It took three weeks in a witch-induced coma for John to come back to me.
During that time, I didn’t care that vampyres existed and there were multiple worlds. I didn’t care that Lothaire recognized our darkness and knew who our biological parents were.
None of it mattered.
I had sworn on my life that I would never fail John again.
The past blended with the present.
“Give us the prophecy, oracle,” the king demanded harshly. “Stop speaking in riddles. You’re scaring them, and they’ve been through enough.” I gripped John’s hand with so much force my fingers cramped.
In the present, we arrived at a building hidden by snowy trees. “Cafeteria” was written above the green door.
John tried to pull away to open the door, and my throat closed with panic. Itchiness exploded across my skin, so I tightened my hold on him and Aran. He stopped reaching as he recognized what was wrong.
I couldn’t stand to part from him.
Not after we’d been separated for so long.
Never again.
I breathed shallowly.
“Of course, my King, let me be clearer.” The oracle giggled and swirled her hands in the air. “I speak through the mouth of the stars as I proclaim this fate.” I shoved John further behind me, heart pounding with fear as I protected him with my scrawny frame.
The three of us sat down together at the table as food was passed out by workers.
I slid my chair closer to John, and he slid his closer to Aran. We sat pressed against one another.
Breathing deeply, I searched for calm.
Voices spoke around me, but I didn’t hear a word they said, because I didn’t care about them.
I didn’t make friends.
I ignored everyone.
I didn’t talk or interact.
No one existed but John—and now Aran. Two people were the center of my world.
They were my world.
The fateful day on the cliff had solidified my attachment to my twin into something that defined my being.
Codependency consumed every moment of my life.
It was me.
We were two halves of a whole, and even though John could put on a mask and socialize, he suffered from the same dependency.
Memories swirled around me.
The past was alive, and it reached for me.
The king had never revealed to the realm that the lost princes had been found, because you couldn’t lead a powerful realm if you refused to acknowledge that anyone else but your brother existed.
You couldn’t play the political game of survival if everyone else was already dead to you. So the lost princes had stayed lost; we’d been nothing more than rescued humans living in a foreign realm.
We’d liked it best that way.
But over time, the king had grown disappointed because he thought I’d grow out of my issues. He’d thought John would help me change into someone different.
My twin loved me the way I was.
As a result, when Lothaire returned years later to take us to Elite Academy, the king made a horrible decision: he blackmailed Lothaire with secret information in exchange for keeping our identity a secret. Worst of all, he convinced Lothaire to let only one of us attend Elite Academy at a time.
The king claimed it was because he needed our abilities to run the realm.
He lied; it was a desperate bid to fix our crippling dependency problem.
The king pulled us aside and promised we could be reunited if we could prove we’d both formed a relationship with someone else.
What proceeded were the worst years of my life training at Elite Academy.
They thought I was John, and I never bothered to correct them because they didn’t exist to me. Not in any way that mattered. I let my twin do the socializing for both of us; it wasn’t for me.
In the beginning of my time at Elite Academy, I was alone in a sea of faces.
Desolate.
Unmoored.
Until a blue-haired boy with haunted eyes and a mouth dripping in sarcasm draped his arm across my shoulders and called me John.
I tried to ignore Aran, but it was impossible.
For some confounding reason, I wanted to help the pretty boy floundering to stay alive in the dark sea. My heart pounded wildly in my chest as a pipe was pressed against my lips and a joke whispered in my ear.
Aran refused to leave my side.
And for the first time in my life, I latched onto someone that wasn’t John.
I saw someone else.
The twin that refused to interact with anyone besides his brother was cured.
Months later, the king wept with relief and rejoiced with his family when we asked for Aran’s hand in marriage. Everything he’d ever wanted had come to fruition.