Dread ripples through me, even though I know where this story is heading, even though I already know the ending.
“She told me to kill her, so I obeyed.”
Fin’s gaze transfixes on his shoes as he speaks. “I remember.”
Sorrow fills Lydia’s eyes. “What?”
Fin swallows. “I remember. That day. Father took Mother and me to the dungeons and made us wait for you. I always thought it was just a nightmare. Just a kid’s way of explaining something that couldn’t be explained.”
There’s a silence that creeps between the three of us, and it’s thick and sweltering.
But that’s all there’s ever been between the three of us.
Distance.
Muggy and thick and difficult to wade through, but it’s not a distance any of us created.
He created it. Rajeen. He’s the one who wanted this, the hate that boils between me and my two siblings.
And he’d hated Lydia from the day she was born. From the day she left the womb and the midwife declared that my mother had borne not an heir, but a daughter.
It’s why he forced her to choose. Forced her to kill, not just his enemies, but her very own mother.
Because he’d hated her from the beginning, and when she and Fin bonded, he couldn’t stand for her to possess a glimmer of happiness. He’d wanted to take away that too, the relationship between siblings. He’d already been driving a wedge between us since it was discovered that I possessed magic and Fin did not.
For the first time in my life, I reach down into myself and expect to find anger, but instead find something else.
It’s not as pretty and delicate as forgiveness. Not as gentle as kindness.
It’s rough and calloused, and it mirrors my heart.
I reach within and find determination.
And since that’s all that’s left in me, that’s what I use when I cross the room and take my sister in my arms.
At first she flinches, going stiff in my grasp like she expects me to reach into her chest and rip her heart out. But as I hold her, she slowly softens, her tense muscles loosening.
And then Lydia begins to cry.
Her tears are hot, boiling as they fall from her eyes and fall onto my shoulder, my neck.
Fin stands in the corner, and for a moment it strikes me as odd that it’s me holding Lydia, and not the brother whose forgiveness she would sell mine for in a heartbeat, the brother she loves.
So I turn my head and urge him with my gaze.
He’s stiff, his body still in shock from hearing that the nightmares that have plagued him so often are actually a memory. A leftover smudge on his mind of the truth of our mother’s death.
But then I flick my neck to the side, hopefully subtly enough that Lydia won’t feel.
For a moment, Fin’s face hardens, and I can’t help but think it’s the most heartbreaking vision I’ve ever seen. Fin, once so full of life and joy, so, so very bitter. And I can’t help but wonder if I did that. If I took the brightest star in the sky and doused it.
But even I don’t have that power.
As much as he faults me for Ophelia’s death, as much as I am to blame, I cannot go on bearing the burden of my brother’s bitterness.
I cannot hold the blame for the darkness that swells in his heart.
I can only hold out a hand and hope he grasps it.
Fin’s gaze flickers to our sister, the sight of Lydia crying, which I know he hasn’t witnessed since the night of our mother’s death.
A crease furrows his brow, and he takes in a deep breath, his chest expanding in reticence.
Then Fin walks toward us, putting his arms around both of us.
I don’t miss it, the way he embraces me too, even if it’s only for her sake.
Eventually, Lydia pulls away, slinging tears from her burned cheeks with her long fingers like she’s ridding her body of spiderwebs.
There’s revulsion there, on her face, at her outburst. Fin actually makes eye contact with me and smiles, an inside joke between the two of us about our sister and her disgust for actual displays of emotion.
I’m not even sure I return the smile, I’m so shocked to see it. When the moment passes and he turns back to Lydia, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve missed my only shot.
“There’s more,” Lydia says with a groan.
I raise a brow. “I can’t imagine it could be any worse.”
She snorts, and Fin adds, “Please tell me it was you who ambushed our father on the road that day. That yours was the last face he saw as he faded from this side of the sun.”
