S he was so close. I had never seen Tisaanah’s face anywhere but in the mirror. She was the same, and yet, so very different. I could see so much
more of her this way, and so much less. When I stepped forward, I half expected her to move with me.
I had not realized, then, exactly how unusual she looked to the rest of the world. I loved her mind for all the crevices her broken pieces gave me— how easily we fit together. But even her face was composed of many fragments, those patches of tan and white making her look like a cracked porcelain doll.
She looked like home.
For the last few weeks, I had at last begun to feel right in this body. But the sight of her released sharp pangs of grief in all the empty parts of me that she would have occupied. It shook me down to my core.
A part of me still wanted to crawl inside of her skin. A part of me still wanted her.
“It’s you,” she whispered, sounding as if he hadn’t intended to speak. “Reshaye.”
I approached her until I was close enough to feel the warmth of her body. Our noses nearly brushed. I could have kissed her.
“That is not my name.” “Aefe.”
Why did it feel so strange to hear her voice saying that? “Maybe that is not my name, either.”
The sight of her shook loose the fragile grip upon my new sense of self. I had started to feel like Aefe, but now I found myself questioning it.
Maybe I was still Reshaye. Or maybe I was half of each, and all of neither.
Her brow furrowed, and I struggled to decipher her expression. “Why are you here?”
I nearly laughed. Did she think I did not know what she was asking? The same thing Tisaanah always asked in her subtle ways—what do you want?
“Justice,” I said. “Retribution.”
It was only now, as the words left my lips, that I realized the full extent of their meaning. That I realized how much of that justice today was for her. Perhaps it was because I still felt her memories burning in my heart. Perhaps it was because I still felt her scars upon my own back.
“It won’t stop after this,” she murmured. “What your king wants to do.” “I know.” And that was the joy of it. It was only the beginning.
“It does not have to be this way, Aefe.”
I smiled, nearly breaking into a laugh. “You can not lie to me. I know what your mind feels like. I know you yearn for your vengeance just as much as I yearn for mine.”
Her eyes were hypnotic, large and mismatched. They refused to relinquish my gaze. “Not like this. Not what will come after it. You do not have to be this, anymore. No one can make you.”
I was confused. Make me do this? I wanted this. For the first time, I was choosing my path. I was fighting for my own people, not someone else’s.
“I want this,” I bit out. “You are the one that taught me what it was to leave a mark upon the world, and I will leave it.” I pressed closer, my eyes bearing into hers. “The Lejara. We know that you have one. Where—”
Instead of answering, she said, “You sacrificed yourself for me. I saw you, Reshaye. Aefe. I saw you.”
Those three words made me stop short.
I saw you.
It was the truth. As Reshaye, I was invisible, a living being in a world where no one acknowledged me, except for one soul. What choice did I have but to become fixated on them? Tisaanah became everything to me—my lover, my enemy, my captor, my slave. All these roles were inextricably linked to what I once was.
I reached out with a trembling hand to stroke her cheek. She was so soft, so fragile, and so unremarkably human.
She tried to conceal it, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t hide her flinch, the tensing of her muscles, or the slight buzz in the air as her magic simmered to life, ready to act.
She was afraid of me. We were no longer the same. She was human.
I once thought what we shared was love. But even then, she abandoned me, just like all the other humans. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill me now, to strip me of my newfound purpose, to drag my corpse to a room of stark white. Just as Maxantarius cast me out, leaving me to endure countless days of torture. Just as my father turned on me in another life.
It was Reshaye who craved Tisaanah, not this new version of myself, who had found a new home and purpose. And Aefe could not live until Reshaye was gone.
Once, I had loved her. But now, she was the enemy.
“No,” I said, quietly. “I am exactly who I wish to be.” My hand trailed down past her jaw, resting at her throat. Tightened. Tightened.
Tisaanah was smaller than I, her neck slender compared to the length of my fingers. Her eyes bulged as I lifted her off the ground. She clawed at my hand, leaving wounds of rot and pus that I barely felt.
My anger flared, demanding release. Black flowers sprouted at my fingertips, their vines crawling over her skin.
Tisaanah had become powerful through the gifts I—I!—had given her. She had used me and discarded me, just as her own captors had done to her. She was like the rest of them, I told myself. Now, I had my own people who loved me, who trusted me. Tisaanah could not live if they were to survive. If she did not destroy us, then she would be captured and exploited
by people who would.
Still, something made me pause as her head began to loll—just long enough that I was caught off guard when fire surrounded me.
