Caius had always appreciated the symmetry of a good story. There was something beautiful in the circularity, the wholeness. A good story made him feel like the world and all its fundamental truths were encapsulated within its neat enclosure.
He supposed he’d always known how his story would end, even if he had not realized it until the moment it did.
His sister’s eyes gleamed black. Darker than the night sky above, darker than the velvety shadows of the in-between, darker even than the rift she had torn open in the world. They were unfathomable. Alien.
Pain lanced up his arm. His wrist was broken. But pain was a physical concern, the body crying out against some unpleasantness. Decades of Caius’s life had been spent training to push pain away, to lock it behind a seal to be dealt with at a later time. The pain was nothing. The pain would not win, would not make him pliable, would not soften him for the shadows to claim. Not this time.
Tanith’s power – not hers, not truly, but the power that rode her body like a knight rides a horse – pushed at the boundaries of his body, aching to tear them down, to spill across his skin, into his veins.
He held it off with all his might and choked out his sister’s name, even as the syllables were crushed in his throat by the power clawing to get in.
Golden eyebrows furrowed, oddly pristine against the charcoal-veined ruin of her face. A flash of red fought through that black gaze. A glimmer of truth stealing an illicit peek through a curtain of darkness.
“Caius?” Her tone was soft, tentative. Confused. Her grip on his shattered wrist loosened.
He could hear Echo calling out to him, shouting that it was a ruse. Not to trust it. Not to trust his sister, his blood.
Her reddish eyes rolled to the side, then upward, taking in the horror she had wrought. The wound in the heavens. The fissure in the street. The ravenous creatures of darkness and despair she had birthed in her frenzy of violence.
Moisture gathered on her lashes, tears threatening to spill.
More than a century had passed since the last time he’d seen his sister cry. And this was his sister. Not a monster wearing her skin like a mask. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would set and the moon would rise.
“I don’t want this,” she said. She was herself once more. The darkness had receded, pushed back by the strength of her emotion. But how long her reprieve would last, Caius did not know. Tanith’s grip on herself seemed a tenuous thing. There one moment, gone the next. But Caius would not let it claim her. Not again. If she died here today, she would die as herself and no other.
Darkness be damned.
Caius sagged against his sister. She supported his weight, as they had so often done for each other over the years. As they had forgotten to do, torn apart as they were by time and tragedy.
“You can stop it,” he said, his forehead falling to rest against hers.
Her eyelashes brushed against his skin. She shook her head, blond hair falling around their faces like a curtain, shielding them, this moment, from the broken world beyond.
“I can’t,” she said.
“You can,” he countered. “You —”
“Not by myself.”
Her words halted his reassurances. The truth in them rang as clear as a bell, too loud, too resounding to be denied.
She pulled away, enough to force her slightly less reddish eyes to meet his. There was a battle raging within her, and she was losing ground to the enemy. Their enemy.
“I’m sorry, Caius. I’m so sorry.”
The apology was too big for words, but still, she tried. He heard all the things she didn’t – couldn’t – say.
I’m sorry for Rose.
I’m sorry I failed you.
I’m sorry I failed myself.
I’m sorry for this.
She was not wrong. He hated how right she was, but not even he, the Dragon Prince newly crowned, could defy the truth when it was so abundantly clear.
She could not close the rifts. Not alone. It had taken both their magic to crack the seals, to open the gaping chasm in the world that was consuming it with the inexorable hunger of a black hole. It did not matter than his magic had not been willingly given, that she had stolen it for herself and her own selfish desires.
It had taken both of them to open the rift in the world, and because the universe also loved the symmetry of stories, it would take both of them to close it.
His blood had begun to mend the wounds the broken seals had inflicted, but it wasn’t enough. It was nowhere near enough. The universe demanded a more potent power to cage what had been unleashed, to close what had been ripped open.
Caius spoke the words he had heard Echo say, the words of a spell as ancient and as fundamental as the changing of the tides, as the elements that gave life to the natural magic of the world.
“By my blood.”
He felt the ripples of magic those words created. Sensed the electric potential they carried.
The magic swelled in the air around them, a glittering crescendo to the grand finale.
Caius wrapped his arms around his sister. Over her shoulder, he saw Echo kneeling, holding the fabric of reality together with little more than the force of her will. Her hair – as brown as rich soil – tumbled around her face, freed from the ferocity of her fight. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and tears had tracked through the soot and ash on her face, leaving trails of pristine skin in their wake. He could see the plea forming on her lips, and he hoped that she would not cry out for him to stop, to not do what he knew he must. He was only so strong. Oh, how beautiful she was. How brave. It was a privilege to love her.
Caius had indeed always loved the symmetry of stories. He had lost a love and found another. He had lost a sister and found her again. He had lost his crown, his title, himself, and found the role he was meant to play, the piece of the tapestry into which all their lives had been woven. He was but a collection of threads, unable to see the totality of the image until he stepped away from it, but now he saw.
He should have seen it coming. He should have known the familiar lines of his tale, one as old as time itself: a king sacrificed so the rain would come and the crops would grow and the sun would shine and the world would keep on spinning another turn.
The wholeness of his story was laid bare before him, and he knew his story would end just as it had begun.
He stepped back, guiding his sister with him. One step, and his foot felt the ground give way beneath him, drawing them both into the abyss. Another step, and there was only air and darkness.
Caius and Tanith – his sister, his twin, his blood – had entered this world together. And that was how they left it.