Page 96 of Vexatious Queen

“No, that’s okay. I was just going down to get us something to eat. That is, if you’re okay with me sitting in on your conversation,” Ivy asked.

“Of course, you’re always welcome.”

“Okay, give me five minutes to put on something more than this,” Sabastian gestured to the grey sweats.

“I appreciate that,” I said, walking over to his roommate’s window.

Their chatter while they changed became background noise as I stared outside. The windows here overlooked the forest, and even though I was done with the cold, I could never be sick of this view.

The snow on the trees hung heavy. The mix of white and green, layered with the morning fog, was stunning and felt mystical. Wayward had always felt like that. Secret to most of the world, it held a quality reserved for movies or books, and yet here I lived it every day. Sometimes it hardly felt real.

Three more months until graduation, until we left Wayward for good. It was strange how much a single year made you feel about a place. I had been so angry when Neil dropped me off and left me here. Now…I couldn’t picture what my life would’ve been like without this place or those that I’d met here. The guys, lifelong friends, and even Dean Henry all held a special place in my heart. I had reconnected with my father and found peace among the chaos. Wayward Academy had marked me forever.

I jumped at the reflection of someone standing behind me.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, but you weren’t responding to your name,” Sabastian said as I turned to face him.

“It’s okay. I was just lost in thought.” I glanced around the room. “Ivy left?”

“Yeah, she said she knows what you like to eat and how you take your coffee.”

Ivy had become an incredible friend, and I didn’t know what I would ever do without her.

“Come sit down. I pulled out all the pictures I have.”

Following him over to the communal table in the room, my eyes bugged out at the dozens of photos sprawled on the surface. Picking up the closest to me, I traced over our happy little baby faces. We were dressed in white, with little bonnets on our heads. I’d never seen a photo of me this young. I’d never questioned where my baby photos were in our house, which, thinking back now, was odd. Maybe a part of me knew deep down that we’d left all these memories behind.

“We were so little,” I said, sitting down, unable to take my eyes off the photo.

“Yeah, it’s kind of freaky and hard to believe.”

You’d never know looking at this photo that we weren’t siblings.

We both had dark hair, and while his eyes were blue and mine gray, they were similar. I was smaller than Sabastian but not by much. We could’ve easily passed as twins.

My eyes snapped up to Sabastian.

Jesus…twins.

That was what they did. We were born close enough together to pull that off. Pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. Questions I hadn’t asked Eddie yet, because talking about Mum seemed to upset him as much as he smiled and said that he loved reminiscing about her.

I swallowed down the guilt as Sabastian smiled at the picture. He deserved to know the truth.

“Um…Sabastian.”

He looked up from the photo he held. “Yeah.”

“Have you thought about what it means that we are the same age but have different fathers?”

His smile slowly fell. He had either chosen to ignore that fact or it hadn’t dawned on him yet. Sabastian stared at me.

“Are you sure Edmundo is your father?”

I nodded.

“But that means we don’t have the same mother. It’s impossible to get pregnant and have another child that fast.”

I sat there quietly, waiting for him to put all the facts together.