TWIN REVELATIONS
Psychomachy (noun): a conflict of the soul.
DAY 28, HOUR 6
I woke up hyperventilating as a crushing emptiness expanded in my chest. Dark-gray light filtered through the single-pane window of the barracks, and I rubbed at my eyes to clear the fog.
Muted colors remained.
Snores echoed as the rest of the legion slept, and I gasped for air on the narrow bunk as my chest collapsed.
Disintegrated.
The chasm inside my sternum made it hard to move, think, or live. What was once vibrant and colorful was now faded and cold.
The empty feeling had arrived a few days ago. I’d woken up heaving from forgotten nightmares, and it had felt like a piece of my soul was missing.
The new abyss pervaded every moment of my existence.
It wouldn’t leave.
My hand was hanging over the bed holding Aran’s.
I leaned over the edge and took in her peaceful expression. Slowly, with my heart screaming at me to stop, I disentangled our grip.
As soon as her fingers left mine, the feeling of wrongness intensified exponentially. Lately, contact with Aran was the only thing that kept the emptiness at bay.
Minutes passed as I sprawled back on my bed and felt miserable.
Sick of wallowing, I crawled out of my bed and hauled myself up to my twin’s bunk. I acted on instinct.
I laid on top of John and hugged him tight to me.
We barely fit together on the narrow bunk, but I didn’t care, because the worst part of the emptiness was that I wasn’t the only one affected.
I’d promised to protect my younger brother.
Yet we were both suffering.
Neither of us spoke as I held him tight to me. He’d been lying awake in the bed when I’d climbed up, dark eyes glossed over with pain as he, too, struggled with the yawning chasm.
“We need to figure this out today,” I whispered. “It’s time.”
John turned his head to look at me. Expression grim, he nodded.
Yesterday, we’d snuck away to the medical barracks under the guise of getting food, and the doctors had performed dozens of enchanted diagnostics.
They’d found nothing.
There were no more options left.
We couldn’t continue to suffer like this and fight effectively, so there was only one thing left for us to do.
Moving as silent as the spirit of Hesychia—the personification of quiet—we dressed for battle in our all-black uniforms with heavy combat boots. John stretched as he dressed like he was preparing for war.
We placed our prepared note on top of the dresser. We’d kept it vague and short. It stated that we’d return as soon as we could.
John dragged a hand through his messy hair. The circles under his eyes were gray, and his olive skin had an unnatural pallor that matched my own.
We were both sick.
“I hate leaving her,” John whispered as we stood over Aran’s sleeping form. He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead and traced his fingertip over her scar.
I whispered, “Same.” Nauseousness made my stomach roll. Separation was unacceptable, even if it was temporary.
The chasm in my chest continued to radiate pain.
We had no choice.
I ripped my gaze away from Aran and forced my feet to walk toward the door. If I let myself get closer to her, then I’d never leave. I’d curl myself around her like a cat and breathe in her wintry scent. I’d close my eyes and pretend everything was fine as I clung to her like an addict with his fix.
Sunlight reflected across the small room in streaks of unnatural gray.
I made a harsh gesture toward the door, and John sighed loudly, the noise desperate and broken. He tangled a blue curl around his finger and gave it a soft kiss. He released her slowly.
Incorporeal clouds of regret and unease hung around us as together we slipped out of the warm, enchanted room, and into the snowy forest.
The air was freezing.
I barely noticed.
I was too busy drowning in cool tones. The world was shades of bland. The once vibrant green needles of the conifers was now a sickly gray, and what was once a rich brown bark was now a sullen, bleached white.
Even the snowflakes were muted.
They no longer glinted as they fell and reflected sparkles from the sky in prisms of colors. They swallowed the sunlight.
Consumed it.
John stared at me with intensity. His dark-brown eyes now appeared black. He asked, “Are you sure about this?”
“I’m not sure of anything anymore,” I said honestly, and John grimaced in agreement.
He gave me a curt nod, and I didn’t wait for him to change his mind.
I released the darkness I always held in check.
Gray snowflakes disappeared into the void and the forest grew quieter as if it sensed the disturbance.
Shimmering black expanded before me as I let my power flow. The dark coalesced into something wider.
Taller.
The fabric of reality trembled, as it always did when it was introduced to a new form of matter. Our power wasn’t solid, gaseous, or liquid, and it didn’t buzz like enchanted technology.
It was silent.
The absence of matter within the presence of a realm’s force.
I tipped my head back and let it flow. It was like taking a deep breath after drowning. Using my mind’s eye, I shaped the darkness into a floating rectangle that was about the dimensions of a door.
It hovered over the steaming ground in front of us, glittering and black. It was a state of high energy.
Cold air filled my lungs, and snowflakes gathered on my lashes, reminding me of the woman we were leaving behind.
We had to do this.
For her.
For all of us.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Hopefully we can get answers before anyone realizes we’re gone.”
John dragged his hands over his eyes tiredly as he half stumbled, half threw himself into the darkness.
He disappeared.
Branches scraped together, as the storm picked up. My hair whipped around my head as frost burned my cheeks.
It was blizzard conditions.
For a second, I hallucinated that the realm was sentient. The storm was alive.
I threw myself through the doorway—I walked across realms.
RJE was our preferred form of travel, but this was an emergency, and we needed an audience with the king immediately. Entering directly into his domain was the best way to get his attention. He would recognize our presence immediately.
John was waiting for me on the other side. He brushed snow off his shoulders as I pulled the darkness back inside.
The door disappeared like it had never existed.
“Let’s go, I don’t want to linger,” John grumbled as he stalked down the cavernous path that we were both intimately familiar with.
Monsters roared, rocks vibrated, and pebbles fell as the cavern shook. We both ignored the noise.
We were used to it.
My eyes adjusted to the new dim lighting. Hellfire glinted off the silver bars that lined both sides of the path.
I followed my twin deeper into the most dangerous prison in all the realms. I smirked as another monster roared.
Its existence was widely believed to be a myth. People were stupid.
The boogeyman was real, and so was the prison that housed him.
The king ran the prison, and in some ways, he was the prison because his powers were inexplicably tied to it.
Since we were his heirs, our powers were also tied to it.
John ran his fingers along the stalactite that hung from the ceiling like he was greeting an old friend, and the rocks vibrated with pleasure.
As we walked down the winding caverns—thousands of feet beneath the realm’s surface—my twin stood taller.
Power clung to him.
He was stronger now that he was within the source of his abilities.
We both were.
We turned a corner, and a Minotaur prisoner threw himself at the bars next to John, opened his maw, and screamed bloody murder.
My twin turned to him and smiled.
Dimples flashing, he tsked at the beast that had murdered thousands.
The Minotaur went wild.
I rolled my eyes at my brother’s antics. Since we were little boys and had discovered our heritage, he loved to taunt the prisoners, and they hated him for it.
I was indifferent.
Per usual.
John’s steps took on a swagger as more prisoners threw themselves at the bars as he walked past. They screamed, roared, and shrieked at him but flinched when he turned toward them, and scuttled back into the darkness.
If it weren’t for his youth and dimples, he could be mistaken for the king. His darkness formed a glittering cape that hung off his shoulders.
A dark crown jutted off his head.
Similarly, the heavy weight of a cape settled on my shoulders, and I adjusted the crown that dug into my head.
The Princes of Darkness had returned to their land.
Rocks shifted beneath my feet like they were trying to touch me through my boots. The jagged path became smooth before us as the rubble reshaped itself. The rocks were always trying to impress.
“Thank you,” I said as touched a boulder on the side wall.
It warmed and shivered.
I felt the cavern sigh with pleasure, then the energy shifted into pure excitement.
As if a switch had been flipped, the prisoners went dead silent and fell to their knees. They bowed their heads.
“My sons, to what do I owe this delightful visit?” The king’s voice boomed. He stood under arching stalactites, hellfire casting shadows across his velvet robes, as he smiled at us.
Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin.
Power rolled off him.
We were his mirror images. The blood of the royal family overwhelmed any other heritage we might have had. Which made sense because our mother had been a layperson. A human who’d secretly traded goods in both realms.
She’d left pregnant on a trading trip and had never returned. The king hadn’t known of our existence until Lothaire rescued us and brought us to him.
We’d gone from mortals to princes overnight.
Both had their challenges.
The king smiled with happiness in a cavernous prison dripping with stalactites, power, and fear.
His voice echoed. “No one expected the Princes of Darkness to visit the underworld anytime soon. I must say, I’m ecstatic. You’ve made your old man very happy.”
He walked toward John slowly, then threw his arms around my twin in a punishing hug. As they embraced, he nodded at me over his shoulder.
I nodded back, and he didn’t try to touch me.
I’d set my boundaries years prior, and the king respected them.
“We have a problem, Father,” John said softly as he was clapped on the back.
The king straightened.
His dark eyes flashed as he glanced around at the kneeling prisoners. “Not here. Let’s go to the castle and discuss.”
He grabbed our arms.
Glittering black power—a derivation of our own—wrapped around us, and we were transported into a white marble foyer. Servants bustled around, and the familiar scent of marble and olives hung heavy in the air.
The ceiling was arched and lined with colonnades.
Olive trees filled the corners of the room.
A stately woman swept into the room and shouted boisterously, “For once, the oracle was correct. My favorite nephews have returned. Blessed be the day.”
John smiled as she hugged him. “We’re your only nephews, so we better be the favorites.”
She pulled away and slapped me on the shoulder aggressively.
Our aunt was one of the queens who ruled Olympus and she’d never liked boundaries.
I pulled away, but the corners of my mouth lifted into a grin as she fussed over us like we were children.
“Nonsense. I’m sure someone has produced another child by now.” She winked, and the king shook his head at her antics.
The royal blood was renowned for being too powerful to procreate.
They’d lived too long.
Immortality was both a curse and penance.
Before our mother, no woman had been strong enough to bear a child of our family’s legacy. The embryos killed the mothers, and consequently themselves.
We were the king’s miracle children.
We were his secret.
“Hades, prepare their room,” the queen boomed authoritatively as she smacked John’s wide bicep and tsked. “They’re withering away. The boys clearly need to eat. They don’t look well.”
She snapped her fingers at the king.
“Yes, Athena,” the king said, then he grumbled under his breath about meddling women and went off to find a servant.
Aunt’s smile fell as he disappeared down the hall, and she turned to us. “Now that Hades is gone, tell me, boys. Honestly. What’s going on? You don’t look well, and I can feel your energy. It is disturbed.”
“We’re not sure.” I rubbed at my sternum. The emptiness was a tangible chasm.
Her frown deepened. “Now that you’re back at Olympus, we can figure this out.” She leaned forward and gave us both kisses on the cheek.
I withstood her touch because I knew she needed it.
With a dramatic flourish of her gown, she led us down the hall where the king had disappeared. Toward the kitchens.
Her heels clacked loudly across the white marble floors.
Servants ran out from the wings to polish the floor behind us as we walked, and I ignored the bustle of the palace like I always did.
“What have you boys done?” she asked, her eyes filling with fear. “I gave you the jewels because you said you were in love. Yet you come back appearing wan and depleted. Did she reject your advances?”
“She accepted,” John said, and his voice cracked like just thinking about Aran being realms away was killing him.
It made sense.
It was killing me.
“That’s not our problem. Something else has gone wrong,” I said as she led us deeper into the castle.
She stopped walking abruptly, and all three of us halted.
Her olive-toned skin leeched of color, and she looked like she’d seen a Minotaur. Her eyes were unfocused, and she grabbed at her emerald necklace. “I think I know what’s wrong,” she said cryptically. “It’s the enchanted jewels.”
John’s eyes widened.
Her fear was contagious.
“What do you mean?” I demanded as I pulled my twin behind me, a reflexive protective instinct I’d never grown out of. “What did you do?” I shouted, my skin crawling with worry.
Her head snapped in my direction. “It’s not what I’ve done—it’s what’s been done to her.”
