A sister's cry
From the safety of the balcony, Solvayne watched the blurred shape of her sister stumbling through the dust of the courtyard. Nyxelle's movements were jerky, her knees buckling every few paces. The tutor's stopwatch clicked with the rhythm of a guillotine.
Solvayne's chest ached. It was a phantom pain, a sympathetic resonance of the "mirror." If Nyxelle's lungs burned, Solvayne felt the heat. If Nyxelle's feet bled, Solvayne felt the sting.
If I am the standard, Solvayne thought, her fingers trembling against the windowpane, then I am the one holding the whip. If I stay perfect, she will be run until she dies.
She turned away from the window, her gaze landing on a jar left by a careless servant—a luxury item from the southern colonies. Peanut butter. Rich, thick, and to Solvayne, more lethal than a daggertip.
She knew her own biology. The doctors had been clear: a single taste would cause her throat to close, her body to revolt. In the Von Granz house, an allergy was just another "defect" to be managed with strict avoidance.
She opened the jar. The smell was cloying, earthy, and terrifying.
"If I am heavy," she whispered to the empty room, "she can stop running."
She took a spoonful. Then another.
The reaction was instantaneous. Her throat began to itch, a frantic, stinging heat spreading behind her tongue. She swallowed the thick paste, forcing it down even as her windpipe began to constrict. Her skin flushed a violent red; her heartbeat thundered, not from exertion, but from the body trying to fight off its own destruction.
She took a third scoop, tears streaming down her face. Every swallow felt like swallowing hot coals. She didn't just want to gain the weight; she wanted to destroy the "perfection" that was killing her sister.
More, she told herself as the world began to tilt. I have to be bigger. I have to be the broken one.
The jar fell from her numb fingers, shattering on the marble. Solvayne collapsed beside it, her hands clawing at her throat, gasping for air that would no longer come. Her vision went black, the last sound she heard being the distant, rhythmic thud-thud-thud of Nyxelle's feet on the dirt outside.
Light returned in jagged, painful stabs.
Solvayne felt a cool, shimmering pressure against her throat. Her lungs were pulling in air again—thin, shallow sips—but they were working. Above her, the ceiling was a blur of white, soon replaced by a face she knew better than her own.
Nyxelle was over her, her hands glowing with a frantic, flickering green light. Healing magic—a forbidden expenditure of energy for a "defective" asset. Nyxelle's face was a mask of salt and soot, her dress torn, her skin caked in courtyard dust.
"Sol... Sol, please," Nyxelle sobbed, her tears falling onto Solvayne's swollen cheeks. The magic hummed, pulling the inflammation from Solvayne's throat, but Nyxelle looked as though she were pouring her very life into the spell.
"Why?" Nyxelle wailed, her voice cracking. "You knew... you knew it would kill you."
Solvayne reached up, her hand shaking, to touch Nyxelle's arm. "Now... we are... the same," she wheezed. "You don't... have to run."
Nyxelle collapsed against her sister's chest, her forehead resting on the shattered remains of the peanut butter jar.
"I'm sorry," Nyxelle whispered into Solvayne's shoulder, her body racking with heaving sobs. "I'm so sorry, Sol. It's my fault. I was greedy. I ate the bread because I was so hungry... I just wanted to feel full for one minute. Because I ate that loaf, you almost died. I'm sorry I'm not perfect. I'm sorry I'm a burden."
In the doorway, a shadow lengthened.
Uncle Anasil stood there, leaning against the frame. He wasn't calling for a doctor. He wasn't rushing to help. He was watching the two broken girls with a look of pure, academic fascination. He pulled out a small pocket watch, checking the time.
"Ten minutes of oxygen deprivation," Anasil mused, his voice a smooth, terrifying silk. "And a self-inflicted wound for the sake of 'love.' How... breathtakingly wasteful."
He stepped into the room, his boots crunching on the glass and the peanut butter.
"Don't cry, Nyxelle," Anasil said, smiling down at them. "The ledger won't care about the apology. It will only care that now, neither of you is fit for the pedestal. I wonder... which one of you will your father discard first?"