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Another shapeless form came into my view. “Kalen, don’t!”
It was Ione.
“I’m not sure which one of them is dead.”
Dead? As if the word was a spell, the Light lifted from my eyes. I looked down at what should have been a pile of mortar in my lap.
“What in hell do you mean?” Kalen said, the words coarse.
“Did you not see? When the Light receded, the Shadow went with it. The powers are now one. It is Gwynore’s body, yes, but it could be either of them inside.”
I ignored whatever it was Ione and Kalen were fighting about, glancing down at Melany. Her head sat still in the cradle of my legs, her veil perfectly draped across her cheeks. The trim was a sheer black lace, a mourner’s veil patterned with small Preserver’s crests. Through the fabric, I could see her eyes were closed.I felt my fingers drift towards her face. It had been so long since I had seen my twin, and I wondered if that mischief had remained etched in the bones of her face and if her eyes still gleamed as bright as they had when we were children. I paused to see the tips of my first and middle fingers dipped in black ink. Like smoke pulsing under my skin.
I’m not sure which one of them is dead.
I jerked my head and looked back down at Melany. Her chest did not rise. Her mouth, pale and dry, yawned open slightly. Like she was about to tell me a secret. Something she learned in the dark.
My hand still hovered in the air, unsure of exactly where to land, unsure of what exactly to do. It stayed floating above her face as I searched for the power inside my sister, the string that tied us together when we were pulled apart to live and reign in these bodies. I tugged on that string and found only myself to answer to. I tugged again, sure I was just out of practice. One length ofShadow at a time, I pulled and pulled until the darkness burned in my chest. The Shadow began to rise within me, rippling against the Light, fighting against it.
Gwyn, Kalen said, his voice moving through my mind.
I snapped my head towards him so quickly that Ione jumped where she stood at his shoulder. Kalen was unalarmed but there was that familiar glaze of fear coating his eyes when he looked at me. Kalen began to move toward my sister and me, but Ione braced her hand against his arm. I marked their touch and a flicker of black flame danced across my wrist.
“It could be Melany, I...” she faltered. “I’m just not sure.”
But I was. I was not my twin because she lay in my arms, dead.
Yet somehow the Shadow still lived in me. And in my shock, I convinced myself that all of that horrible Truth would not be so if it weren’t for Ione. If she had just given me more time, hadn’t sold me out, had helped me— truly helped me when I needed her the most. Melany would still be alive. Our father might still be alive if she would have just helped me.My blood grew cold and all of those thoughts, all of those ways I could blame her for something even Gabriel could not have seen, melded into one: I was going to kill Ione.
Gently, and without looking away from those fingers that heldtightly to Kalen, I slid Melany to the ground. My twin’s hand fell open as I stood, the knife she had plunged into my chest clattering against the stone.My hands ached to clench, to ball into fists on instinct. So I let them, feeling a wind draft around my sides. Ione’s eyes grew wide and Kalen cursed under his breath.
“Gwyn,” he warned, but I stalked towards my only living sister, well aware of the cloud of Shadow trailing in my wake.
A loud whooshing pushed through the room and before I knew it, my right hand was around Ione’s throat, her eyes bugging as I slammed her head against the stone wall. Glass from the skylight above rained down on us.
“You did this,” I sneered, but my voice was not my own. It reverberated against itself, a tone I recognized as Melany’s edging every word. I laughed. What was I blaming her for exactly? Kidnapping Kalen and I? Or the fact that Melany was somehow trapped inside her good sister’s body.
Whimpers and choked shrieks ground their way out of the High Mer’s lips. I slammed her head against the wall again to quiet them. The whirring and clicking of my two powers surrounded us, drowning out her cry. I was almost sorry for it, to miss such a lovely sort of sound.
In my periphery, I could see the Shadows rising, threaded by sparks of Light raging war against myself. I knew what that meant.Somehow, I’d taken Melany’s power for my own, just as she had once taken mine. But I’d done more than tie a stone of Shadow around my neck. This dark, billowing pressure was living inside me, mixing with my blood, filling my lungs, swallowing me whole. And my heart was fighting it. As if my Light knew it was an abomination of the natural order to be both at once. My soul was tearing itself into shreds from the inside out.
Yet all the while, my breaths came steady and true. Ione’sthroat felt fuller in my hands as I squeezed.
With the twitch of my brow, I called the Shadows forward, and they listened. In a tailspin, the darkness tunneled itself into a dozen spokes that raced toward my sister with one command. Until she gives.Black wires of Shadow spewed from my fingers, fusing into Ione’s veins, razing lines of purple and blue up her jaw. Her body thrashed and her legs thrashed against my knees. She fought hard, gasping until blood spattered across my face. I let my tongue swipe at my lips. It tasted like the Sea. I snarled. I’d run to her when I thought the Binding would be the end of my world. If only she’d known I’d be the end of hers.
“GWYNORE!”
My Shadows stilled when the Preserver yelled my name.
The Preserver? Was he still?
“Gwyn,” he said softly, melodically. “Listen to me. Listen to my voice.”
My jaw clenched. I wasn’t sure I was just Gwyn anymore.
“You are,” he answered. “And I’m just Kal. You are my best friend, and I am yours.”
“You know me,” I remembered.
