To punish me.
Nyra stares at me so hard, I can feel the animosity in her gaze. It’s heavy and it’s spiteful.
And it’s pointed at me.
“I’m so sorry, Nyra.” My voice quivers, and I honestly can’t get the sound of Berline’s laughter out of my mind. It’s crackled with the sound of youth in it. Sweet, gentle, unharming youth.
It’s gone now.
No one is more aware of that than Nyra.
“I’m so fucking sorry.” I feel like I can’t say it enough. I want to say it over and over again in hopes that it’ll sooth the ache in my chest that I know must be eating away at my sister as well.
But she says nothing.
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t visit me,” Her voice lifts and echoes around me in the hall, surrounding me with the sound of her hidden anger. She’s always so good at forcing happiness that it’s sometimes hard to remember that other emotions are there deep inside. “You would have known if you’d paused your own problems for ten seconds to check on your sister in the infirmary. But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t! No one was allowed?—”
“Seelvie and Vanitee came. Every day.”
My mouth is so dry, it just hangs open as that information sinks in. Creatchin let her daughter visit Nyra but not me.
She lost her family because of me and had to heal that emotional wound.Alone.
“Mother always treated you like you were fragile, and it made me walk around you like the ground you walked upon was the egg shells you were made of.” Her tone isn’t cold or even angry any more. Just sad and tear stained. “I just—I just thought you’d have made the same great effort for me as I made for you.”
Effort?
I don’t know why my energy changes so quick at that.
“What effort? I’m not fragile. I was never treated differently.”
The laughter that cuts from her trembling lips is loud and sudden.
Genuine, even.
“Youaredifferent, Cersia. Of course, you’re treated differently!”
This is our first real argument I think we’ve had in our entire lives, and it almost pisses me off that my sweet, kind sister is navigating it better than I am.
What the fuck.
“I’m weaker. I get it. I was given beauty, and I wanted to make up for it with physical strength. Maybe I practiced too often, and maybe I took a lot of time away from Father, but?—”
Another gasp of stunned laughter has me taking a step back from the woman I considered my best friend our entire lives.
“You weren’t blessed! Oh my Goddess.” She throws her hands in the air, and it’s then that footsteps sound behind her quietly.
“I was,” I whisper. “I was blessed to be the most beautiful woman in all the realms.”
“You are so damn full of yourself. My Goddess. You didn’t get a blessing, Cersia. And that’s when mother knew. She knew what father knew all along and she feared others would someday find out. And so, she shoved it down anyone’s throat who would listen that Cersia was the most beautiful child in all the realms.” Her eyes are damp and crazed as she frowns at me. “And if you repeat something enough to people, they too will do the same. The news of the most beautiful woman in all the realms spread like wildfire. But the truth is, she’s just a simple blonde girl with too much ego to let anyone think for a single second that she might be average.”
If my mouth could fall open any farther, it would unhinge like an old rusty part that I no longer know how to use.
And I think that might be true.
