~RUNE
My world was spiralling out of control.
My body was trembling violently.
My heart raged against my chest.
My intake of breath grew way too short that it hurt to breathe.
I ran to Sayla.
When I reached her; I shook her, checked her pulse, checked for a heartbeat.
Nothing.
Only coldness greeted me.
“Please, Sayla, open your eyes…” I begged breathlessly.
“Don’t leave me. Wake up! Please!”
I looked down at the ugly wound on her stomach.
Pressure!
I needed to apply pressure.
“Wake up! Come on!” I cried as I pressed hard on her wound.
Nothing.
I moved to her chest and began to apply more pressure while counting internally.
“One, two, three!” I counted even if I had no idea what I was doing.
No matter how many times I did it.
Nothing changed.
“You promised!” I screamed desperately.
“Together forever! Remember?”
That was when the doors suddenly came open and guards spilled into the room.
Bright light came alive in the hall and Lucien— my brother appeared tall after the guards.
“Rune… What have you done?” He demanded breathlessly as his eyes settled on us.
My eyes grew wide at his insinuation.
He didn’t possibly think that I—
“No. No. No…” I began to shake my head at him.
But the moment he reached me, a hard slap tore across my cheek and I fell back in shock.
The guards didn’t dare say a word but I could see it in their eyes too.
They thought the same as my brother.
That I dared to do this to my own sister!
The next minute, my parents barged into the library.
“Your Majesties!” The guards roared.
A shrill cry erupted from my mother’s lips when she saw Sayla’s blood soaked body on the ground.
Lucien instantly began to channel his light into Sayla in an attempt to save her.
My parents came to stand around Sayla too, channeling their light together.
I held my breath despite the burning pain on my cheeks, hoping with all my heart that they could bring her back.
“It’s not working,” Lucien stated painfully after a while of trying.
“We’re too late. She’s gone.”
Mother let out another cry.
Father balled his hands into fists so hard that they turned white.
While Lucien just trembled angrily as he stared at Sayla’s motionless body.
I felt as if my world had ended.
This couldn’t be real.
It had to be a nightmare!
“You monster!” Mother suddenly roared as she charged toward me.
“You did this! You killed your own sister!”
I was horrified as I began to shake my head at her.
“I— I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
But she grabbed me by my hair and began to drag me away.
I screamed in pain yet she wouldn’t let me go.
“I am going to do to you what we do to criminals— monsters like you!” Mother stated in a shaky yet angry voice.
Lucien and Father didn’t say a word.
They let Mother drag me away as they followed quietly behind.
I was beyond mortified as helpless hot tears spilled down my cheeks.
I didn’t know whether to cry for my dead sister or the fact that I was being accused of her murder.
Mother dragged me through the dark corridors, down stone stairs until we reached the dungeon where they interrogated criminals.
The smell of dried blood and dead things instantly hit my nose.
She threw me roughly into a cell.
“Hang her up by her hands!”
My body bruised against the hard rough ground.
I hadn’t even recovered properly before two guards lifted me and began to bind my hands by chains.
Then they used the chains to keep me suspended in the air.
“Hand me the silver whip!” Mother ordered.
“Yes, your Majesty,” the guard answered and retrieved it from the storage.
A shaky gasp escaped my lips when the burning torches in the cell reflected on the whip as the guard finally brought it in.
“No, Mother no—”
Piercing pain slashed across my body as the whip made contact with my skin.
I let out a painful scream.
“Why did you kill Sayla!” She roared.
Lucien and Father were now standing in the cell with us, watching with pure hatred blazing in their eyes.
“I didn’t kill her. I would never—”
The whip hit me again.
“Aaah!”
I heard the sound of my skin tearing under the merciless power of the tool.
“Don’t you dare lie to me!” She spat.
“You were obviously jealous of my Sayla! You couldn’t stand her glory. You couldn’t bear the fact that she was way better than you could ever be so you decided to take her life!”
“No! I would never hurt Sayla!” I screamed.
She reacted by hitting me harder than before.
She didn’t stop this time.
Not even when blood began to ooze out of the thousand cuts that now defined my body, or my screams continuously echoed through the dungeon until my voice broke.
I was wailing now as ugly tears and mucus ran down my face.
I could not stop trembling violently as my body burned with a thousand pain.
Lucien stepped forward this time.
“To think I began to pity you!” He spat angrily.
“I was going to arrange to have you sent far away from here so you would at least get a shot at building your own life for Sayla’s sake! Yet you killed the only person who ever defended you!”
“I— I loved S— Sayla,” I managed to whisper through bashed lips.
One of my eyes had already gone blind with blood and I struggled to look at them.
“I didn’t kill her,” I breathed weakly.
“Monster! There was no one else in the library besides you. Admit your monstrous crime!” Lucien spat, hatred seeping out of every word.
I thought of the other voice in the library.
The only way they could have escaped is if they knew of the secret passage Sayla spoke of.
If I could make them understand that there was a secret—
“I should have killed you that day you came into this world!” Father roared for the first time since Sayla died.
I gasped.
Father never spoke to me before.
He always pretended I didn’t exist.
But today that he chose to speak, he had only one thing visible in his eyes.
Murder.
Then right before my eyes, he pulled the sword that had been resting perfectly on the closest guard’s sheath and charged toward me.
“Father, no!” I screamed in horror.
He lifted the sword in the air and was about to cut me down in that instant when a new guard suddenly rushed into the cell.
“Your Majesty! The Orin have entered our territory!”
Everyone in the room froze.
No one spoke for almost a million heartbeats as we suddenly remembered the wedding which was supposed to happen in a few hours.
“The Mad Orin King is here,” Lucien breathed first, breaking the loud silence.
“If he finds out that Sayla is—”
Mother gasped in horror.
“The alliance will be called off,” Father muttered in shock.
“We are doomed.”
“He’s unstable. He will lose it and destroy all of us,” Mother added as she began to breathe shakily.
“There are many of them coming in. They will kill us all. Unlike the impression we try to give them, there are not that many Aylin anymore,” Lucien revealed.
“They’ll tear us down, they’ll drain our essence before we even get the chance to use our light to burn them.”
I watched as Father stiffened and he gripped the sword tighter.
Mother began to tremble visibly.
I could not tell if they were more worried about Sayla’s death or the implications of her death.
That was when Father’s head snapped toward me.
“You! It’s all your fault!”
Then he raised his sword for the second time that day to cut me down when Mother suddenly grabbed his hand.
“Stop!” She roared.
“She’s her twin! They have the same face!”
He stopped immediately and they glared at each other as if they were secretly communicating through their eyes.
“You don’t actually mean—”
“Yes, we have no other choice,” Mother stated as she kept her gaze on Father.
Then they both turned to me while Lucien stared at them in confusion.
“Since you were so jealous of your sister that you could not stand her happiness, you will take her place. You will become Sayla Aylin.”
I widened my one eye at them in shock.
“This is insane. King Uriel and Sayla are in love. He’d know I’m a fraud! He’ll kill me!”
“Don’t you think that’s a less cruel fate than the one you will get if you remain here?” Lucien asked as a sickening cold smile crept up his face.
I looked at my parents in disbelief before staring back at him.
They were all mad.
They actually thought I could fool the entire Orin Kingdom.
The true monsters!
“I have no light, no healing powers. They will discover me!” I cried.
“At least, by then, the alliances will have already been signed in blood. It cannot be broken after the signatures,” Father stated.
“And your life will serve a good purpose to the people of Valaris for the first time.”
I could not believe my ears.
This was a suicide mission and there was no way I could survive it.
“You have no choice in this matter, Rune. As of today, Rune Aylin is dead and only Sayla Aylin lives. You will marry the Orin King by sunset and save the kingdom Valaris with your life,” Lucien stated firmly.
Suddenly, Mother came forward and grabbed my cheeks.
I winced at the pain.
“If you ever try to run away,” she began.
“Either King Uriel Vorn finds you first or we will.”
Then she smiled coldly.
“Unlike the Mad Orin King, we won’t make your death quick and painless.”
The weak will always be preyed upon…