The Captive Twin

by R. J. Francis

  That’s when her sight gradually returned. And she began to remember.

  The place she began to see was filled with smoke and dust. She started to hear a little bit of this and that—but now everything, particularly her head, and especially her ears, throbbed with such pain that she started to cry. “Ow, ow!” she whined, not caring who heard. With her next breath she sucked a sweet, acrid smoke into her throat and lungs, and she coughed. Pain shot like lightning through her hips and down her legs.

  Right next to her, she saw Alessa with burning splinters in her hair, and with Sasov collapsed atop her. Embers floated past like glowing gnats.

  Elaina’s own body was curled awkwardly against the wall. She summoned all her strength to wriggle her arms free from beneath her. “Stay still,” Elaina told Alessa. She reached out clumsily and swatted the glowing slivers of wood out of Alessa’s hair.

  “Thanks,” Alessa said. “Ugh!” Alessa twisted to get a grip on the guard unconscious on top of her, and she rolled him gently onto the floor. “You’re hurt pretty bad, kid,” she said to Elaina.

  “Yeah, everything hurts,” Elaina whispered. “I’m broken.”

  “Hang on. We’ll get out of this.”

  Alessa’s eyes seemed to lose focus—like she wasn’t entirely there. “I’m feeling something about…the children!” she said. “They’re stealing the children!”

  The children…this guard dying beside her… Elaina was in so much pain she couldn’t think about anyone else. She too was dying, damaged beyond repair: bones shattered, brain swelling, bleeding inside where nobody could see.

  She might only have a few breaths left. She looked around at the world she had known and prepared to leave it.

  But then she noticed a white glow on her hands.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “A nd then I saw Elaina,” said Prince Jaimin. “She was on the floor, in terrible pain, and her dress was on fire. And that was it.”

  Nastasha pulled back the black hood of her cloak and knelt beside him. The light from the sole torch mounted on the cave wall sparkled in her dark brown eyes and caused her blonde hair to glow warmly. Jaimin had crammed himself into a corner of his private cave. He sat on the floor, gripping his knees. His face was soggy with tears.

  “These things I saw—were they real?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nastasha said. She sat down beside him against the slippery cave wall. “You don’t remember anything else about the room she was in?”

  “If I did see anything else, I’ve lost it now. I’m so frightened!”

  “It sounds like just a nightmare,” she said. And then she realized: if there had been trouble in Audicia, Jaimin would be the only person in the camp likely to detect it. “What do you see now?” she asked. “What do you feel?”

  Jaimin closed his eyes. “Nothing,” he said, but he kept trying.

  Nastasha began uttering a soft, repetitive prayer, asking the divine spirit to protect Elaina and the others. Jaimin sat still, lulled by his confidante’s voice. Nastasha had pieced together her own religion from all her research on the subject, but few people ever heard her pray.

  As she prayed, she too felt that something bad had transpired. She tried not to focus on the feeling, in case Jaimin could read her thoughts. Still, she couldn’t keep her keen imagination from running through scenarios where the Arran delegates were killed, the war was lost, and she was captured and tortured. Quiet now, she told her mind, and she tried to concentrate on the words of her prayers. Nearly driving herself mad, she gave up and stopped praying. “Nothing yet?” she asked Jaimin.

  “No.”

  “And they’re out of the range of our communications,” she said. “But if you are in Kalmise, perhaps there’s a way for you to get a clearer picture.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  Nastasha moved directly in front of him, facing him. “Try looking into my mind,” she said. “Just for practice. It may help you connect with the others.”

  Jaimin was reluctant. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”

  “No, you won’t,” she said. “I promise. And don’t hold back. Go as deep as you can.”

  “Aren’t there any secrets in there you want to keep from me?”

  “Jaimin,” she said, “There are plenty of horrible things in my mind now—I shan’t lie. But I’ve already told you my deepest secret. Other things in here may shock you, but there’s nothing I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Promise me again I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I promise.”

  Jaimin separated his legs and Nastasha scooched in closer. Elaina had explained that the mental connections one had with those closest to them were always open. Jaimin knew he had a connection with Elaina—she’d used it many times to see into his mind—he just needed to learn how to perceive it better. And if he had a connection with Elaina, surely he also had one with Nastasha, his lifelong friend.

  Sure enough, Nastasha’s mind opened up to Jaimin the instant he formed the intention of looking in there. It was so quick—as if he had dropped through a trap door.

  At once he had the impression that he was in two places simultaneously. He still clearly saw Nastasha right in front of him, but at the same time he was inside her, floating in a soupy fog, surrounded by her ideas, her emotions, her thoughts… It was the oddest feeling. He was surrounded by everything he knew was Nastasha: her scent, her wisdom, her razor-sharp thinking… He even felt her incredible love for him, and her bitter sadness at knowing he would never be hers. “Is it working?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, although he heard his response filtered through her ears.

  “I’m going to try to show you something.”

  The space around Jaimin darkened, but he knew he was still within Nastasha’s mind. The image of her face and her lovely brown eyes faded some, but it never completely disappeared, so Jaimin knew his real eyes must still be open. A light appeared from above and sank down into Jaimin’s field of vision. Someone was holding a lamp: someone descending into a laboratory on a rotating platform. It was Nurse Isabel.

  As soon as the nurse stepped off the platform, he leapt from the shadows and, with a sweep of his leg, knocked her off balance, sending the old woman to the floor. Her lamp bounced away. Jaimin quickly figured out that he hadn’t attacked the nurse, it was Nastasha who had—he was just seeing her memory through her eyes. He watched her pursue the nurse, who scooted backward against a metal desk. He heard a brief exchange of words, and then watched Nastasha’s hands plunge her short sword into the cowering old woman’s chest. He felt her rage as she twisted the hilt with all her might. When she withdrew the sword from the woman’s torn flesh, a surge of bright red blood followed it out and did not abate.

  “Did you see it?” Nastasha asked.

  Jaimin was out of breath. He felt as though he was about to vomit. “Can you change the thought?” he asked.

  “I can try,” she said.

  The lab and the rage faded, and Jaimin found himself in a new scene. This one was less sharp than the last, but it was evident what was going on. He saw himself on the castle’s parapet with Nastasha, on that recent afternoon when they had discussed the psychic ability the investigator Devon used to savagely probe people’s minds. Nastasha wore a light blue dress under a solid white fur-lined robe.

  Without a word, the Jaimin he was watching reached around Nastasha, slid his hand up onto the bare section of her back beneath her golden curls, and pulled her close to him. But, again, he began to see things through her eyes, and what he felt was his hand on his own back. He felt drawn to kiss…himself, and he did. With the warm contact he felt dizzy with pleasure, a female pleasure, one he recognized from his intimate moments with Elaina.

  The kiss deepened. He felt himself losing who he was—he was becoming much less Jaimin and much more Nastasha. His—no, her—hands slid under his loose waistband, and, disengaging from the kiss, she grasped the ends of his shirt and lifted it off over his head, re
vealing his lovely shoulders and chest. She quickly moved in again, kissing his lips, his chin, his neck, and his chest, and then sinking down to her knees to kiss his navel, taking in the scent of his bare skin. She felt Jaimin’s fingers move in beneath her hair, slipping in against her head, holding it tightly, holding her face against his abdomen.

  Her desire for Jaimin mounted; the desire to lock bodies and souls. Surely she could please him. But not here—this was not the place, out in the open. She would bring him downstairs, to her room.

  “Jaimin, have you returned?” the real Nastasha asked, snapping him back to reality.

  She has no idea I’m seeing this! Jaimin knew she hadn’t been trying to show him that scene. It must be her fantasy.

  “There’s so much in here,” he said, embarrassed.

  “That’s just what Raquel said when she bored into my head. Only she wasn’t welcome—you are. Elaina. Try to make the connection. Find her.”

  Of course. Elaina. Jaimin blinked his eyes furiously to bring his consciousness fully back into the room, and he finally managed to disentangle himself from the loving, warm presence of Nastasha’s mind.

  From what he knew about the nature of spirits and the spirit world, it should make no difference that Elaina was in a different kingdom; he should be able to contact her as if she were in the same room. He closed his eyes once more and reached out for his fiancée, to see whether she really needed help, or if his horrible dream about her burning had merely been a fabrication of his fears. He heard two faint words, soft and unmistakably hers: “I’m okay.”

  “She’s okay,” Jaimin said.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. She’s okay.”

  “Ask her what happened.”

  What happened? Jaimin thought, directing the question at Elaina. He heard again, “I’m okay.”

  “That’s all I’m getting,” Jaimin reported. “She’s okay.”

  “Something must have happened. I shall speak with my father.” Nastasha stood up. “You rest.”

  He grabbed her arm. “Isabel deserved it, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. So did Devon and Raquel when I murdered them. It doesn’t make it any easier to live with what I’ve done. I shall never rid myself of those memories.”

  “You didn’t murder them.”

  She pursed her lips dismissively, and then looked pensively away. “What happens to evil people when they die?” she asked. “In the spirit world, are we meant to live among those we have killed?”

  “I don’t know,” Jaimin replied. He sensed she was most troubled by having killed Raquel, who had been her peer and classmate. But she also held doubts about killing Devon, whom the king and even the queen had trusted. “Maybe with my new connection to these other worlds I can find some answers for you,” Jaimin said.

  “I must go speak with my father,” Nastasha said. “Will you be fine by yourself now?”

  “I will.”

  “Send for me if you need me,” she said.

  “And you—don’t forget I’m here for you,” he said.

  She left him, shaking her head, pained by the fact that he could never be there for her in the way she needed him to be.

  Earlier that evening, Princess Eleonora of Destauria was having her hair washed. She was exhausted and still nauseated from the long, bumpy coach ride back from her beach home. She knew she should never have traveled that far this late in her pregnancy.

  One of her maidservants tried to keep the rinse water at just the right temperature, while the other made sure each strand of Her Royal Highness’s silky brown hair was evenly coated with the outrageously expensive fatty hair mask.

  “Candace,” said Eleonora, “I’m getting cold. Are you almost through?”

  “My apologies, Your Highness,” said Candace, a slight woman in her late thirties, whose own hair had gone completely grey far too early.

  “And Deb, dear, my chair is too cold. More wood, please.”

  Deb ran to stoke the furnace that heated the water coursing through Eleonora’s custom chair, not wanting to abandon for too long the pot of rinse water on the fuel pellet stove.

  “This mask is supposed to sit for ten minutes,” Candace explained.

  “Very well,” said Eleonora. “In that case, bring me a cover.”

  “Right away, Your Highness.” Candace wiped her hands and went for a blanket.

  Young Deb wasn’t at all skilled at adding wood to a fire, and she found herself stomping out embers that had spilled onto the floor.

  “Here you go,” Candace said, laying a thick lamb’s wool blanket over the reclining princess.

  Eleonora grabbed Candace’s wrist abruptly. “Candace,” said Eleonora. “You’re shaking. I thought I noticed it before, but now I’m sure of it. There’s something the matter, isn’t there?”

  “Oh, I am so sorry, Your Highness. I don’t want to trouble you.”

  The way Eleonora was looking at her made the woman tremble even more. The princess seemed to be staring into her very soul. You don’t want to know, thought Candace.

  “Oh, but I do,” said Eleonora. “Candace, you’ve served me since I was a little girl. We’ve shared so much. My dear, if something is bothering you, I need to know. I’m sure I can help somehow.” Deb ran back over to her rinse pot and busied herself with her thermometer. If this conversation was headed where Deb suspected it was, the princess would need a rinse quickly.

  “Well, Your Highness, I really don’t want to bother you with my troubles,” said Candace.

  “Out with it!” said Eleonora, staring even deeper into her servant’s soul. “You’ve never been this upset.”

  “Very well. It’s my daughter, Elma. She’s been taken in a raid.”

  “What? When?”

  “Earlier today.”

  “Today?” Eleonora sat up the best she could given her enormous baby bump. Her goopy hair slapped down against her naked back and stuck. “How could that be? How could the Arrans have gotten past our lines? And why hasn’t my father told me?”

  “Please, Your Highness, lay back down.”

  “Rinse me,” Eleonora said, lifting her hair and laying it back over the drain basin. Deb already had the rinsing pot in her hands and she was on her way. As Deb poured the warm water, Candace combed out the nourishing slime. “Ooo, I really thought we were done with them,” Eleonora grumbled. “I dared to hope I’d heard the last of the stories. Haven’t they taken enough from us?”

  Candace was sobbing quietly. “Your Highness, please, don’t get upset.”

  But Eleonora just grew more agitated. “I’ll get your daughter back, Candace. I’ll get her back if I have to slaughter a hundred of those Arran bastards myself to get to her. If they were in our city today, then my father has failed. He promised me it would finally be over, but he’s failed.”

  “I pray she’s being rescued this very night,” Candace said. “But please, Your Highness, be calm. Your child needs you to be calm. This raid can’t mean we’ve failed. It’s just a small group of them that got through. Your concern means so much to me, but I’m sure I will get my Elma back.”

  “I’ll make sure you do,” said the princess.

  The inner doorman unlatched and pushed open the three-story-tall blackwood door to the Destaurian throne room. Three ministers shuffled out, engaged in a whispered debate. “Princess,” shouted the outer doorman.

  The inner doorman began the announcement. “Her Royal Highness, Eleonora, Princess of De…”

  “Come,” the king interrupted.

  Eleonora strode into the throne room, dressed only in a white robe and slippers. Her wet hair had been loosely tied into a single braid. Despite her look of utter frustration, her steps fell softly on the long, leather runner that led to King Radovan’s throne.

  The stone walls of the Destaurian palace were a stately dark grey—many shades darker than the walls of the Arran castle. Huge banners and streamers in Radovan’s colors: grey-blue, dark blue, and gold, d
ecorated the heights of the room. Hundreds of lamps worked hard to illuminate the vast space.

  “Have you lost your mind, that you come before me in a robe?” King Radovan asked his daughter. “Eight months out of the public’s view and you’ve forgotten what clothing is.” Radovan was thin, handsome and fit. He didn’t slouch lazily on his throne as some rulers do. He sat up straight and full of energy on his blue padded throne, in his black leather armor, warmed by his fuzzy black-and-white autumn robe.

  Eleonora knelt before him, just as she was supposed to. Somehow being in this grand throne room had reminded her of her place. “My servants told me there was another raid earlier today,” she said. “How did they get through?”

  “Oh, they are clever snakes,” Radovan said. “Slithering through the tiniest cracks in our shields. It’s a death throe, my dear. A last gasp. I assure you, they are finished.”

  “They must still be in our kingdom. Surely they will be caught when they slither back out. Have you had any word?”

  “Nothing yet,” he said, “but good news travels slower than bad.”

  “This one hit close to me, father. Candace—my servant—her daughter was taken.”

  “That’s unfortunate. What was her daughter doing out in the city?”

  “Attending school.”

  “Yes, well, unfortunate,” Radovan said. “All of the young people we’ve lost. If we can get them back, we will. Arra is now entirely under our control. There’s nowhere for them to take new prisoners.”

  “Have we found any of the islanders?”

  “Our boys are closing in on them at this very moment.”

  “How can I help?”

  “The best thing for you to do is to stay here where we don’t have to worry about you. I’m pleased that you enjoyed your respite this week, but I have to insist on no more excursions until we have this sorted out. You shouldn’t be venturing far anyway in your condition.”

  “I agree, father, and I promise to remain in the palace until the birth. Please send word to me with any news.”