She looks at me with pure shock, but the unexpected relief and sorrow I see there too gives me pause.
“It’s you,” she hauntingly whispers, her eyes—my eyes—welling with tears. “I…I can’t believe it’s actually you.”
Her arms fall limp at her sides as though every ounce of fight just drained out of her.
“Whoare you?” I demand, entirely unsettled by the strange way she’s looking at me. “Why do you have my face?” I snap, shaking off the phantom pain in my shoulder and filling my empty hand with a dagger so I’m ready.
I wipe the blood from my forearm on my tunic and glare at her.
She looks puzzled. “You don’t know?”
I scowl harder. “Would I be wasting my time asking if I did?”
“Right,” she concedes. “I’m Auset,” she offers, and rage rings in my head as I step threateningly closer. “Hear me out,” she pleads, bringing her hands up defensively and scrambling back. “I swear that I am, I’m Neith Auset Korven Nalrora. Princess of the Night and Winter Court and rightful sovereign to all four realms.”
This time, I stagger back as the weight of that declaration bares down on me like a rock slide. I run my gaze over her face and then take the rest of her in.
“Am…I…arewe…twins?” I ask, my tongue stumbling over the words like they’re craters in a path I’m struggling to traverse.
“No,” Neith answers solemnly. “I haveyourface, and you havemyname, but that’s it. That’s how they planned it.”
“Theywho? ” I demand, reeling. “Plannedwhat?”
I’ve waited and yearned for the answers trickling out of her mouth, but now that I’m cupping them in my hands, I feel more lost than found. I don’t understand what’s going on. I thought I had a grasp of what happened to me, of who I was, but I couldn’t be more wrong.
“It’s complicated…”
She presses her palm to her bleeding shoulder and winces. Pulling her hand away, she looks at the crimson covering her hand and then grabs the bottom of her dress and presses it against the weeping wound.
“So simplify it,” I growl, some of my shock fading as I start to lose what little patience I have left.
“I will, I’m just letting you know that there’s history you need to know in order to understand. You really don’t remember anything?” she presses, her silver eyes curious with a small glimmer of hope hidden within.
“I woke up six and a half years ago in a cage. That’s my first memory.”
Neith cringes and pulls in a deep breath. “Should we sit?” she asks, gesturing to the settee.
I give her a pointed look. “And let you pull a crossbow from under a chair and shoot me with it? You’re fine where you are.”
“Auset, I know you’ve been through a lot and you have no reason to trust me, but I would never hurt you. You saved my life…many times.”
My brow furrows with frustrating bewilderment.Saved her life?I search her face, my eyes begging for it to unlock the void in my mind. The problem is it’s my face, so of course it’s familiar, but none of this makes any more sense than it did before I walked into this room.
“You still can’t sit,” I tell her, trying not to fidget at the emotion swelling in her gaze.
A small smile tilts her lips, and she snorts an amused laugh. “Fair enough. Can we at least move closer to the window so the moon can fix us?” she counters, gesturing to her shoulder and then the cut on my arm.
“Fine. But if you make me chase you out a window, I don’t care how bad it might hurt me too, I’ll make you regret it,” I warn.
We both slowly, cautiously move closer to a swath of moonlight that’s streaming through a lofty pane. Her quarters are comfortable. A large bed, dressers and wardrobes probably filled with the finest togs, and a small desk where she does whatever it is that princesses do. The room is pleasant, warmed by a fire, with a sofa and some chairs to the side of the door. Deep reds and dusky pinks are the colors of choice around the space. It’s entirely too soft and too frilly for my liking.
“What do I even call you?” I snip. “We can’t both be Auset.”
“Most people call me Moon, the Moon, my Moon. It’s an Igeeyin thing, the highest place of honor in a clan.”
She drops her dress from her shoulder and tugs at the neck so she can inspect her healing stab wound. I take in my arm, the cut there nothing more than a faint red line now.
I eye her coldly. “Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”
