Prelude
Blood inched towards her toes buried in the evening snow. The expanding red was a drop of ink on an endless white canvas; the longer she stood there, the more snow tainted. The longer he waited for her to meet his eyes and drink in the insanity they held.
All was as it had been yesterday and the day before. The sun sank low, and the trees settled to silhouette against the becoming night sky. In the distance, there was the call of several birds, but other than that, winter in Vervua became a silent beast resting for the night. It was a scene she had often experienced, but only one thing made today different. Her father lay still on the ground, outlined in his blood instead of a snow angel’s imprint. The mask of his face, which was usually bright and curved to optimism, stayed dormant.
Her head tilted upward away from the cooling body. The wind hit her face differently than when it was angled down, the white ribbon in her braids lifting and touching the edges of her face. Yesterday, her brother had tied them into her hair with adoration and love. Now the twins stood facing one another, one dripping with blood and the other drowning in power. The bloodied sword he held might as well have spelled it out into the white snowscape: he held no mercy, even for the ones he loved most.
The last sliver of the sun fell bright amongst her porcelain face; her complexion almost blessed if it weren’t for her father’s blood that speckled her cheekbone and neck. She had tried to save him and fought against the liquid pouring out of his body. The consequence was her stained, dripping hands and someone she failed to save. She hesitated for a moment, her persistence for her father’s strength not yet diminished. Just a slight flinch, she urged, then she could sew him back together with the wounds he had gotten from his kin. There was no such luck. The love for her father urged that her brother, the monster standing across from her, ought to drag her body alongside the already dead one into the abyss. Tears seeped through, and all the daughter received was a pitiful sigh.
“Come to reality, sister. This shell of a man can’t do anything for you now,” he threw his weapon down, the blood slicing vividly into the snow once again, “he was in your way, our way. He never had the power we have now. Together, we can find happiness and even peace.”
There was a sharp intake of breath. A second passed, then another. Words formed and grasped at strings and then fell apart. “You can not dismiss him like this, dismiss me believing I would follow you blindly,” the words shuttered the more she spoke, each one hitting the snow lighter than the last. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she raised her gaze to his, the white ribbon in her auburn braids catching the bitter breeze again and blowing rapidly between her eyebrow and jaw. “We were a family.” The small light in his eyes, in his heart, extinguished. From the life he had taken or the souls he had broken, she didn’t know.
Her father was mutilated, and both of his children’s hands were bloodied, yet only a single set shone ruby in the winter light. Her brother persisted with pride, stepping over the corpse and holding his hands out for his beloved twin, “You and I are the most powerful there is, that there ever was. The four seas and endless lands of Vervua are for us to rule,” she took a couple of steps back, droplets of blood plummeting to the ground from her fingertips, like a trail for him to follow. Nevertheless, he continued, “You could not wish to stay where you are, sister—being presented over and over like a prized vase. With me, you are not a doll for playing with. With me, you are the puppet master. Our father was the only one holding us back, but now….”
The wind blew more persistent with his implication, his face highlighted by the arisen moonbeams, and he embraced the cold. The darkness flooded in as the sun disappeared, and with no light, there lay no hope. Any power she could have possessed was gone until morning, and in his territory, the only control was that in his deranged smile. Confidently, he reached for her hair and the ribbon interlacing it, remembering how he delicately braided it the morning before. His sister jerked back away from his hands. She wasn’t afraid of him and didn’t think she would ever be. But at this moment, when his eyes darkened from her movement, the eyes that looked exactly like her grey ones, there was a sense that any acts of love or rekindling could never bandage the wound that her father’s death left on her.
“Look keenly, Adrick, for as the pull of your heart is mounted upon this path, as you to your steed, and you yearn for a roomful to obey, I will not be accounted for. In your lands, or in your life.” She made her intentions clear. The only auburn curls in Vervua and pale, porcelain face that smiled in the reign of terror would be his. She would run. She could defend herself in a moment to get away, she thought foolishly. The darkness was his territory, but they were equal in power. A knife twisted inside of her as she backed up one, two steps more.
“I’d advise you not to walk away from your family, Vienna.” Her tongue fumbled out of misbelief, no other sound but the arising nightlife. The birds made a final call in the distance, and the snow began to fall from above once more as if to exemplify the prolonged silence and the threat in the air.
The Pertanoise Twins were doomed to fall no matter if she stayed. There was too much power between them, and with her father gone, no longer leashing their possibilities, she would lose control. It looked as though her brother already had.
A scoff echoed the empty field transformed graveyard, “When I walk away from father’s body, there will be nothing left behind, I assure you.” With a final harsh breeze nipping the pair mercilessly, the bond between Vienna’s hair and the white ribbon became unsealed. It blew like a flying dove as she turned around and withdrew from the relationship with the brother. He had shown her how to tie her slippers and shared the same journey as her with their developing, raw abilities, but where it all went so wrong, she didn’t know. Her footsteps sounded in the valley snow loudly.
Step
Crunch
Step
Adrick caught the ribbon, drowning it of any warmth remaining. The silk twisted with his clenched fist as his resentment towards his sister rose. The betrayal, like his father, became a weapon inside; the veins in his arms blackened with anger, with hate. He gave her all she could have needed. Together, light and dark, side by side, they were a duo to defeat armies and kings. His fingers intertwined between the silk, and thoughts like the ones he had before he killed his father echoed around his head.
Step
Crunch
Step
Vienna felt electricity in the air, a familiar tug she had known when her brother would fling harmless balls of dark abyss, and she would throw back pure light in the taunt. But this wasn’t an afternoon game. Instead, a test of how far Adrick could push his abilities. She turned back to see her twin’s pale face encrypted with dark veins, and his fists harbored smoke oozing onto the white blanket of snow. Her grief clouded any rationality, the black drowning out any light or defense she had. The last she saw was the sunken figure on the ground dozens of feet away and the inescapable feeling that she wouldn’t want to be in whatever world that came after this.
The stars, the moon, they had come to witness the shadow that became. For Vienna, there would be no dawn, no day. Only her eternal darkness.
