Luc’s reprimand echoed in Lila’s head while she watched him correct the architecture assignment he’d given her. She’d gotten an embarrassing amount of measurements wrong. So much for being better than him.
You can’t use it.
Lila fingered the architect program application she’d tucked into her robes’ pocket. Was it stupid of her to learn these things? Would it be even more stupid of her to give her garden design to Luc? Or stupid of her to keep it? What would she do with it? Stick it in a drawer somewhere, take it out on occasion, and cry?
At least, if she gave her design to Luc, he might like it. He might see what she was capable of.
In his hands, her design might be put to use. It might be seen. It might be worth all the hard work she’d put into it.
Lila clenched the pages in her fist, braced her skull against the obelisk, and stared at the Void like the darkness held the answer.
Was it worse to have no words? Or to hear the words of your heart claimed by another?
Present Aeon
When Lila swung open the door to her house, Castor was sprawled out on the blue chaise lounge he favored, a chalice of wine in one hand.
“Where have you been?” he grumbled, his pale cheeks flushed with drink. “You’re missing all the festivities. Eva said you stayed on Earth after she left.”
“Oh, um…Yes, sorry. I got a little carried away. Was everyone at the feast?”
“Not everyone.” He shot her a glassy, accusatory stare.
“Well, I really am sorry. I lost track of time.” Lila began moving around their shared living space, and he followed her with his eyes. She took off her pearl and gold earrings and opened the lid of her desk to put them away.
To her shock, and then to her horror, she saw that all of her sketches were missing. Every last piece of parchment. Her sketches…and her application to the architect program. Her original proposal for the Garden that she’d copied into a proper blueprint for Luc. Only specks of sawdust remained.
Dread pricked at her skin.
“Castor…” she began, with her back turned to him, “did you move my sketches?”
“Did I? Let me think…Oh, yes, those. I…put them somewhere else.”
“Where else?” Lila twisted around. Castor never touched her things except to spite her. This didn’t bode well.
Rising from the chaise, Castor approached her. He chuckled, the edges of his voice deepening in a way Lila didn’t like. His eyes were too focused on her face, like she was a piece of wood he was carving.
“I put them…into the Void.” His voice grated over the last three words as he stretched his arm out ceremoniously. He took a sip of wine, and Lila’s head spun. Her world tilted on its axis.
“W-what?” she asked, certain she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“Iflungthem into the Void!” he announced, flinging his arm out. “You wouldn’t believe how they disappeared. Like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Lila flinched. Her back hit the desk, leaving her trapped between it and the wall of Castor’s body. It was an all-too-similar position to the one she’d been in a short while ago, and yet, it felt entirely different.
Lila had been trapped for her entire existence, but she’d never felt it as acutely as she did at that moment.
“You can’t do that!” she cried. “Those were mine!”
“Do you know whatyoucannot do…Liiila?” Castor swayed as he leaned in, unsteady on his feet. “Youcan’t do metalworking. You’renota blacksmith. You’renotan architect.Youare just the other half ofmysoul.”
“They’re just…hair pins,” she protested, hating how weak she sounded to her own ears. “I can’t believe you would do this.”
Castor snatched the earrings from her hand. He threw them on the ground and crushed them underfoot, as if to confirm, ‘Why, yes, Lila, I would.’
Eyes wide with fury, Lila shoved him.
“I hate you!” she screamed.
