Chapter Eleven
Rayna
Rayna stared at the unconscious princeling as he lay in his bed, wishing he would just hurry up and die already. She'd been trapped here for two days — perhaps, it was hard to tell for sure — stuck in this tiny room with a stranger who shared her face. Her twin. Her brother. What else had Father lied to her about?
She scoffed, turning away from him and looking once again at the glowing red walls of the infirmary. It wasn’t like she’d never been locked up before; Father had shut her up in her room plenty of times, placing wards to prevent her escape. Othelia had insisted it was the only form of discipline that was acceptable for a young woman of her status and ability. She would have preferred a harsh scolding with the business end of a switch. At least then it would be done and over with and she could get back to her training. But instead, she would be locked away for days on end with nothing to do but read her books and stew in her thoughts. And now, here she was again – stewing and staring at the wards she had never been able to see before. There wasn't even anything to read, and even if there had been she doubted she would have been able to turn the pages. There was only her unconscious brother and the impenetrable wall that sent tingles up her arm when she pressed her hand against it. For a while she had studied the wards and the runes that powered them, fascinated. She’d always known about wards and even had a rudimentary understanding of how they worked, thanks to Othelia’s ruthless instruction. But she was no mereologist, so had never given them any more thought beyond how to avoid or defeat them. A Shade Hunter’s true power resided in their strength and cunning, not their magic – as Master Jan never let them forget – and so to her wards were nothing more than obstacles to overcome. But now, here in this new prison, they were the only thing that she could even touch – the only thing that felt real to her.
She scowled and punched the wall. She didn't really expect anything different to happen from the countless other times she’d tried to brute force her way through the wall, but she felt an overwhelming urge to do something other than sit around and wait. She felt no pain, just a powerful force repulsing her fist and the same tingling sensation as before. The waiting was driving her crazy. After things in the ballroom had calmed down, some of the soldiers had gathered the princeling onto a stretcher and carried him to the infirmary. Rayna had found herself pulled along against her will - as if she was tied to the boy by an invisible rope - and any lingering doubt she might have still had about what was going on vanished: Father had killed her, and she was bound to the unconscious nobleman as his shade.
Father was a liar and a murderer. He may not have killed her with his own hands, but he had thrown her in that damned basement and let her die, so in her mind there was no difference. She had even believed him when he’d told her he was trying to help the others. Now she didn’t know what to believe. Her and Xavi and Ricard and the others had been locked down there for a reason, though she still had no idea what that reason was. He had left her down there alone and her lungs had finally found their chance to kill her. Funny. She’d always thought that it would be Adrick who would do her in. She smiled mirthlessly at the thought of the look on his face when he learned that he’d been denied his victory.
She frowned at the softly glowing red wall, then huffed and turned to look out the window. She had no idea how long she had been in the room with the young lord, but it was still broad daylight outside, though it seemed to her at least a full day had passed since the healing mage had thrown open the curtains last. The unpleasant woman had checked in on the princeling one other time, at around what Rayna would have thought to be noon, and she had seen no one else since then. She thought she had been in here for two days total, but in her current state she couldn't be certain of anything. She felt no need to sleep, or eat, or even pee. At least she wasn’t coughing anymore. It was strange and unsettling; she could see, hear and smell just as well as ever - and in some ways even better - but the lack of touch was grating on her nerves and making her irritable. Whenever she started thinking about it she felt the anger rising up in her again and all she could see was Father holding his hand out to her, helping her into the carriage.
She shook her head in frustration and growled, trying to clear the image out of her head. The princeling moaned softly. She whirled around and glared at him as he shifted about in his bed, but he didn’t wake. She had been lied to her entire life, and here was the proof. She had no sister and she was no gutter-rat, not if her twin was the son of a prince. What did that make her, then? A princess? She remembered enough from her studies to know that Prince Andreu was not supposed to inherit the throne, not since Oriol had his own sons now. But he was still a prince, whether he was to inherit or not, which meant his son would become a duke. Had she grown up in Prince Andreu’s house she most likely would have been married off to some high noble or other. She shuddered at that thought. Maybe Father had done her a favor, raising her as a ward instead of the high-born she apparently was.
But that brought even more questions to her mind. If Father was a duke, why had he lied to her about where she came from? Had Father and Prince Andreu orchestrated some insane plot that somehow involved her? Or had Father managed to steal her away as a baby? And why her and not her brother instead? It didn’t make any sense and the more she thought about it the angrier and more frustrated she got. None of it made any sense: not the lies, not the violence. Oh, she had always known that Father was capable of violence - in fact, in some ways she found that easier to believe than the lies - but what she had seen in that ballroom was indescribable and sent shivers up her spine whenever she thought about it. Did she even have a spine anymore?
The door rattled and pushed open with hardly a creak - no cold basements and squeaky doors for their precious princeling, oh no, only the best for him - and a halberdier with officer’s knots on his shoulders entered, his large frame filling the doorway and blocking her view beyond. Rayna pushed her dark thoughts aside for the moment.
“Finally gonna let me out?” she asked.
He said nothing, simply folding his arms and staring at her. He had dark, almost black, skin marking him as from the southern continent, but his eyes and hair were completely white. His uniform was rumpled and unkempt, as if he’d been wearing it for several days without rest, and there was dirt and bloodstains splattered all over. Rayna was fairly certain the blood was not his own. He narrowed his eyes at her.
She sighed. “Look, I’ve already told you, I’ve never seen this boy before, and I had no idea what Father was planning…” She gasped, his gaze suddenly feeling like it was ripping deep into her very being. He dug around in every corner of her… what? Soul? Essence? What was she even made of now? Whatever it was, he was merciless with his digging. She felt naked beneath his gaze and would have been ashamed if it wasn’t for the pain. It hurt so bad that she thought it would have killed her if her traitorous lungs hadn't already done the job. She desperately wanted to look away but couldn’t, transfixed by those milky white eyes. After a moment he grunted and broke whatever strange connection he had with her. Whoever had told her that shades couldn’t feel anything obviously didn’t know what they were talking about, but Rayna was used to dealing with pain. Her whole life had been one type of pain after another. This was no different. She grunted and shook her head, trying to clear the residual effects of… whatever it was he had done to her, trying to ignore the niggling thought that she didn't even have a head to clear anymore. She blinked and looked up, meeting his gaze with a scowl, but the halberdier merely turned and left the room.
“Five minutes,” he said, his deep voice tinged with a slight Katet accent. He did not address Rayna but someone just outside the door whom she couldn't see. Then the door closed and the lock rattled, leaving her alone. Rayna cried out in frustration, whirling around and taking it out on the wards again. How long was this going to go on? How long would she be stuck in this room? Her fists and arms tingling uncomfortably with each punch, but she hardly noticed. Even if they did release her she was still bound to the young man lying next to her. Why wouldn’t he die? Even the final journey would be better than being stuck here.
“Ahem…”
Someone coughed and Rayna spun in the air. A shade floated on the other side of the bed, looking at her. She was a pretty thing, perhaps a few years younger than Rayna, though she knew enough to realize that appearances mattered little when it came to determining a shade’s true age. She was wearing a fancy dress beneath what looked like school robes, probably from the Mage’s Academy. A noble. Couldn't they just leave her alone?
“Yeah? What now?” she asked, annoyed.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I just wanted to check on Vincen,” the shade said. She had a nice voice. One that had never needed to beg for bread on the streets. She probably didn’t even know how to curse.
“What, they didn’t send you here to try and get close to me? You know, girl to girl or whatever?”
The shade smiled. “One of the advantages of being a shade is that it’s hard to force us to do anything we don’t want to. Besides, Do you really think they’d ask me to interrogate you in the middle of the night?”
Rayna blinked and looked out the window. The sun was shining high in the sky and it was bright as noon. “What do you mean? It’s broad daylight out there.”
The shade shook her head. “I forgot. You’re new to this. Look closer.”
Rayna looked again and realized that the bright light in the sky she had assumed was the sun was, in fact, the moon. Stars sparkled all around.
“We can see just as well in the dark as we can in the light. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”
Rayna shook her head. Well. That explained how Remei was always able to find her no matter how dark of a hole Rayna shoved herself into. How had she not realized this sooner?
Rayna turned back from the window with a slightly embarrassed huff. “Well, whatever. How’d you get past the wards? That big guy locked the door.”
The shade had the good grace to look bashful. She was cute. She possessed a sort of natural grace and beauty that Jana and Marta, despite years of effort, had never managed to achieve. “The King has given me freedom of the palace. That, and, well… I was once betrothed to your brother, before…” she gestured down at her translucent, shimmering form. “In any case, I am sorry they’re holding you here. No one knows what to make of you. We all believed you were stillborn, so you can imagine our surprise.”
Rayna shrugged. No one was more surprised than her. “So… what? You live here? You a princess or something?”
Her face fell for a moment. “Nothing like that. I’m just a shade, like you. My name is Ona. My father is Marquess Anton Lequette, Lord of Marisette. You’re Rayna, right?”
Rayna suppressed a laugh. A marquess! She would have actually outranked this girl, had Father not stolen her life away. In the end, it didn’t really matter, though. Marquess, Duke, Prince… they were nothing more than titles handed down from one man to another, each as meaningless as the next. And what was a title without power? By themselves they meant nothing. Rayna nodded down at the boy. “So, he’s gonna be a duke, huh? That why you wanted to marry him?”
A look that might have been anger flashed across the shade’s face, but she composed herself quickly. “Yes, Vincen is to be the Duke of Selise. And you would have been a duchess. You may have even married Prince Aarmond, had things gone differently.”
Rayna smiled a little, despite herself. Rayna had deliberately baited Ona, and she had barely flinched. She was starting to like this girl. She looked the same age as Remei, maybe a little older, and Rayna could remember her once saying she had been about fourteen when she had died. Yet this girl was acting far more mature than Remei ever had. Rayna had heard that shades stopped maturing when they died, so either this girl was older than she looked or “they” were wrong again and shades did actually continue to learn and develop as they went on. Rayna shrugged and gestured down at herself the same way Ona had a minute ago.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think anyone’s gonna want to marry me now. I don’t much like the idea of being told who to hook up with, anyway.”
“That’s our duty as women; to support our men. For the good of the Empire.”
“Yeah. No thanks.”
Ona hesitated a moment, an awkward silence hanging between them. Then she sighed. “Well, anyway, you and I don’t have to worry about that any longer, do we? It’s yet another advantage to being a shade, I suppose." Ona looked down at Vincen with what may have been longing. Or maybe loss. It was hard to tell. Maybe the girl really had loved him. Rayna frowned. When she looked at the boy - Vincen - all she felt was… disappointment? She remembered Xavi and Ricard and her silly dream that they were her brothers and would one day rescue her. But they were dead, or as good as, stuck in that basement with the others. She felt a lump forming in her throat. Funny, she didn’t even have a throat now, did she?
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This was her real brother, her twin. She had no sister. Not that she knew of.
“So I guess my family’s kind of a big deal, then?” Rayna said, trying not to let her voice crack. She drifted back and leaned against the wards, ignoring the tingling sensation running along her back. “Any other long-lost brothers or sisters I should know of?”
Ona shook her head and brushed the back of her hand against Vincen’s cheek, the tips of her fingers disappearing inside of him ever so slightly. He shivered and she pulled away, clutching her hand to her chest. She looked up and Rayna noticed tears in her eyes. “He never told you anything, did he?”
Rayna shrugged. “Father? No, not really. I was his ward, he found me in a gutter.” She scoffed. “Or, that’s what he said, anyway.”
“And that’s why you call him Father?”
“Isn’t your time almost up?”
“He got away, you know. They couldn’t find him anywhere.”
“Yeah. He’s good at that. He’s never there when you need him.”
“He killed the entire Royal Family. Only Aarmond survived.”
Rayna snorted and turned away. So they had sent her to gather information after all. And she had actually found herself liking Ona.
We are your family, Master Jan’s voice whispered in her ear, and family is everything. Hah. The only family she had ever known had betrayed her and left her to die.
She felt a gentle tingling on her shoulder, similar to how the wards felt, but softer, almost pleasant. She turned and saw Ona behind her, her hand on Rayna’s shoulder. A tear dropped from her eye and vanished into sparkling dust. She had never seen a shade cry before. It was strangely beautiful.
“We are here for you, you know,” Ona said, her voice soft.
“By locking me in my room?”
Ona shook her head. Her smile was sad. “It takes a few days for the Bond to settle in. You can’t go more than a few feet from your twin until then. You're not a prisoner.”
“Really?” Rayna scoffed, gesturing around the room at the glowing red walls and runes. “Sure coulda fooled me.”
“I know you weren’t involved. Anyone who saw you appear in the room could tell that. But it doesn’t look good for you to protect him.”
“What can they do? Execute me? It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?”
Ona shook her head sadly. “I don’t know what you’ve been through, but there are a lot of good people here. You can trust us.”
Rayna scoffed again, her anger rising. No one could know what she’d been through: lied to her entire life, imprisoned, tortured, beaten, and then murdered by her own “father”... No, she wasn’t protecting him. Not in the least.
The door shook as someone, probably the big guard, pounded on it from the outside. Ona sighed and looked down at Vincen again, blinking a few more of the sparkling tears from her eyes. “Could you please give him a message for me when he wakes up?”
“Yeah, sure. I guess.”
“We’re leaving in a couple of hours, with the funeral procession, my sister and I. After that we are going to Clement to stay with Lord Matvie for a while – so that she can recover and we can wait for things to settle down. Just let him know that we’re ok – him and me. And that marrying Alba won’t change that. Can you tell him that for me?”
Rayna frowned. She knew Lord Matvie, sort of. He was one of the few nobles who had come to Father’s house more than once. He had even stayed with them for a couple of days on one occasion, leaving with a toddler Rayna had never seen before. She remembered watching them cross the courtyard, his young wife carrying the small child in her arms. She had found it curious at the time but hadn’t given it much more thought after that. “Sure,” was all she said.
Ona smiled and looked down at Vincen. She bent low to kiss his cheek, stopping short. She choked back a sob, then straightened and flew toward the door. Before passing through the wards, however, she stopped and turned back. “Being a shade is hard enough,” she said, smiling despite her own pain. “If you’re not on good terms with the one you’re bound to it’s a lot harder. Trust me. Try to get along with Vincen, ok? He’s a bit thick at times, but he’s a good guy.”
“Hey!” Rayna called as the girl began to slip through the door. She stopped and turned, only half in the room. “Will I ever sleep again?” It was a silly question. Irrelevant, in the grand scheme of things. But, still…
Ona smiled, her eyes filled with pity. “No. Not until… not until the end. You should find a hobby. I sing, and go on long flights…” a flicker of a genuine smile perked up at the corners of her mouth. “Sometimes I spy on my parents.”
Rayna laughed at that, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to like this girl who had been sent to spy on her. “A hobby?” She gestured at Vincen. “What am I supposed to do? I gotta follow this guy around everywhere he goes. I can’t grab hold of anything. I can’t even read a book.”
“You’ll figure it out, eventually. You don’t know much about shades, do you? We learned all of this in school.”
Rayna shook her head. “Never really knew any shades, except for one, and she wasn’t worth talking to.” She sighed. “But, I guess I’ll figure it out, like you said. I’m good at getting by on my own.”
Ona smiled softly. “One more thing,” she said, her silver eyes growing sad and distant. “Try not to think about it too much.”
“About what?”
“About how you became a shade. It happened, and that’s that. All you can do now is be there for him - help him to live his life as best you can. That’s your job now.”
Rayna laughed. No matter how she looked at it, she was stuck. Stuck as a shade, stuck living a life that wasn’t truly her own, stuck to this boy she had never met. She hadn’t even known his name until a couple of minutes ago. “Well that’s just great,” Rayna muttered. “I don’t even know him.”
Ona sighed, her eyes sad despite the smile on her face. “And we don’t know you either. But we will,” she said, and then she was gone.
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A heavy thump shocked Rayna out of her reverie. She still hadn’t managed to get to sleep - and from what Ona had told her earlier it was unlikely that she ever would again - but she had finally managed to relax, floating on her back and staring up at the ceiling, lost in thought. At first she had just let her anger and frustration wash over her, stewing in the unfairness of her current situation as the events and emotions of the last couple of days replayed in her mind over and over again. Ona had given her plenty to think about, so much so that it all jumbled together in a big, incoherent mess. After a couple of hours of pointless brooding, however, she found herself drifting aimlessly from one random thought to the next, and so she just went with it. In a strange, detached sort of way, she was no longer dwelling on her thoughts, she was just letting them wash over her, unguided, unfiltered, and unprocessed. It was something Master Jan had tried to teach her once, long ago, as a way to help her process her thoughts and emotions. The idea, as he’d explained it to her, was to clear her mind of all the random things she thought were important but probably weren’t. To let her brain take over and guide her to the authentic truth. The whole exercise had seemed esoteric and pointless to her and she had shrugged it off as a waste of time that would have been better spent sparring. Now, however, she found the lack of focus freeing, like a weight she hadn’t realized she was carrying had been taken from her.
The boy moaned and Rayna sighed, her pseudo-sleep ruined almost as soon as she had found it. She rolled over and was only a little bit surprised to find that his bed was empty. Not completely empty – the sheets and pillows were still there, but Vincen himself was nowhere to be seen. She heard him moan again, a disoriented and muffled sound that seemed to come from under the bed, and she smiled. The same thing had happened to her when she was little, or so Othelia had told her. On at least three separate occasions she had found Rayna crying on the ground underneath her crib. It wasn’t until Othelia had actually seen her slip right through her mattress one afternoon that they finally realized Rayna was a twin. Rayna frowned, trying to force back the dark thoughts rising up in her again. Had Othelia known the truth, or had Father lied to her, too? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. It didn’t matter, anyway.
She sighed and rolled over onto her stomach, drifting down to the floor. She looked under the bed and there he was, clearly visible despite what should have been the dim light of the single lamp burning on the small table near the door. He was laying flat on his back under the bed, his face contorted in a groggy, confused frown, his eyes still heavy with almost three days worth of rune-induced sleep. She frowned. He looked kind of pathetic, lying on his back with his forehead wrapped in bandages, his nightclothes wrinkled and having worked almost up to his hips. They may have shared the same face - though his was undeniably more masculine, especially in the jaw and cheekbones - but she still found it hard to believe they were related, much less twins. She shook her head. The truth was the truth, and there was no denying that she was a shade now, and bound to him. Vincen. Her brother. Her twin.
He groaned again, louder this time, and brought his good hand up to rub the bridge of his nose, grimacing against what was most likely a doozy of a headache. She had heard the halberdiers telling the healer about how Father had struck Vincen, slamming him to the ground with one massive, powerful punch. Those same hands that had comforted her so many times had almost killed her brother. Her brother who she hadn’t even known existed. Her brother who had tried and failed to save the King, the Queen, the Prince, and countless halberdiers and mages… so many people had died by those powerful hands. She shuddered at the thought. She sighed and sat up, crossing her legs underneath her and leaning forward, waiting for Vincen to fully wake. She still didn’t know what she was going to say when he did, despite having had more than two days to think about it.
It didn't take him long. He grunted and stretched, loudly passing gas as he leaned on his elbow, preparing to sit up.
“Careful,” Rayna said, just as Vincen pushed himself up, his head cracking against the mattress slats.
“Gyaa! What the..?” he grunted, collapsing back and rubbing the top of his head.
Rayna chuckled and shook her head. “Tried to warn you,” she said as he rolled over and squinted at her, blinking the sleep from his eyes.
“Yeah,” he groaned, still rubbing his head. “Where am I?”
“Palace infirmary. You’ve been out for almost three days. I almost thought you were dead, except I’m still here, so…”
Vincen grimaced and carefully crawled out from under the bed, shooting it a confused glare. “So why am I under the bed instead of on top of it, like in a normal, civilized hospital?”
“Not a hospital. Infirmary, remember? Though I’m not really sure what the difference is. Anyway, it’s because of your new skill. It used to happen to me, too. You’ll get used to it.”
He stood, slowly and cautiously, then sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “New skill?” he said, scrunching his eyes shut and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Who are you, anyway? I didn’t think nurses used shades.”
Rayna frowned and floated up so that she was eye level with Vincen, still sitting cross-legged. “Ona was right, you are thick. I’m not a nurse, I’m your twin. In case you couldn’t tell.”
That caught his attention. His hand froze and his eyes opened wide. “Ona? She was here?”
Rayna wanted to punch him. Was he serious? That was his takeaway from what she had just said? Instead, she closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead against a headache she didn’t actually have. “Yeah, yeah she was here. Nice girl, better than you deserve, apparently.”
He sighed, leaning forward on his knees before looking back up at her, a somewhat dopy grin on his face. “How long ago?”
The sap was in love with a dead girl, that much was obvious even to her, and Rayna hardly thought of herself as a romantic. She considered lying to him for a moment, but then thought better of it. This wasn’t at all how she had imagined her first conversation with her twin going. Still, she had meant it when she said that Ona was nice, and she had promised to deliver her message.
She shrugged. “I dunno, a couple hours ago, at least. It’s kinda hard to keep track of time in here.”
“Just ask the nurse.”
Rayna scoffed. Yep. Thick. She gestured at the walls. “Can’t. Too many wards.”
Vincen frowned and sat up, glancing around the small room. “Really? Why? Who are you? Why are they keeping you here with me?”
Rayna groaned and stood, which meant that her head stayed in one place while her feet reached down to the floor. At least, she thought they did. She couldn’t actually feel the floor to be sure.
“Didn’t you hear me a minute ago? I’m your twin, Rayna. Nice to meet you.”
“Twin?” he blinked at her, heavily and slowly, and Rayna sighed. He was still drugged, apparently, which explained things a bit. It didn’t make him any less annoying, though. It was going to be a long afterlife if things kept going like this.
She shook her head and drifted over to sit next to him on the bed. She found it surprisingly easy to gauge where the bed was, even though she couldn’t feel it at all. “Yes,” she said, gently, despite her irritation. “Your twin. Believe me, I’m as surprised as you are. Father always said he’d found me in a gutter.”
Vincen stared at her, his eyes searching her face, taking in every feature, and somehow she didn’t mind.
“But you’re a girl,” he said, his voice mirroring the confusion in his eyes.
“I’m glad you noticed,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m sorry…” he said quickly, blinking and pulling back a little. “It’s just, I always thought… we all thought… I mean, we were told…” He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose again. After a brief moment he lowered his hand and looked back at her. “We were told you were stillborn. And a boy.”
Rayna sighed and nodded slowly. “Yep,” she muttered, frowning. “Sounds about right. They tell you I’m dead while letting me believe you never existed. Bastard.”
“Who?”
“Father. You know, Duke Borden, and whoever else was helping him. I was his ward.”
That did him in, and Vincen let himself slowly fall back to lay on the bed. “I’m sorry, but Borden? Of all the… ugh." He scrunched his eyes shut and grasped the sides of his head, rubbing his temple furiously. “This is too much. So, uhm, Rayna? You said I’ve been asleep for three days?” he asked, peeking at her with one eye. “Did they give me anything? Medicine? Or runes?”
Rayna nodded, and he groaned.
“I thought so. My head feels weird. I think I’m going back to sleep now.”
Rayna shrugged. “Sure, go for it. But just so you know, Ona wanted me to tell you something.”
He opened his eye again and squinted at her. “Yeah?”
“She said that the two of you were good, and that getting married wasn’t going to change that. And she’s leaving with her sister this morning to go stay with Lord Matvei.”
Vincen stared at her for another moment, both eyes opened now. He didn’t sit up, just looked at her from his awkward position laying on the bed. “Yeah?” he said, sounding groggy. “She said that?”
“Yep.”
“That’s nice." And then he was out.