All of us.
We had to be.
“I’m not asking much. No one need know.” Majjie stands up, leaves her lover.
He’s put away his gun. Her plaything.
“Just two things.”
I think of her and Isaac. I know who he is.
She doesn’t.
Not yet.
I think of what she can become.
“Just two things? That’s all you need from me?”
Majken smiles. Nods.
I stand up and go to the window, showing them my back. Vulnerability.
Trust.
For the first time in weeks I breathe easily. The trees twitch in the wind, another January storm setting in.
Lovers.
Is that what we were?
I turn towards my sister. She’s watching me, waiting. She needs me to agree and even if I do, I don’t know what I’ll need to do to get out of here alive or without more blood on my hands.
Blair. Isaac. Me.
Pretenders to a tarnished crown.
“Tell me what you want to know.”
Epilogue
January
Isaac
Anger is only one step away from love.
How can we feel anger if we aren’t passionate about something? How can we feel that fire or want to fight to avenge a wrong if we don’t feel love at the root of it.
Anger. It sleeps in all of us. Waiting. And although we think we are masters of controlling it, that we can tame that fire while in the clutch of its claws, we are wrong.
Because love isn’t beautiful or kind or pink roses with diamond rings. Love stirs the anger within us and can leave us reeling from the hurt.
I watch him leave.
His footprints scar the snow, deep marks against the white and cuts across my heart. Ben would argue that there was no other choice than to walk away, to leave us in his bed but we always have a choice.
We just don’t always see it.
