I made the same pancakes Daris had been cooking since his mom left and was almost done when I heard something smash. I took a calm sip of my coffee and looked up. Sure enough, the very man I was imitating was at the door of his room and his morning coffee was shattered on the floor.
“Morning,” I greeted him and put my plate in the sink. I leaned against the counter as Daris cleaned up the mess, glancing at me while I poured myself some orange juice. When he finally fixed the glass, he mirrored my position against the opposite wall. His eyes slid from my toes to my eyes and he held my gaze. His was curious and skeptical while mine was a challenge.
“Is there a reason you’ve decided to look like me?” He sounded annoyed and he closed his eyes when I smirked at him. He sighed and pinched between his eyes.
“Nope.” I shrugged. “Just thought it would be good practice.”
“Can you change back?”
“Of course I can. I just don’t plan on doing it.”
“Skyler.”
“Skyler.”
“Change back.”
“Change back.”
“Stop copying me.” His fists clenched at his sides
“Stop copying me.”
“Skyler, stop.” He crossed his arms.
“Skyler, stop,” I mimicked him.
“You’re acting like a child.”
“You’re acting like a child.” He groaned and I did the same.
“This is getting us nowhere.”
“This is getting us nowhere.” I smiled.
“Skyler!” He grabbed his hair and turned towards the wall.
“Skyler!”
“Go train.”
“Go train.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Can I at least know how long I’ll have to deal with this?”
I pushed his shoulder so that I could see his face, and I noticed the bags under his eyes for the first time. My smile fell and my concern took over. He turned his head away and breathed deeply.
I changed back and put my hand on his back. He smiled when he saw that I was back to normal.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Start talking or I will turn back and we can go back and forth all day.”
“Please no,” he groaned
“Then talk.” I got him to sit at the table and started making him another cup of coffee. He was silent, and then I heard him get up. “Don’t even think about it. Sit down and explain.”
“Can I help?”
“I’ve got this. You explain.” I stirred in some cream and sugar, watching the dark drink lighten.
“I’ve got family issues, that’s it.”
“Yeah, I have family issues, too. You don’t see me giving everyone the silent treatment.”
He raised his brow and smirked.
“Forget I said that. Point is, I kind of need my trainer to tell me what to do.”
“I don’t even know what to teach you. You’ve figured out a lot of advanced level stuff.”
“So be creative,” I said and he laughed mirthlessly.
“Now stop distracting me. Going back to families. You know my problems. Now it’s time that you fill in your blanks.”
“It’s nothing, Skyler.”
“Well, it sounds like something, and it’s a big enough something that you’re not talking or training. You’re barely sleeping and you’re always hiding. That’s my thing.”
He smiled slightly. “I’m your trainer; I don’t have to tell you anything other than how to train.”
I passed him his drink. “You do if you want me to keep cooking.”
“But then you won’t eat.”
“I’ll cook for one.”
“Fine. You may want to sit down, though. I don’t need you falling on the floor.”
I didn’t question him and sat down. “I’m listening.”
“Impatient much?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Okay. You’ve met my mother, so you can understand just how cheery my childhood was with her around. Dad left before I was old enough to remember anything specific about him. The hard part is that I recently found out that I’m not an only child like I thought I was.” He paused and the tension and pain radiated off him. “My dad was an Acerlum. He took my twin brother when we were still babies.”
“Daris—”
“I’m a bit afraid to tell you the next part, but it’s the reason you’re sitting. Before I keep talking, you have to promise me that, once you learn who my brother is—you may already be able to sense it—you won’t hesitate to battle him. I have no emotional attachment to him and I never will. At this point, I want to kill him and I almost have on several occasions.”
“Daris?”
“Travis.” The room got quiet and the air instantly charged.
When I spoke, my voice sounded like I might as well have been screaming through a megaphone. “What?” The shock was running deep. Daris sighed.
“Travis is my brother. More specifically, we’re twins.”
My brain stopped. All train of thought crashed into a brick wall. I’m sure my face looked the same as Camille’s when I tried to explain something to her in detail: blank, empty eyes and a gaping mouth. Well, I always wondered what was going through her mind and now I had the answer, because it was nothing. I was thinking nothing, running through my memories of the two and putting them side-by-side.
The similarities between the two of them jumped out at me, and I felt stupid for not having figured it out sooner. The darkened eyes when they got mad, the possessive behavior, the cocky smirk.
I looked at the brown leather bracelet Daris was wearing and compared it to the black one Travis wore. They were the same except for the color as if they were designed with the other in mind.
“Skyler?”
Suddenly, the train jumpstarted and my thoughts went from analyzation to “Oh shit.”
“Sky? You okay?”
“No.” I sighed sharply. “You just told me that the Acerlum hunting me and helping my father is your brother. If you had just told me you had a sibling who was an Acerlum, I would have been better.”
“It’s just that it’s Travis. I know.”
“Yeah, that. It’s obvious now that you say it. You two have the same smirk and your eyes get dark—almost black—when you get mad. I can’t believe I didn’t put it together sooner.” I leaned forward and looked into his eyes. “Is that why you’ve been so quiet recently?”
“I knew it had to come out eventually; I just thought I was going to have more time. The last thing you need is another member of my family causing you stress.”
I smiled softly and shoved his shoulder. He barely moved, but it got a smile out of him, nevertheless. “And the last thing you need is to hide things from me. Your mom said it herself: we’re on our own right now. That means trusting each other with everything, no matter how bad it can be.”
“Agreed.”
“So, no more moping?” I asked.
“No more tantrums?” he shot back.
“I’ll try.”
“Then so will I.” He stifled a yawn.
I smiled. “Good. Now go sleep.”
“What? But I just woke up.”
“Yeah, right. You walked out of your room with a cup of coffee and bags under your eyes. Go to bed.” I yawned. “I’ll clean up here.”
I turned back to the stove and felt the exhaustion consume my body. My legs felt weak and my eyes were heavy. I shook off the fatigue and reached for the eggs, but Daris put a hand on my shoulder.
Silently, he took the carton from my hands, put the food away, and led me to his room. At the foot of the bed were most of the pillows and blankets from when we pissed off his mom. I giggled sleepily.
“What?”
“That,” I pointed to the pile, “has been here for a while.”
“I had other things on my mind than cleaning my room. Normally, I would build the thing, but since we’re bo
th tired…” He waved the hand that wasn’t holding me up and a few blasts of wind moved everything so that it was a sloppy resemblance of his creations.
“You’re lazy.”
“I’m tired.” He sat us against the pillows and covered us with a blanket while I was being lulled to sleep by his steady heartbeat. I couldn’t help but think that we may have a bit of a break for the next few days.
A very determined person woke me up, knocking on the front door repeatedly. They were knocking for about twenty minutes before the house became silent again. I was even able to go back to sleep, nuzzling into Daris’s shoulder with his arm wrapped protectively around me. He kissed my forehead and I sighed. I was happy. Another series of raps came, but this time, they echoed in the room. It was too quiet to come from the door. I looked at the window.
In the last rays of the setting sun, there was a dark silhouette against the clouded sky and the flash of white teeth and a red glint in his eyes. A quick burst of light illuminated Travis’s face. I shot a blast of air at the window, but it dissipated before it hit. Travis just smiled and his laughs echoed. I turned to Daris, but he wasn’t waking up no matter how hard I shook him. His skin started to pale and I was desperate to see his eyes, but they stayed closed.
“Daris! Daris!” I screamed his name over and over, hoping for some sort of response, but he didn’t move. The laughter and my screams got louder and louder until I was the one being shaken.
“Skyler! Skyler!”
I shot up and opened my eyes. Daris was awake and shoving my shoulder, screaming my name louder than Travis’s laughter. I tensed and looked out the window just in time to see a shadow dart across the lower part of the window.
“Blossom?”
I didn’t look away and I felt myself shaking. I was sweating and I couldn’t look away.
“Blossom, what’s wrong?”
Then, there was a knock at the door. He got up to answer it and I had to grab him by the arm to pull him down. I blasted some wind at the curtains and shut them so that the room was black.
“Don’t open the door.” Another knock.
“Why not?”
I tried to sense who was at the door like I did when I could find Daris, but something blocked me and sent me reeling with so much force that I nearly fell backward off the bed. “That asshole.”
“Skyler.”
“Someone’s here and they don’t want us to know. When I tried to sense them, it’s like I was thrown backward.”
“Okay. Okay. Let me try.”
I was terrified at how sure I was as to who was there. If so, maybe their relationship would let him sense his brother. He cursed under his breath.
“It’s Travis, isn’t it?”
“How did you know?”
“Now is not the time for this.” I opened the door a little bit, thankful that his door was hidden from the windows. I stuck my hand out and waited until the hilt of the dagger was in my grasp. I turned around and Daris was putting on his shoes and strapping his own weapon to his side. He looked at me and his gaze was stern.
“Now what?” He went to his closet and opened a hatch in the roof. “We’re going to hide in an attic?”
“No. We’re leaving. Do you have everything?”
“I think so.”
He started climbing the ladder.
“You obviously thought ahead.” I climbed after him and he pulled the ladder up. It was silent between us as he locked it in place. Then, a blast shot through the house and I whipped back to look at the attic entrance.
“Oh, kitten. Come on out, babe.” Travis’s voice carried throughout the house. “Your friends are worried about you. I even brought them with me.”
“Come on out, Sky!” Camille’s voice was shrill and unwelcome in the silence of the home. My eyes were wide when I looked at Daris who mirrored me.
“Skyler!” Melanie followed suit.
“Shut up, you two,” Travis snapped.
“We told you, she’s not here,” Camille said.
“You told me a story about a woman who looked similar to her. That’s close enough.”
“She’s a Luxator,” Melanie spat the word like it was venom. “She can’t morph like us.”
Daris and I looked at each other and shared equal expressions of terror. I think his was more focused on the morphing and mine was because I was freaking out that the girls I was forced to spend all of my time with in high school were part of the very group I had to destroy. I wanted to smile because this just gave me that much more incentive to go down there and show them what I could do even though I was scared out of my wits.
“We don’t know what she’s capable of.”
“Of course we do,” Camille protested. “She’s going to have the same Naturtem as the rest of them. Why is she so special, anyway? Just because she’s his daughter?”
“In case you don’t remember, sweetheart, unlike the rest of them, you weren’t able to figure out she had powers. You didn’t even know who she was until you found me. You even went up to Daris and got near his mother. What would you have done if they realized that the two of you were Acerlums?” There was a silent moment in which I could only imagine Camille and Melanie shrinking away from him.
Daris tugged my shirt and I noticed that he had a portion of the roof open. I was sitting on the roof and waiting for Daris when I heard the back door open. Thankfully, a tree covered the opening and we were surrounded by foliage, but I could still see them clearly. I turned to Daris and put a finger to my lips. He zipped his and we watched.
Travis strode into the middle of the back yard and stood where I normally practiced. Camille and Melanie stood off to the side.
“Travis, they’re gone. Can we just move on?” Melanie asked.
He rolled his eyes. “Amazing how you two were born Acerlums and yet I have more power than both of you.”
“Well not everyone has pieces of the Umbra Coronam, Travis.” Camille retorted.
“You know the power of the crown. You cannot defy it or me. So quiet.”
Camille bristled. “Why should I, garden gnome?” Travis shot a quick bolt of green at her and she recoiled back into a tree. She got up quickly, albeit shaken. “Point taken.”
“If I had known she was that tough, I would have thrown the apple harder,” I whispered.
“Do I want to know?” Daris said from behind me.
“I’ll explain later. It’s a pretty good story. Now, shush.”
“You can’t honestly expect us to wait for them,” Camille cried.
“Of course not. They may not even come back,” Travis scoffed.
“The stove was still warm,” Melanie chimed. “They can’t be far.”
“Suppose,” Camille dragged, “that she can’t morph and that she’s not even here and this is an innocent woman’s home like we told you it was. Then we have no lead. We don’t even know if she was here.”
“Yes, we do,” Travis answered. “Consider it another dream come true from the Umbra Coronam.”
My eyes widened. “Daris, we need to figure out a way to get out of here. Now.”
“Skyler—”
“No, you need to listen to me. We have to—.”
“Let’s just get rid of it, then,” Melanie interrupted. “We know she’s not here now, so she must be close by.”
Travis smiled.
“This,” he pointed at Melanie, “is why I like her more than you,” he said to Camille.
“Daris,” I breathed.
He grabbed my face and made me look at him. “Trust me.” He flashed his cocky smirk and I saw a plan brewing in his eyes, swirling behind hope and anxiety that was bordering on desperation. I had to listen to him. I could only nod and watch as, with an inaudible mumble, Daris seemed to become the commander of every natural warrior in the yard. “When I say so, fly. Don’t go slow and don’t stop. Just go. Promise me.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m going to give them something to shoot at. Yo
u have to get away, understand?”
“No. Daris, no matter how good you are, you can’t fight them three against one.”
He grabbed my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. “Skyler, you are my priority right now. When I tell you to go, I need you to go. Please.” His eyes were flooding with emotion and I felt myself get close to tears, scared of what could happen. Nevertheless, I nodded slowly and he smiled at me before turning his attention to the Acerlums in the yard. He said something else and the trees came to life, restraining and fighting the Acerlums with every root, branch, and leaf.
“Go!”
I took off and flew, doing just as he told me. The wind snapped my hair back and stung my eyes. I zipped over the low roof of the other houses in the spread-out neighborhood before I dove into a bushy tree. I waited for a few minutes before getting nervous that Daris still wasn’t here. Peering through the leaves I looked for any signs of him and saw none. I tried to sense him and found him miles away from where I was. The terrifying part was that it wasn’t getting stronger or weaker. He was still at the house, and I could tell that he wasn’t just hiding; he was fighting. My heart stopped.
“Dammit,” I hissed. I left the branch softly and sped back home, a bit more cautious but quicker than when I left. My desperation was fueling me and I urged myself to fly faster.
As I got closer, I could see more of the yard, or rather, what was left of it. The trees that had attacked were lying in burned ashes around the field. The grass was just as charred, ribbons crisscrossing with small patches of green in between. As much as it pained me to see the bits of comforting nature so destroyed, it hurt even more so to see how Daris was faring.
He and Travis weren’t even fighting with Malicis or Naturtem. They were going at each other hand to hand while Camille and Melanie watched on like rabid fangirls. Between the two, Daris looked worse, but it was evident that Travis was the one who was taking the bigger beating. His movements were slow and sloppy, his punches weak. Daris, on the other hand, despite the bruises that covered his arms and face and the big gash on his stomach—visible through the tears in his shirt, was still holding his own.
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