As I expected, Castiel is sitting at the table when I walk into the cottage. What I didn't expect was Chaska, sitting in the chair next to his with a cheek full of garlic-buttered bread. She raises a slice in the air, grinning when I shut the door behind me and shrug off my satchel to hang it on another metal hook. A much lighter weight than back at the home I share with Rylan.

Castiel's wheelchair sticks out awkwardly against the round table and his legs, which haven't moved since the day the Void Queen took the ability away, don't have any room to shove underneath. No one in the village has the time or the care to craft a taller table. And the man standing in the kitchen, our adoptive father, would never pay for something so fickle. Not while Castiel believes the fuss isn't necessary.

I place the corked bottle of pink liquid onto the table next to Castiel's working hand and he mutters gratitude under his breath. We've gotten past behaving awkwardly about the subject, and his focus on repairing what looks to be a hole in the toe of a leather boot halts the forced grins and spilled truths of appreciation. The last words I desire to hear out of his mouth are that my sacrifice isn't taken lightly. We all know it isn't.

"Must Rylan always put you in such a terrible mood?" Theoden calls from the kitchen.

I glance over my shoulder, slumping into the chair opposite of Chaska's, and squint into the open archway providing a clear view of his hunched back. "It's partly my fault," I call back. My eyes dart to Chaska's and she shakes her head in disappointment before waggling a slice of bread, silently urging me to eat so we can train. I drop my voice lower, muttering, "I chose to poke the bear. It's only fair for him to attack."

As the years go on, Theoden's steps slow and his posture worsens. He shuffles back into the small dining area no bigger than a royal's bathing chamber, and plops down into the last empty chair. Every movement strains his ability to breathe. The world sucks the air out of him when he reaches an elevated level of height. Precisely why he slumps.

Castiel and I weren't the only victims of lost loved ones during the Void Queen's siege three years ago. Memories of their smiles and companionship never fade away despite the ache of loss wearing off. For Theoden, the man that took us in when no one else would, his eyes the shade of frozen mud tell the saddest story known to man. Even a warrior would weep.

"Eat, child," he urges me with a wave of his wrinkled hand. I do as he asks, and what Chaska suggests, by stuffing a bite of garlic bread into my mouth. To satisfy them both.

He has curly hair, tight like a cap. When we first met after the slaughter of innocent parents and fishermen, not a single strand stuck out from the oil black dome. Now, half the hairs have greyed despite my Luminary abilities taking them away when he requests to see himself younger. He hasn't asked for such care in a while. Too long, actually.

The best bakers in the kingdom don't match what Theoden does in his small, rickety kitchen. Though the countertops of splintered wood and brick oven are not of the highest quality, he never once cared. By firelight, he used to tell us how, when life was better, he complained. Nothing made him happy; not the small kitchen or the creaking door that screeched every time someone entered or exited. These were things he couldn't fix, not on a fletcher's salary. But he had his wife.

The door still creaks, the kitchen wouldn't be considered enough for a royal member, and his wife is dead. He buried her near the garden so she'd always be near. Every evening, I glance out the window and spot his huddled figure against the stone wall bordering our yard, his lips moving as he speaks about another day to a woman that may not hear. Not after she fell to the army of the soulless.

I glance over at Castiel's quickly working hands. He threads the needle through tough leather, a bead of sweat on his brow, his back hunched. The potion remains where I set it, wobbling slightly against the tug and pull of his movements. I consider moving it out of the way so he doesn't knock over something so expensive. Rylan would be opposed to buying another.

"How is your pain, Castiel?" I question. "Are you feeling any better as of late?"

He shakes his head and grimaces at what he believes to be sloppy handiwork. The leather came together, but he isn't satisfied. And I don't see why; the only ripple lies towards the bottom and can easily be overshadowed with a layer of black thread. "Nothing changes. I wake in the morning and cannot feel my spine until I take a drink of the potion. Then, the tears dry on my cheeks and I can breathe again."

I give him my best sympathetic look. The answer is always the same.

Luminaries possess unlimited power, and I've tried on multiple occasions to weaken my brother's pain. He's not the man he used to be, not in bulk, height, or personality. After he took to the wheelchair, effortless smiles stopped brightening his eyes. The weight dispersed, melting away like sugar glass, and I never saw him stand again. I cannot do anything for him; the only power stronger than my own is the Void Queen's and her forte is irreplaceable and unfixable.

Castiel didn't come to terms with that overnight. It took a while, including an adjustment period where he never wanted to leave the cottage in fear of being bullied by the children that survived that night. They wouldn't understand, Castiel was trying to save what he had left. He didn't know the Void Queen planned to try her hand at breaking a spine. Instead, she paralyzed him from the waist down.

I give Castiel the only promise I can. "I wish there was something I could do. You'd think with my abilities; I could at least dull your pain." I place a hand on his thin arm. When did he become so feeble and easy to grab onto? "Someday, I'll venture into the Magic of the Wise and find someone able to help you."

Theoden grunts. "No child of mine is visiting that horrid place," he orders. Wrinkles break through his umber skin, cutting clean on his cheeks and at the corners of down-turned eyes. He waves around a cut of dried venison stabbed through with a wooden fork. "I won't allow it."

No child of mine.

We are not his blood, but Theoden had no children. The Rithorne children will forever be the closest he'll come to having a full, functioning family. It's what his wife wanted, but life and the village got in the way. No one can afford children, let alone bear the pain to bring them into this world. Avoiding the Void Queen comes first, raising children when she's dead is second on the list of importance. Sadly, her fall never came.

I chew on the inside of my cheek and he glares at me, knowing all too well that the nervous habit will eventually make me chew through the side of my face. As we learned to be around each other, the first thing I discovered was that his threats mounted much taller and scarier than my parents ever did. When Theoden ordered you to do something, you listened. Otherwise, you grimaced at the visual he created, looping the threads of a disastrous tale together to create an explosive lie.

"The Magic of the Wise is no more of a threat than the Void," I deflect. "The army of the soulless cannot capture me there."

Theoden begs to differ. "They may not, but the witches see through your skin. The magic crawling underneath, originating from the Void, and they'll send you right back to where you belong. In the hands of the Void Queen." He upturns his dark palms, withered with age and scars from crafting too many bows and arrows. A scowl tugs down on his lips. My final warning.

To console, I say with confidence, "I will not go where I don't belong. The Magic of the Wise will come to us, eventually. They always do."

Across the table, Chaska digs out a spoonful of rice from one of Theoden's pot and plops the heap onto her wooden plate without regard for spills. No one else at the table notices. Especially not Castiel, the sharpening of his craft takes tremendous focus.

"We mustn't speak of this so loud," Theoden scolds. "The windows are open; the guards know no sense of personal bound..." He waves his hand about in the air around our table as if trying to shoo the conversation away.

"The guards here are stupid." Chaska doesn't hold back. "They can't spot a goat from a calf, let alone a Luminary. They don't search for us until night falls and they have an excuse to wander through the streets in search of treasures on two legs. During the day, we're safe. It's when the moon rises that we must keep our voices down."

Theoden rubs a hand against his wrinkled forehead. But it's Castiel that speaks next. "Do me a favor and don't raise your voice to test that theory." Finally, unsatisfied but annoyed, he tosses the shoe aside to its rightful place on the floor and pushes his wheelchair in farther to the table. The bowls rattle and Theoden's tankard of lukewarm water dances, water sloshing over the rim.

"Sorry, Theoden," Castiel apologizes, flashing us all a look of embarrassment. I take a moment to realize my hand holds tightly to the potion he disregarded as soon as it found the table. I do not wish for it to shatter. The last thing Theoden needs is a pink stain on his floorboards.

"No troubles, boy." He wipes up the puddle with the sleeve of his tattered, worn tunic. If only my parents taught me to sew. With all the stitching Castiel does, I would consider him to be the one that repairs what Luminary or ordinary hands can't fix. A long order of shoes and boots that need mending prevent him from doing such.

The next few minutes are a mess of clanking dishes, furling napkins, and the sloppy slurp of Theoden sucking liquid from the rim of his tankard. The wood on the outside is splitting, but he doesn't seem to mind.

I watch his slow movements as he eats, the shaking of his hand when he lifts the fork to his mouth and the inevitable sadness in his eyes accompanied by silence. I cannot repair what Theoden lost, nor does he wish to have that stark scar healed. Given to him by a soldier of the soulless, he wishes to remember the last day he spoke to his wife. Loved her and kissed her. The deep, jagged line cuts through his cheek, a shade deeper than the already dusk gloom of his skin.

Before he catches me looking at him, I tear my stare away and back to my food. It's not long before Chaska drums her hands on the table, signaling that it's time to train. For someone that lives in a shed and has nothing other than my family and a job, she keeps in remarkably high spirits. I can always count on her to either piss me off or brighten my day with that joyous attitude.

Theoden bolts us in the basement to combat the possibility of guards coming by. They're fond of random searches. As the lock slides into place, sealing us into the dark if not for the ball of sparkling, spitting fire hovering over the palm of my hand, I don't feel protected. 

My hands find the cold lip of the sink and grip tight. Behind me, a tub of water waits. The soaps lining the wooden tray are stacked neatly, and the towel hanging from a wooden rack is softer than any fabric I'll ever touch. The world around me isn't what I wish to focus on.

I meet the stare of a brown-haired, green-eyed girl in the mirror. Twenty-one years of life and I still haven't mastered the ability to come face to face with her. My secrets, my past, my treasures, and deepest fears—she knows it all. And yet the face staring back at me, innocently round—not like that of a child but what the people in Gudgeon consider cute—does not feel like my own.

The Void Queen thought Castiel and I looked like twins. We cannot be more different. Even our noses are wildly unalike. My pointed nub and his crooked hook do not stand farther apart on the spectrum of what the average person considers twins.

I took after my mother in the respectful term of average. As I stand bare-chested in front of the mirror, staring at my face, I remember the way the villagers used to consider my mother and me identical. Like a twin but more. A bond shared between mother and daughter.

As I matured and my body changed, my breasts growing bigger than that of the other girls to weigh down bony shoulders and offset a thin waist, the only refuge I had was knowing that my mother went through the same struggles. She matured the same way. Drawing the wrong kind of attention never fell into what was our fault, but everyone saw it that way.

A deep breath raises my shoulders, accenting normally non-existent collarbones, and I exhale through my mouth. Only the beginning. My fingers tingle when I give the silent command, and as I will it, the base of my hairline shifts. Not in movement, but color. Brown swims like a waterfall to white, puddling at the bottom of the stands hanging against my back.

Already, the change is enough to loosen a knot in my stomach. I stare back at those green eyes and watch carefully. My favorite part of the transformation, besides allowing my magic a breather after clenching all day long, is the muddling of my eyes. The pupils twist in their attempt to stop the inevitable, but the green gives way and another, more startling shade, shoves it out.

Crimson eyes never looked so tender. I suppose that is what the Void Queen hoped for and said as such. The destinies of the innocent were to detonate in on themselves and wreak havoc on the world. I will not succumb to what she wanted me to evolve into in her honor. The true evil is not the Panjandrum Corps or murdered Luminaries hanging from the gallows. The Void Queen will always hold the title of being the bearer of nightmares to haunt Rivian children's dreams.

A weight lifts off my chest. The form I possessed for eighteen years doesn't belong to me anymore, but with my Luminary abilities, I'm forced to shift back into it. What I look at now, a woman of ice and fire blended into one soft stare, is Marie Rithorne and always will be; hidden beyond the flesh.

I think I'm alone until a heavy knock rasps on the door. I jump, immediately shifting myself back into the form that won't get me killed, and a splitting headache results. Calming my senses, I wrap a towel around myself and hope for the best.

Rylan's muffled voice comes to me through the door, clear by my power's advantage. "Are you almost done?" he asks.

"Yes, almost." I glance back at the tub.

"Are you...are you all right?" A question to draw attention to the silence on the other side of a wooden door, and a reminder that he's sorry for how he behaved earlier this afternoon. I don't care for either; my personal business is my own.

I swallow the lump in my throat and stare back at eyes that don't belong to me. Not anymore. "I'm fine." The biggest lie, and the most common, since the Void Queen pierced my heart.