Chapter 180

At the head of the small procession walked Barnon. Elise pulled back her hood and moved through the stone passage that led deeper into the castle.

“Where is His Majesty?” she asked. “I’ll go to him at once.”

“In his chamber, Highness. But first—this.”

Barnon, who followed silently at her back, offered something into her hand. It was a fine silver chain. Where a pendant might have hung, there was instead a tiny bead of crimson stone, no larger than a millet seed.

“Keep it on you always,” he said.

So this was the device meant to summon Rezette. Elise drew her hair to one side and fastened the necklace about her throat. No explanation was required. She could feel the faint, insistent tremor of the magic circle woven into the gem, its pulse echoing against her skin.

A teleportation array, with fixed coordinates, she realized.

And at once she sensed that the coordinates shifted from moment to moment. Her attunement to magical circuits made it clear. The array bore only one possible set of coordinates: Rezette’s. Wherever he moved, the stone updated, keeping pace with him.

By activating it, she could flee directly to his side—no matter the distance. Or she could pull him to hers. The thought loosened a knot inside her chest.

Even so, the castle remained steeped in gloom. Since their defeat weeks ago, the atmosphere had grown heavy, hushed, as though even the stones mourned. Elise made her way quickly toward Andrei’s chamber. She did not bother knocking. She pushed both doors wide.

A gust of wind swept her cheeks. The chamber’s windows stood open, spilling air and light across the room. At the sill leaned a young man, his hands gripping the frame. His weakened right leg tilted his weight unevenly, so that his body sagged toward the left. His back was thin, pitiably frail. He looked more wasted than he had on the day she left.

At least he can stand, Elise thought. She had braced herself to find her brother at death’s door. Relief pricked sharp at her nose, and she whispered, “…Andrei. It’s me.”

The young man turned slowly. His brown hair, long enough to brush his nape, scattered in the wind.

“I’ve come back,” Elise said gently. “You must have worried. How are you feeling…?”

But she faltered as she drew near enough to see his face. “…Andrei?”

His cheeks were pale, yet beneath that pallor a sickly yellow shadow lurked.

Andrei tightened his lips and turned toward her fully. His dry mouth curved faintly into a smile. Then his lips parted.

“Sister.”

It was Andrei’s voice.

“You’ve suffered much,” he said, and his tone was tender, familiar. He opened his arms to her.

Elise hesitated only a heartbeat before stepping forward again. But seen from the front, his cheeks were bleached white as paper. Then what was that shade I saw before? Just sunlight?

“You needn’t have come here first,” Andrei murmured. “Still, I knew you would. Always making the foolish choice…”

He drew her into a light embrace, his arms circling her shoulders. At that instant, Elise cried out in pain.

“Ah—!”

A sharp ache shot upward from beneath her navel, as though something had struck the organs of her womb. The spasm was brutal, blinding.

Andrei steadied her, one hand sweeping her back.

“Are you all right? Elise, does something hurt?”

“Let—let me go, Andrei. Hhh—!”

She shoved at his shoulders, wrenching herself free. Only after the fierce throbbing in her belly subsided did she catch her breath.

When she raised her eyes again, her brother’s single remaining eye was clouded with worry. He was her mirror—his eyes, his nose, his mouth all as like to her own as a twin could be. Andrei sighed low.

“You’ve been stranded nearly twenty days in that desolate place,” he said. “You won’t need to use magic again. From now on, I’ll handle everything.”

Elise said nothing.

“I should have done so from the start,” he went on. “I never should have sent you into the jaws of death—”

Elise squeezed her eyes shut and lifted her hand, silencing him. His words faded, leaving a silence too heavy to name.

Only after long moments did she speak. Her voice was hoarse, trembling. “Say it.”

“What do you mean?”

Clutching the front of her cloak, she strode toward him. The distance she had put between them closed again with firm, unhesitating steps. Her hood slipped back, silver hair tumbling free, bright strands scattering in her wake.

Without pause, she seized his collar at the throat. Andrei started as she wrenched him down to her eye level, her grip merciless for all its slightness.

“…Tell me,” she whispered, her gaze blazing white.

“What name should I call you this time? Becky.’”

The counterfeit expression peeled away from his face, like paint washed from glass. One eyebrow arched with mocking grace, as if to say, So, you’ve figured it out at last.

Her vision seared white. Outrage stripped her of breath. Sameshita, the dragon, had taken her brother’s body.

“You—!” Elise hissed.

For months now she had felt the creature circling her. More than five times it had appeared in the flesh, wearing bodies not its own. And now, of all forms, it wore her twin’s? Born the same day, of the same blood? There could be no mistaking it.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, her teeth clenched.

“I don’t know what entertainment you mean to find among humans,” she spat, “but if you insist on living among us, the least you could do is keep to some law of decency. Do you know whose body you dare to inhabit?”

Her fury was lightning behind her eyes. For months the dragon had been strangely docile, as though their bargain had sated it—but no. A dragon never remained within the bounds of reason.

“Careful, Elizabeth,” the youth said with a sly tilt to his eye.

“This shell belongs to your brother. Handle it so roughly, and really—tsk.”

“What?” she snarled.

“His body is fragile. A glass goblet, ready to shatter with the least pressure. Keep on like this, and it won’t last long.”

Her fist twisted in his collar, biting into his throat. The thin skin reddened, scraped raw where the fabric cut him.

And yet she knew her grip was weak. Too weak to draw blood. Those marks—those dark bruises already marring his neck—they had not come from her.

The sight snapped something in her mind. What have you done to him?

“Get out,” she shouted. “If you want something, speak to me. You’ve lingered at my side all this time—why now? Why take Andrei for your games?”

“Get out?” The dragon chuckled low.

“Are you sure you won’t regret asking that?”

A shiver crawled cold down her nape, dread curling her gut. She whispered, almost choking, “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

Her golden eyes swam, too bright, desperate. “Tell me, Sameshita. My brother—he isn’t dead. Say he isn’t!”

“Me? Kill him?” The dragon laughed, loud and incredulous, as though she had made some absurd jest.

“How could I? I haven’t even undone this ridiculous curse binding me. And this body—it resembles Gallian too closely.”

He could not harm Gallian, nor his descendants. That much was true. By that logic, he should be powerless against Elise and Andrei.

“Then what—what happened?” Elise screamed. “What have you done?”

“Not I,” the dragon replied smoothly. “You killed him, Elizabeth.”

Her breath stopped. “…What?”

“The circuits,” he said simply.

No more explanation was needed. The truth struck her like a blade.

She had not been merely borrowing Andrei’s circuits. At some point they had transferred—entirely, irrevocably—into her.

Her mind flashed back to that quarrel, the day her brother had inscribed the sigil at her back. He had said he would tend the channel between them, adjust the passage that bound their unconscious selves.

And now she recalled, one by one, the words he had murmured to her that day…