Page 19 of Daughter of the Dark Sun
“And you believed him?” Apattar said with a strangled cry, disbelief that Ninann could be so innocent coloring her face. “He forced this upon me! Tortured me, claimed he wanted to purgeme, set me free. Rotting away the hours with only my thoughts to keep me company. It festered until it formed a sickness inside my mind. Do you think he meant to drive me to the edge of insanity? I look up at the stars in the night sky and want to extinguish them from existence, to blanket the world in the same nothingness eating at my soul. If the gods did write my destiny—if such a thing is true—I will make them tell me why, or I will end their precious world. Maybe then they will deign to talk to me!”
“You sound deranged, Atta.” Ninann tried to get up, but Apattar dug a hand into her arm, forcing her back down.
“You asked for me to unveil my demons, and now you must hear them. I need to cleanse this ache from my heart.”
Apattar paused. The words begged to stay in her mouth, to deny the bloody, brutal truth of her crimes. She ground her molars together before starting again.
“Nine years old, Ninann, that’s when I killed someone for the first time. An accident. I didn’t mean to kill him, but it all happened so fast. The morning of our nameday, walking home through the trees, a man tried to grab me. He chased me, I panicked. A void opened up in my soul, consuming my mind and taking control. It came like I knew what to do all along. It felt primal, as if I connected with the First Harmonic at the moment of its creation and cut the very weave of his soul. The more time I put between myself and his death, I realized Ilikedwhat happened. Over the years, I thought of how I could use my powers to free myself from this prison and bring you with me.”
Ninann did not speak or even make a sound. Apattar reached out to take her sister’s hands, but the woman recoiled with a look of horror. Silent tears streamed down her perfect dark brown cheeks, mouth twisted in a look of pain as if trying to hold back a scream.
“For… for the first time?”
Ninann’s voice cut like glass through Apattar’s heart. She wanted to deny it, say the foul deed only happened once. But she could not lie when Ninann’s bright green eyes pierced Apattar’s soul, light shining on all the dark recesses of her past.
“Others.” Apattar bit her lip, drawing a pool of blood to the surface. “Yes, others. The assassins… if Father told you. Didn’t mean to kill, but I felt scared, hurting for so long.” Her voice sounded far away, dream-like.
Trapped by her mind, Apattar wrestled with the memories of the thin woman who had plagued her for months, refusing to acknowledge the name that slipped out two weeks before.
Apattar closed her eyes and pulled wisps of the Shadow-weave deep in her heart into an orb of deep black nothingness. With each inhale, she imagined the void pulling the numbing pain from her body, feeding the hollowness eating away at the woman. As the void siphoned away the hurt, Apattar felt a sliver of herself go with it. Another fleeting happy moment, now lost forever to her darkness. Soon, the warmth of the desert returned to her bones, but the ache of her fractured heart remained.
“… about an attempt on your life.”
The sound of Ninann’s voice pulled Apattar back from endless oblivion, hearing the words through the thick haze clouding her mind. Apattar took her twin’s hand, tracing the pattern of flying doves and flaming suns with care, letting the warmth bring her back to life.
“There is no love left in this heart, little dove,” she said after a long silence. “None save for the bond we share. You are my guiding light, my sister, my best friend. I need you to understand me, please! I can’t lose this too, you are the only comfort I have.” Apattar’s mouth was dry, her tongue heavy and thick.
“How could you ever expect me to understand this!” Ninann’s voice cracked as she forced the words out.
“Please help save me from myself, Ninann. I’m scared, I don’t want to lose control forever.” A hushed whisper, the cold morning breeze bore her words away.
Ninann looked down at her hand in Apattar’s, clasping the other over her twin’s arm. The warm touch pushed back the hollow nothingness consuming Apattar. A single tear escaped from her right eye, falling on top of a bright blue dove on Ninann’s hand. Those emerald green eyes—always full of love and compassion—looked up, now guarded and uncertain. Apattar could feel her bond with Ninann weaken, the music always thrumming between the two of them falling out of sync.
A shiver ran down Apattar’s spine. What happened when the shared harmonic of two souls diverged? The change was subtle, a fraction of a heartbeat’s difference between their songs. Yet, a vast canyon had emerged between Apattar and her twin.
“I…” Ninann paused, basking in the silence for some time. Apattar remained silent, desperately hoping her sister would break the unsettling quiet between them.
“I don’t know what to say. How could I stop loving you when I am you, and you are me? I will try to help, but what could I even do? I understand nothing you are telling me! Voices, compulsions, all this rage and hurt at the hands of our father you have kept away from me for our entire lives! It is an endless ocean to swim across and find you. But swim I will. I must.”
Apattar slipped her hands from Ninann’s grasp and stood up, walking forward a few paces before turning back around toward her twin. She held out her right hand and, with her eyes closed, began to imagine the black nothingness eating at her pushing out with each heartbeat. It spread into her fingers until it slowly seeped out of the tips. Tendrils of black Shadow-weave crawled into her palm. The air cooled around Apattar’s hand as the void within her materialized. It pushed back the desert heat from her body, enclosing the young woman in a blanket of cold.
A small black orb took form, so devoid of color it seemed to suck the very vitality from the world around it. Apattar slowly sighed, setting her gaze on the manifestation of the emptiness she harbored within.
“This is what festers inside me, Ninann,” Apattar said with bitterness. “Your black dove is perhaps more aptly called a dove devoid of life.”
Ninann stood and walked to her twin, reaching a trembling hand toward the black orb before pulling it back. Her eyes were wide and curious, changed from the terror she held moments before. Apattar could swear she saw a shadow growing behind her sister’s eyes.
“You are not empty, you are hurt.Evranenithescaping the dagger are rare, it is true. But if they have lived and the world still turns, then you will not be the end of it, this I know. Maybe it’s not even a curse, my dear sister. Maybe you’re just… you.” Ninann spoke with an unexpected understanding.
“You are too complicated for words, Atta, and for this, I love you. I don’t know what I can do, but tell me and we will find a way. You will be of age soon; by law, your path will be your own. Surely you can survive two more years.”
“I think…” Apattar paused, closing her hand and letting the tendrils of cold shadow sink back in before continuing. “I think I need to go away. To find some answers, but most of all to find what life is like away from him and Av Madhira.”
Apattar looked up at the sky, now painted with pastel shades of pinks and oranges as the sun rose. Her gaze settled on the hazy moon sitting low on the western horizon. An invisible thread pulled at her heart. It seemed to tell her,come find me, remember.For one beat of her heart, Apattar almost thought she had lived another life, one that knew fierce, devoted love. The breath caught in her throat at the thought that seemed morelike a memory. A faint whisper of hope took its place among the ever-present voices of dark desires and empty feelings.
“West. I need to go west. I’ve seen gateweaving in my books, I know I can find my way home if I get lost.”If there is a fate, perhaps happiness is not beyond reach if I adjust my perception of the world. “And I must leave today.” Apattar spoke with an authority that even startled her, unsure if the words were entirely her own.
“You mean to leave? Alone? And trust a conjured portal to carry you to safety?” gasped Ninann.
