by Emily Shore
“Only one thing’s impossible,” I murmur against her mouth.
I need this break, this little gap to remind myself of my own humanity—before I do something I’m gonna regret.
“Huh?” Her breathless voice asks.
“You. You’re impossible. But you’re my impossible.”
She brings her shoulders together with a smile. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
I shake my head. “Sounded better in my mind. But I’ll tell you this—” I pause to sift my hands in her hair, cup them around the back of her neck because she doesn’t like them hanging around her face. “You’re an impossible girl to find. Except for me. I’ll always find you. Just like the day you were born.”
“Funny, I thought I found you.”
I plant both my hands in hers and kiss her forehead, hoping she takes the hint I’ve got to stop for a while. “We found each other.”
As soon as I hear the door open on the other side of the exhibit room, I hurry away from her and rush as fast as I can behind the auditorium-like chairs.
Serenity
When my father enters the exhibit room, I don’t move. I don’t take the risk of my father thinking I wasn’t alone by me looking back even for a second. Instead, I focus on Sharky and sidle up against the tank.
Every time Force gets close to me, my world feels like it shrinks to the size of a teacup. Chance of escape is minuscule at best. How long before my father steeps me with his boiling water, drains my flavor to use it to his satisfaction, and dries me out?
“I thought it would be best to check on you.” He approaches me with the same body language I’ve grown accustomed to: hands folded behind his back, slight hunch, tilted head with an edge of insanity in his eyes.
I don’t answer. Tonight, I give him nothing.
And when I walk away without a confrontation even after he grabs my arm, I make sure he knows it.
When I take the elevator, it’s up to her floor on the other side of the Penthouse. What I don’t expect is to find my mother instead of Queran inside her bedroom. Not to mention Luc. However, he’s on his way out the door, and though it surprises me that he doesn’t meet my gaze, I welcome his lack of attention. I turn mine to my sister.
Her eyes are closed, but I can still see her trying to defy the instinctive wincing when my mother starts to apply antiseptic. Chancing a nervous glance, I expect to see lake-wide gashes. Instead, most of the wounds have fused together and grafted. The skin fuser rests on a nearby table—a newer model than Jade’s.
My mother has already cleaned the blood away.
At first, I stand in the corner of the room until my mother motions me to come forward. To finish what she has started. This is the first time the three of us have been together since the Breakable Room.
“My girls.”
My mother speaks the two words—softer than snowfalls—and touches us in separate ways. While she feels comfortable fiddling with my curls, she reserves her hand to a simple touch on Bliss’s shoulder that lasts only a moment.
“You might think you have nothing in common but your DNA, but you have the most important thing—me.” She looks back and forth between us. “I hope, I pray, you can at least hold onto that.”
When my mother leaves the room to give us some time alone, she takes her words with her. They disappear like a puff of smoke from a storybook dragon. Bliss doesn’t open her eyes.
My hands aren’t slow when I pick up the antiseptic bottle. My fingers aren’t thoughtful. They seem to register how much this is going to hurt—us both. But it’s necessary.
“Serenity, I don’t want—”
“Shut up,” I interrupt her, and she’s not in much position to move. “I’m doing this whether you like it or not. Our mother’s right. Deny it all you want, but we both made our choices because of her. I’ve got to deal with that same as you. You might like keeping walls between us, but I’m going to keep wrecking them over and over again. If the past seventeen years won’t stop me, this sure as hell won’t either.” I spread the ointment onto her back, and I don’t recoil when my fingertips find the healed but raised flesh wounds—wounds I created.
After a few minutes of Bliss cringing and gasping through the pain of the cream, she finally tells me, “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Neither of us did,” I reply, thinking of our birth written in Mom’s journal.
“Luck of the draw.” Her voice doesn’t sound convincing.
I shake my head, picking up on the frailty of her words. “No, it was her choice. She couldn’t keep on forever. No one can. No one should.”
“I manage. You won’t.”
My hand pauses. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? That I’ll turn into him. This is really the worst barrier between us? Worse than seventeen years?” I touch one of the wounds.
“Your blows feel just like his.”
Bliss doesn’t look at me.
Inhaling deep, I blow out a long string of breaths and confess, “You’re right, Bliss. Something deep inside me wants to accept the power. I’m not immune to our father’s poison. I was overdosing on it while you’re on the receiving end, which is worse…I know it is. But—” I lean over, pressing my cheek to the pillow next to her until I can see her eyes. “I’ve got something stronger inside me. I didn’t put it there; it was always there. Sometimes, we take the good with the bad. If I believed there was no hope, I could never look into your eyes again, but I am right now.”
I pause in case she responds, but she doesn’t. She just stares back. For the first time, she’s looking at me and not through me.
“Call it love, call it hope, call it whatever you want,” I go on. “But it’s more. Those things can fade. What I have lasts forever. And that’s truth. I’m not ready to give that up.”
I scoot closer. Nothing in my body speaks of comfort because this is not a moment for comfort. Not surprised she doesn’t move even when I kiss her cheek. Bliss remains perfectly still like a ship in a bottle. I can’t get her out unless I break the glass. Whether I’ve created a hairline fracture, I can’t begin to imagine. I kiss her other cheek, but I can’t will her to accept them. She has to do that on her own.
“I’m not a good person, Bliss. I’m just human. And this human has some good in her she won’t let go.”
Bliss
The mountain of broken body parts inside me is not doing its job. It’s supposed to protect me from this, hold back the emotions, keep me numb. She thinks the stripes on my back are what divides us. She thinks the seventeen years without a sister are the problem. No, those can be overcome, chalked up to the fault of others. What can’t be overcome is the time we were at our closest—a time frame of all of nine months.
History repeats itself. I suck the punishment into myself just as I did then. Broken before birth so my sister could be whole.
I’m an egg. Someone cracked me open before I was fully formed, poured out my golden treasure, and scrambled me up. I can’t be unscrambled. But my sister still has a chance. I understand that now. She might be cracked, but she could get the chance to hatch before my father defines what she will become, before it’s too late. It will be better for all of us if she and Serafina leave.
“There is a certain drug they keep in the Centre supply level,” I tell her, flinching when her fingers descend on my back again. “It counteracts Father’s implant. Use it, take Mother, and go.”
“Not without you.”
“Serenity—”
“Oh, I want to slap you right now, so just—don’t say another word. I’m not leaving without you. Do you think Mom ever would? We won’t leave without you.”
“This is my home,” I deny without moving. “It’s all I’ve ever known.”
“We are your home.”
I try something else. “And what about Luc?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
I should’ve known she would see through my ploy.
“Like you said,” I tell her wi
th a sigh. “I am part of the poison. But it’s my choice now. I am who I am.”
“You can change.”
“I am who I was made to be.”
I wouldn’t know what to do outside the Temple. She has to see that. She has to understand that even if she were to drug me and carry me out of its glass walls, I would go running back to them as soon as I could. As far as I’m concerned, the world outside the Temple doesn’t exist. It’s no better than here. At least I have access to everything I need. Plus, Serenity’s Sanctuary would never accept me. If she knew who I really was, Serenity would never accept me either.
“Give yourself a chance to see someone different,” Serenity urges while pulling out something from her skirt pocket—a small, leather-bound book. “It’s Mom’s journal.” She sets it on the pillow next to me, treating it like a precious gift the way her fingertips linger on its cover. “She’s a good writer. She talks about everything. Leaving the Temple, raising me, loving Kerrick, rescuing girls and getting them to the Sanctuary…”
I can’t be saved, and I don’t want to be rescued, I want to tell her, but she’s in no position to hear it or comprehend.
“She’d want you to read it, too.”
Serenity finishes applying bandages to my back, then stands up to leave me alone.
“I love you, Bliss,” she stops to tell me before she reaches the door. “Whether you accept it or not, I’m going to love you.”
I don’t tell her how many times I’ve heard those words. They sound different coming from her mouth, but I know that’s just a trick. True love can’t exist in the Temple. She’s too innocent to grasp that, but if she doesn’t get out of here soon, Father will force it down her throat.
Hearing another door click from the other side of the room, I don’t bother to glance over at him. Queran is always concerned over my physical welfare after these occurrences. He’s coming to check the healing measures have been applied correctly.
“How long were you eavesdropping?” I smile at him as he sinks onto the bed.
Queran returns the smile and shrugs.
“Naughty, naughty,” I scold him a little.
Then, he reaches for the paper object he formed for me long ago on the day we first met. I keep it hanging from my bed as a helpful reminder of what survival in the Temple should feel like. Leave the beauty; chuck the heart. Managing to prop myself up on my elbow, I lean onto my side to face Queran, careful not to disturb the bandages on my back.
My preparer twists his other hand in a magic trick to make a small origami heart appear. Slowly, he inches it toward the tetrahedra and injects it inside the complex network of triangles until it lodges in the center. It doesn’t look right to me. Like all the intersecting triangles are suffocating it.
Then, he presses his hand to the space between my breasts where my heart lies. “Beat, beat,” he whispers, but then wags a finger back and forth, shaking his head—it’s not beating yet.
“It doesn’t beat because there’s nothing there,” I deny.
Queran shakes his head again, pointing to the paper heart and then back to my chest.
I shrug. “Whatever you say, Queran.”
25
S e R a f i n a’ s Q u e s T i o n s
Luc
From a distance, I watch my brother. I watch how he handles her. Why is he waiting? It doesn’t take a genius to know he wants to talk to her, to hold her. I contrast our backgrounds, chalk it up to raising. That raising still defines me; I will never shirk it off completely. I gave up everything for her, and she’d rather talk to a shark than endure two words with me.
What are you waiting for, Skylar?
After what seems an eternity, my brother makes his way down toward her. Still, I can’t fathom why he pursues her at this agonizing pace. Instead, he waits for her to raise her hand, to pursue him. As I leave, every phrase my father reared me with haunts me.
You want to be a real man, Luc? Don’t wait for any woman.
She belongs to you, so just take her.
The world is your oyster. You have the right to as many girls as you desire. That is what being a man is all about.
Don’t forget, a better one’s just waiting over the next horizon.
Every woman secretly wants to be dominated.
And the world told me the same.
“Just give her some time, Aldaine,” Force advises me. “She’ll come around.”
I’m sure, I mutter internally, tone sarcastic. Without bothering to acknowledge him, I continue on my way, intending on returning to my room, careless if he discovers my brother at the tank. Sky is too cautious for that. Sketching will grant me peace of mind, and since the last exhibition is complete, it’s time to set the stage for her next one.
Force keeps pace with me.
“Wait just a moment.”
Pausing, I incline my head toward him.
“On your way back, would you mind helping get Bliss back to her room? It seems she passed out after her last client appointment. Her medic should be arriving in her room at any moment to test her blood and vitals. Thank you.” He doesn’t wait for my answer.
I roll my eyes, knowing he has countless security guards who could do this for him. Perhaps he is being extra cautious with his Yin and Yang due to the earlier incident with security. Whatever the case, Bliss’s unconsciousness puts me at ease. After our last encounter, I have no wish to speak to her, much less listen to anything she might say. All I want right now is some matter of serenity, however ironic the notion.
Once I arrive in the client room, I find one medic on the floor beside Bliss’s passed-out form, preparing to revive her with smelling salts.
“That won’t be necessary,” I interrupt him. “Force sent me to get her back to her room. You can test her there.”
Without waiting for a response, I slide one arm under her knees and gingerly lift her into my arms, noting strangulation marks on her neck and bruises on her wrists and arms when I do. Somehow, Bliss remains unconscious, expression more composed than I’ve ever witnessed since my arrival. Why should I feel this much rage? Workplace abuse has always been common. Violence encouraged and demanded in every graphicker studio in the country. Even in the Aviary, I turned a blind eye to some of the assaults, especially when I was a new director. I only confronted them when they were a threat to my control.
But now…when I see the bruises like storm clouds marking her Pegasus-white skin, it takes more effort to control myself than ever. Sighing, I avoid staring down at her bare upper half, though the medic feels the need to remark on it once I arrive in the hall outside her door.
“The hidden daughter of the Temple. Curious, isn’t it? They’re twins. So similar. But he keeps this one behind the scenes without an exhibit but free for client interactions while the other is globally paraded but untouchable for anyone?”
“Force is a man of much puzzlement,” I say, wheedling out of an explanation.
“She survives. Like other countless girls I’ve treated here,” the medic goes on, though I don’t care to listen.
Despite my outward indifference, my mind scoops up the last segment of information. The medic is an older gentleman, so I imagine he must have seen a few things during his time here. But for the first time, the knowledge sickens me. Despite knowing this girl—who is more woman—in my arms for only a brief time, I care more about the damage done to her now and in her past than I ever did for the girls in the Aviary. Nightingale, Blackbird, Peacock, even Mockingbird…it was simple to manipulate them into believing the lie. Serenity was the only difficult one.
For a moment, I consider Serenity in her sister’s place. The possibility is one I can’t stomach, so I disregard it. But every time I glance down at Bliss, I’m reminded of how physically similar they are. Day and night wearing the same faces, the same tender bodies.
Ridiculing myself once again for my wandering eyes, I transfer them to her suite door. Serafina waits beside it.
“I will take care of her
now,” she informs the medic.
“Of course, Serafina. Just send the blood sample down to me at your convenience.”
He knows her name because she has drifted through the Penthouse like some sort of ghost. I suppose that’s a half truth. The Penthouse itself still echoes reminders of Force’s time with Serafina. Through Unicorn-themed sprite lites, however it bows to the Swan-themed art, the Penthouse holds half of Serafina’s soul. Provided my brother and I can form a solution to get all three women out of here, it will never hold Serenity’s.
“If you can manage to set her down on her stomach, please,” Serafina directs me.
At the same time I lower her body, I ensure the side of Bliss’s face is pressed into the pillow. Serafina has healing cream already prepared as well as a serum. All for her appointment wounds.
“Hand me the cream,” Serafina requests.
I’d rather leave the room, but I do as she asks out of respect, considering she did give birth to the girl I love…and her sister. My expectation is Bliss will wake when Serafina presses the cream to her wounds, but she remains still and serene in sleep. I assume the strangulation is what caused her to pass out. Hopefully, there will be no lasting repercussions, but I know that isn’t true. She reminds me far too much of my unconscious Birds from the Aviary. Whatever the case, I intend to discuss her healing period with Force. Bliss needs more time. Or at least allow her some appointments with a CellGen. Ironically, Serenity’s Immortal implant would be best suited for Bliss, but Force would never spend that much on his Yin.
“I’ve seen the way you look at my daughter.”
So, that is why Serafina didn’t ask me to leave. For the present, I indulge her.
“Serenity.”
“Both of them.”
“I beg your pardon.” I intend it as a question, but it doesn’t quite leave my mouth as one.
“Only two men have ever taken up residence in Serenity’s heart. Unfortunately, one of them is gone. You keep trying to climb up on her pedestal, she will keep knocking you down.”