by S. K Munt
Kelia had more news for me- in fact from the way her breathing changed and eyes dilated, it became clear, and rather quickly, that she’d forced her way into my room so that she could explode her private secret to someone- anyone that she could trust to keep it: She was in love. And when she confessed that Kohl had stolen her heart, I almost checked out of consciousness for another three days.
Kelia spoke quickly and passionately, filling me in on everything that she had thought, felt or done concerning Kohl Barachiel over the course of his two-week stay. She had been shadowing him since he’d saved her at the ball, and was absolutely convinced that he wanted her as desperately, because he’d spent many hours out in the hall with her, waiting for me to come to. So gone on him was she, that she had started to have faith in what she’d overheard Martya say to me- that if she escaped this place as a virgin, she would steal Kohl’s heart and marry him, becoming the princess that she’d always meant to be. A third-tier one, but a princess all the same.
Her excitement made me feel sick, as did the realisation that she was trying to follow me through my loophole, but I smiled for her and told her that anything was possible- so long as she didn’t share this with the other girls and give them ideas.
‘Of course!’ Kelia smiled and winked and said. ‘Just imagine, Larkin- we could become sisters!’
‘You think I have designs on becoming a princess?’ I asked her.
‘I don’t think Kohén’s going to give you the option,’ she said. ‘We all know that’s why you haven’t got any gold yet… you’re too precious to him for that. Why do you think I was so jealous?’
‘Because you play sport like a girl?’ I’d joked, and she’d giggled and hugged me again.
I had returned her embrace, while praying for both of our souls, and a cotton field so wide and tall that it would look like Heaven on earth to make up for how hellish everything before then was destined to be.
*
Kohl left for Pacifica with the king at his side three days later, and though he only hugged me when he left, I felt his heart pounding and saw tears welling in his eyes to mirror my own.
‘I will see you soon,’ he whispered to me.’
‘So long as you see me and our paths clearly when you do,’ I said back, and kissed his cheek.
‘Too late.’
‘Okay you two,’ Kohén said, pulling me back so that he could step in and hug his brother. ‘Don’t make me regret introducing you.’
Kohl had kissed his pendant over his brother’s shoulder, and then closed his eyes and hugged Kohén tightly- so tightly that minutes passed before they let go with wet eyes, red faces and trembling lips. Not a word was exchanged during this, and I know that everyone on the dock was as moved by the twins strong bond as I was. There and then I vowed never to break it by coming between them, but when Kohl’s first letter arrived two weeks later- one he’d posted from the dock and slipped into a book so it wouldn’t be found, I forgot how not to fall for him.
June 17th AA643
Dear Larkin,
I’ve read so many wonderful books that I think it should be easy for me to string together something beautiful for you with words, but then I remember how the sun looks on your hair, and I forget how to think.
I will miss you dearly.
Love, Kohl Barachiel.
‘Six months,’ Kohl whispered to Kohén.
‘Six months,’ Kohén agreed, and then my best friend turned to me and buried his face into my neck, so that he wouldn’t have to watch his brother walk away. I hugged him and tried to be there for him, but the truth was that Kohén was holding me together as much as I was him- because watching Kohl smile sadly at us over his shoulder almost undid me.
Then again, to put it into perspective that I had no compunction of what love- or losing love- truly was, the duchess’s legs crumpled beneath her as soon as Kohl’s back was turned, and the blade that had been wedged in my heart since my fifth birthday twisted.
‘Please…!’ Constance wailed. ‘Elijah! Kohl! D- don’t l-leave me here!’
I didn’t know if I was more depressed that my own mother hadn’t missed me like that, or because I could feel the infertility vial in my gut, reminding me that I’d never have the chance to break over somebody like that either.
The king looked back over his shoulder with a mournful expression on his face- but Resonah and Rosina were travelling with him this time, and they were holding each of his arms tightly and so, he did not attempt to move to embrace his wife, and nor did her son. So while the ‘luckiest’ and most beautiful and most admired woman in Calliel wept balefully, the gangplank lifted, and her family sailed away- Elijah and Kohl on the boat, and Kohén on foot back up the hillside, leaving her completely alone because Karol had already departed for the East.
I hurried after Kohén, breathless. ‘Aren’t you going to comfort your mother?’ I demanded. ‘She’s falling apart!’
Kohén wiped at his tears and shook his head. ‘If I were capable of putting her back together, she wouldn’t be, would she?’ he gave me a wounded look, then held up a glowing palm, showing me the sparks crackling at his fingertips. ‘I have to…’ he swallowed then faced forward. ‘Train... or something.’
And then he left me alone there too, and I was too angry with him to let a single tear fall. I turned back to the ship so I wouldn’t see him slip into the harem and saw Kohl standing there, watching me. I kissed my wooden ring and blew it to him.
Five years...
*
It took six weeks for Karol to announce that he may have found the key ingredient to complete the formula that Martya Rice had created for locust-deterrent, and by the time he’d been proven right, four months had lapsed and many other things had transpired.
Lindy wrote to me to let me know that she’d survived two weeks before having her daughter- Skylark- who was healthy and living with them in a small coastal cabin in Janiel, and I’d whooped so loudly that one of our harem servants had come in to see if there was a spider needing killing. Lindy thanked me expressly for saving her family and told me that in a few years, she would return to see me again. She’d also included a photo of baby Sky, and bragged that the ‘divine’ Prince Karol had bought them a personal camera (a luxurious item- only the royal family had one within Eden’s walls) before he’d ‘traded’ them in Janiel, on the condition that she send me lots of photos. It was a sweet gesture and an insurance policy, because now that the world was so excited to see if his cure would work, Karol was obviously terrified that I’d mess it up for him by letting the ingredients leak to the masses. I wouldn’t of course because I’d given my word, but I couldn’t help but wonder how hard Karol had prayed that I would stay in a coma and not wake up to hold him to any of his promises. I sure knew that part of me wished that I’d stayed asleep long enough to lose my appeal to him so that he wouldn’t hold me to my promise!
Lindy also wrote that her eldest daughter was ready to take the exams and had her sights set on becoming an academic- and a birthing doctor, which made me grin and pray for days, even more than I prayed for my own. But I had to laugh out loud when she told me Karol’s explanation for why he was taking her away- apparently, he was doing it as a sixteenth birthday present for ME! And she added, rather saucily- that he’d made a demand of his own though- he wanted her to make me a gown that I would be able to wear to his thirtieth birthday masquerade ball the following year- something that had to be lower and higher cut than the ‘swan’ dress, but one that had to have feathers! I’d rolled my eyes so hard that I’d given myself a migraine, and had written back demanding that she make me a duck suit- with an accentuated backside, webbed shoes and a mask with a big ‘ol bill! I was fairly certain that she’d adhere to Karol’s demands, but I amused myself later that day by sketching out possibilities.
Lette turned sixteen in July and joined us in the harem, and walked out the morning after with gold chandelier earrings and a relieved smile on her face. She’d gone to Emmerly who by t
hen, had earned herself a golden anklet as well, and they’d whispered and giggled together in the private dining room while I sat across from them wondering why I’d thought it would be a nice gesture to eat in there with them to celebrate a third joining us. There was no ‘us’ in the harem, and because Kohén avoided me for the next few days, I began to sink into a depression that didn’t abate until I found another book and letter from Kohl waiting for me on my bed, wrapped in brown paper.
August 19th AA643
Dear Larkin,
I found the letter you stashed inside my things and I am… speechless. I can’t believe you trusted me with this formula even though you say that you cannot love me, and I really cannot believe that Karol has actually kept his word and started mass-producing this at your request! Father is gobsmacked to think that Karol worked this out himself, and cannot wait to come home and brag, so if Karol returns soon- make sure he knows to make the most out of that throne access while he can- because the king seems ready to settle in for the long-haul now that his kingdom is back on track again! And with girls like you showing such loyalty to the Barachiel men, how could we ever derail?
You were right to trust me Larkin- I am loyal to Karol and supportive of his future reign, but I am equally, if not more, devoted to you and to put your mind at ease, I will trade a secret of my own as a thank-you for yours, and it is one that could get me in as much trouble for sharing as yours will so please, guard this with MY life:
There are dark Nephilim left and my father (and his father before him) have always been aware of that fact. Their numbers have to be small, practically extinct as we have publicly claimed, but they have made their presence known over the past one hundred years, which is why father added the electric fence. They cannot fly of course, and they do not seem very powerful or they would have agitated us much more than they have, but father believes that the locust problem is to their credit, and I think that I agree. The world was changed during Armageddon yes, and we see evidence of those changes in Calliel every day; the evolution of the salt and pepper bears in the north which have been known to try and bite through our fences, and the gator fish that prey on those foolish enough to end up in the Atlantic ocean, and the fact that we have fruits and trees that did not exist in the time before… but these locusts plagues were set upon us by God, among many other things, so it is strange that they continue to plague us despite the fact that he stopped everything else.
The creatures themselves don’t make sense either- they don’t have the same biochemical traits as locusts from the time before, and their migratory habits are haphazard and sometimes seem intentional, as though they know exactly where to strike to hurt the kingdom the most. Because of this, my father theorises that they may be less than natural, which is another reason why we’ve found ridding ourselves of them to be an impossible task, and if he’s right about that then it’s feasible that the swarms are set upon us not by nature, but wicked Nephilim trying to vitiate our perfect society by crippling our food source. We have taken a vow to ward off poverty after all, and so much of the way the kingdom is run can be traced back to that, so by depriving us of dietary staples, these locusts are causing more unrest than there should be and making my family look as though they’re failing to uphold God’s vision.
So this is why father is so desperate to strike them out, and probably why he was so brash and threatening with your friend for giving him false hope as a means to escape her sentence. I know him Larkin and he would never hurt another person- I swear it- so please, have a little faith in my word if you cannot in his, and know that though it may appear like he took your mother’s evidence lightly, he is trying to find a way to get into the north and see if there are not nests of Nephilim hiding there, as he suspects, because the Wildwoods are just one more part of this new world that makes no sense! How could something grow so densely, somewhere where the ground is harder than ice? They must be protecting something, and that something may be a cabal of dark souls who have nowhere else to hide!
I know that your suspicion has been aroused, but laughing off the Nephilim threat is the only way that my father can keep people feeling safe and from despairing, which could not only cripple Arcadia, but hurt God’s cause as well, so we have to keep this secret and to ease your mind no, Kohén is not aware of this- father simply confessed it last year to me when he was inebriated on palm wine.
So now you have some very powerful information in exchange for yours, and I won’t insult you by asking you not to tell anyone- especially Kohén who is already too incorrigible on the subject of tracking down dark Nephilim- but please, feel at ease when confiding in me.
Not that you needed insurance, sweet Larkin, because the fact that I write I love you to you in ink is enough to have me branded. But I do, and I would take searing pain on my shoulder over no reply from you and effectively, a searing pain on my heart!
Love, Kohl Barachiel.
August 20th AA643
Dear Kohl,
I will always reply and keep every word we exchange confidential. It is nice to have something of mine to give to someone else willingly, even if they are just a few, dark truths.
Love, Larkin.
8.
Things with Kohén continued to be strained over the next few months, but he continued to make time for me and sometimes, we’d get so involved in a hand of cards on my bed that we’d forget what the true purpose of that bed was supposed to be, or so puffed chasing around a ball in his backyard that I’d forget to look for the golden man. We studied for our exams together (he and I were the only ones who bothered, as Kelia had been utterly convinced that she’d become the future princess of Pacifica because Kohl had sent her a postcard) and that was fun and soothing and began to thaw out my anger towards him at a rapid rate.
Or at least it was until Elfin’s birthday passed and saw her walk out to breakfast the next morning with not one token of her affection (or Kohén’s secretion, as Kelia and I liked to giggle) but three. Emmerly was positively livid, Lette was not surprised, Elfin practically glowed, Kelia went white in fear and I locked myself in my room and sobbed over the bundle of letters I’d received from Kohl, trying to tell myself that this was how it was supposed to be.
It wasn’t how it was supposed to be though, and I fell harder and harder for Kohl with every letter I received, feeling as though I were transferring feelings from one brother to another and hating myself for being such a girl- and one with such a conflicted heart! I was unbearably fond of Kohl, but Kohén was my life and the dream of one day sharing one with him never really died, even though it hurt me so much every time he appeared in the corridor looking guilty and sated. He was growing so tall and strong and proud that just looking at him made my chest ache and my mind blur, and when he’d stop whatever we were doing just to enfold me into his arms and breathe into my hair without a word being spoken, I knew that he’d always be my first love, if not my only, and I his.
But love didn’t always last forever, and thanks to his need to sate his urges with other women, and my need to protect Lindy by making that deal with Karol well, ours certainly would not stand the test of time, circumstance or caste and I made a sad sort of peace with that; at least by agreeing to lie with Karol, I’d broken my own heart and dashed my own hopes for a true romance with Kohén, sparing myself the agony of him instigating my fall.
And I supposed, given the way I’d been raised, that I was lucky to have known love at all so like God, I embraced what I could: taking friendship and promises from one twin, and declarations of undying affection from the other while loving both in equal measures and praying to God every night, that someone-anyone- would love me back one day and be allowed to, because I would be free.
Kelia was the last of us to turn sixteen and she passed out from fear twice the week before. I confessed this to Kohén and he looked ill, so when Kelia emerged from her suite the day after without a single adornment, another birthday postcard from Kohl wishing her a happy sixteenth, and a sm
ile on her beautiful face, I knew that even though sometimes Kohén’s body was in the wrong place- his heart was in the right one- and with me, and so, I defrosted a little more.
We participated in our preliminary examinations one week after Kelia’s birthday, and though the other Companions only did the basic test and an Artisan one each, Kohén and I went through every single exam, both prac and written, which ensured that we went to bed exhausted every night for a week. But it was fun and distracting, and I don’t think two people were ever closer to one another than he and I were after each test, when we’d come out of our rooms and embrace and then go back to mine or to the ballroom or the training room to study for the next together. Kohén was nervous- determined to best his older brother’s overall rank of 96% on his final examinations when he turned twenty-one, but I was oddly calm, knowing that if I did poorly, I’d have the chance to take it again in five years AND with no one to compete against.
We drank wine together after the final combat exam (which was used to qualify people for the voluntary defence Corps), and ate the last- and only winter strawberries- (they had grown in my garden alone) and laughed with breath that misted the air, talking about what jobs we might have had in the ‘old’ world. I said that Kohén would have been a solicitor or a judge, and he was pleased as punch with that, but when he said I would have been a princess, I threw my strawberry at his head.
‘No, not a fairy tale one,’ he protested. ‘I once read about one from near the end of the before, who was a star. An actress, a princess and a great beauty who inspired millions with her kindness and charity.’ He blushed and popped a strawberry into my mouth. ‘I don’t remember her name, but yeah, that could have been you.’