Chapter Text
It’s happening.
This, Emilie knows for sure.
Whispers. Closed doors. Implications. A mysteriously dwindling calendar.
No sucking up to that prince she should think about marrying, no sitting in on Father’s meetings.
Just: keep your head down. Focus on your studies. Or even: take a break.
She doesn’t chase it. She knows better.
Unlike her sister, she does keep her head down. She does focus on her studies, listens to her tutors. She keeps the eavesdropping and questions subtle.
Her day will come.
Very soon.
…
She lies awake in bed.
Somewhere far away, her other half does, too, in a bed half as nice, in a room full of people who should be strangers, protected by the one magic Sun Light their little town on the edge of the kingdom has to offer.
Emilie has never shared a room with anyone but her twin, who is breathing loudly in that I know that you know that I’m awake way.
Because real monsters don’t live under the bed. They live in the darkness of night. And even in a gilded cage of a building completely surrounded by Sun Lights, somehow, their parents, once upon a time, thought the sisters would be safer together.
If only it had saved their mother.
Isabelle breathes extra loudly.
“I know,” says Emilie. But she will never be as in sync with anyone as she is with Evelyn Caust. Her Pair. Her other half. A girl she’s never met.
“Well, you sure aren’t acting like it.”
“Some of us,” Emilie begins, “have to think before we act.” But there isn’t the edge in it there would be with anyone else.
“Uh huh.”
Isabelle is younger by fourteen minutes.
Sometimes it feels like fourteen years.
It is like dealing with a four year old, some days.
When they were little, they always looked so alike. The healers had proclaimed them the perfect set. The same long, dainty, sand brown ringlets. The same blue eyes. But they stopped dressing alike. Isabelle cut her hair short; got her hands on some potion that turned the ends red.
And never developed magic.
They were born equally entitled to it, as firstborn twins of a powerful magical Pair.
But it became obvious with time why Emilie got it all.
At least to her.
“Are you ready?” Isabelle asks.
“I have to be.”
“Are you ready?”
It’s what she was born to do. Find Evelyn. Bring her here. Get her in line. With her other half, she’ll be able to do magic. Real magic.
And what she was nurtured to do? Restore the Hartford name.
Since her father’s other half, better half, died, he can’t do magic, after all.
He’s as useful as her sister.
“I’m ready.”
But—
Her fist slammed into the face of the boy, barely sixteen summers old. An adult by Evelyn's people's customs, but still just a pitiful child to Emilie.
She felt his teeth break the skin of her hand, the moment earlier when her fingers grabbed into his hair and dragged him off the girl. The vision was red, spinning in a dizzying, furious haze that made it shimmer like the surface of blood-tainted water.
Her muscles stretched, arm reaching back, other hand tight around the boy's throat, and she hit him again. And again. And again. Wondering when it would end. His head bounced off the wooden floor, his voice changing from angry threats to broken, shattered sobs. Begging for forgiveness.
He would have none of it. She was going to kill him, wring his pathetic little neck, spill his entrails all over the floor. She gasped as an arm the size of a small tree trunk wrapped around her and pulled her from the child like a punch to the gut.
Emilie would have her work cut out for her.
She’s left panting. Their connection feels strongest to her when her own mind is finally half turned off.
Despite her sister’s continued pointed breathing, she finally drifts off to sleep.
And somewhere far away, in the present, Evelyn does, too.
…
After another slow day of no news is good news, hurry up and wait, sleep doesn’t come so easily the next night. Emilie slips out without waking her twin in the mirror image of her own big, plush bed. Her body registers the dark hallway as a threat, even though they’re surrounded by Sun Lights. Not for the first time, she slips into her father’s empty study. The room feels like him more than he does, these days.
She has a vague idea of what she’s looking for, perusing his bookshelves. She plucks a few tomes that seem likely candidates, stacks them on an unused corner of desk. Opens one. Not what it looks like. Next. This one holds promise. She skims.
Pairs share almost everything, of course, but there is some skill to it. You can hold things back. And the other can override it. It’s this psychic battle of wills that Emilie wants to know more about. She knows a decent amount about how to hold back. It’ll be a while before her other half really knows to try, but—
“That’s some advanced stuff for a teenager up past her bedtime.”
She slams the book shut loudly and whirls in one motion.
“At least don’t read in the dark,” her father says lightly. Everything he says sounds like a pacifying joke, these days. Used to being mocked even in meetings that discuss magical repairs of the Hartford Road.
Emilie ignores the quip. “I need to know.”
He shakes his head fondly. “Not yet. But I respect the curiosity.”
She examines him. “Soon.”
“Soon,” he admits. Then: “There are some people who still don’t think you should be breaking into your Pair’s mind. That’s why they teach it so late.”
“Because they think the Pairs who aren’t born here can’t or won’t hold back, more like.”
“Yours sounds like a real spitfire,” he admits. “I get it. Your mother burned at both ends, I’ll tell you that.”
“But you went soft and married her.”
He holds up his hands innocently, like a child. “That, I did.”
But her mother had learned to burn for the right side. “She’ll try to hold back as soon as she can,” she says, of her own Pair. “And I’ll need all the sway I can get.”
“Yes.” He always admits the pressure is on. It’s Isabelle he coddles. They both do. “But there are other ways.”
Softer ways. She rolls her eyes. “She’s mine. Her mind is mine.”
Her father gives a little tilt. “And,” he says, “you’re hers.”
…
In the morning, she gets what she’s looking for.
No longer a precocious child sent back to bed, she’s called before the appropriate council.
Find her, they say. Bring her here. Train her.
This is the moment you were born for, Father says.
This is the day she plays her part.
Are you really ready? Isabelle asks her, wide-eyed.
Now it’s time to find out.