[Library] XVI

[Isotta von Warfel]

It was half a minute to Midnight, and the air was not just air here.

It stepped watchfully, ticking, shivering, unsure of where it stood with Isotta tonight. Knelt beneath the massive clockface she could sense it at her side, inquiring over her shoulder with submissive dread, unsure of what she could be feeling. For a moment she contemplated the invasiveness of it, the intimate violation that reminded her so much of... but Isotta merely sighed, willing it to warm to her.

A deep, melancholy chime erupted from the Clock Tower and into the sky, the stairwell, the courtyard below, losing itself with indecision. It would do so eleven more times before it finally made up its mind on which direction to ultimately travel – but even then it would eventually fade, too insignificant to really matter. It was just another date, after all, surly.

Isotta closed her eyes, the motion of the giant pendulum dragging the atmosphere back and forth, back and forth, until, for just one moment, it swung in sync with the blood through her heart.

“Happy Birthday, Isotta,” She murmured, preternatural eyes straining open. “I wonder what brother dear thinks he has in store for me...”

[Awder von Warfel]

It was the perfect night to daydream instead of sleep, and for those who never slept long anyway, it was the ideal environment for a birthday. However, Awder did not much acknowledge that fact.

Why consider his own, when there was another’s so much more important to scrutinize?

Isotta was four minutes older, and this somehow came to signify that she should be the first to reach the destination that they meet at. It was easy to make up such rules for Awder, when he somehow could always pinpoint his twin’s location. It had nothing to do with their relativity to one another, or their identical birth dates, but merely the fact that Awder had spent now sixteen years studying his sister. Her reactions were second nature, and minus the inability to become emotionally irrational to such a degree as she, he could play her role as easily as his own. Perhaps easier.

He was not disappointed. After a small walk where he followed the candlelight through soft shadows, Awder was hit with the cool and disturbed nature of Isotta’s realm. It was peaceful, almost alluring. The type of lure someone you want to know carries with them. Awder noticed then that the calm of the night had reached Isotta, too.

And when she was like this, it was his best chance to prey. Wordlessly, he slipped a card onto the stone in front of her, his long fingers escaping before her eyes could land on them.

“Did you make a wish?”

The way he said it was very stoic, words disturbing Isotta’s tamed atmosphere and cutting through it. He wondered if Isotta would have the courage to open the Birthday card in front of him, or if he’d have to manipulate her in doing so.

“I did.”

[Isotta von Warfel]

By nature, Awder thought, Isotta felt.

He did not pursue her thoughts so much as coaxed them forth from their dens, baiting them out with fire. By day, Isotta existed as a nocturnal animal camouflaged in fragile tranquillity, sometimes surpassing all aspirations to look almost thoughtful. Perhaps even pensive. But Awder knew better. He always did. He had come with a torch to smoke the beast out.

“Whatever you wish for, I'll always be granted it first.” She breathed, the instrument of emotion already out of tune. How easily his fingers found those cords.

“But what’s this?” The words were a sibilance, nearly indistinguishable in their urgency. It was thin and of average size, a silvery, pale green envelope, unmarked. The hackles rose between Isotta’s shoulder blades as she studied it, suspicion and threat rallying inside her.

Dust blushed the air’s complexion as Isotta scuffled backwards, the movement spidery and unexpected. She could rarely predict Awder’s even most obvious moves. Her fingers tip-tap-tip-tapped against the brittle bone of her wand, growing swifter which each moment he did not blink, did not make one single motion. Her voice was gentle then, so orchestral and curious. “I like the colour tremendously. But tell me, what might the message be?” Alice with the switchblade under her pinafore, coming to find Mad Hatter for tea. She had forgot to bring a gift, unfortunately.

Isotta continued to kneel rigidly, fixated on the pearl-olive envelope. It was her eyes which demonstrated the viper as they drifted into Awder’s, narrow and feral. I dare you, I absolutely dare you.

[Awder von Warfel]

The world was still, for a moment.

Isotta planted herself firmly above the card, studying it with her eyes collecting a storm. Awder did not have to watch the suspicion unfurl itself – he could predict the signs of rain.

The moment was suffocating, mouths refusing to breathe and air so still, as if rejecting to replenish their lungs. They were intruders, enemies of the clock tower. They disturbed the atmosphere in a subtle way that even the dust spiralled in indignation. And as Awder stood in the midst of invisible chaos, Isotta inflamed it.

Awder did not mistake the challenge in his sister’s eyes. He acknowledged the threat with a sly smile that conquered one end of his lips. It was a twitch so tiny that Awder wondered if Isotta would marvel at the significance of it, or only allow her suspicion to grow.

“Need you ask?” Awder finally breathed in the apprehension of the castle around them. His own smooth fingers reached for the card, and turned it over. There was a small inscription in neat writing. On the surface were the plain roman numerals, XVI.

“Happy Birthday,” his voice was low, close. It was a part of the orchestra in her head, joined by the timeless ticking of the tower. His finger flickered the opening of the envelope until it gave way, not revealing what was inside. “My handwriting is not so bad that you can’t read the message yourself.”

A short pause. Awder collected himself, the furtive smile suppressed beneath a halo.

“Did you forget my gift? Nevermind. Mine will be enough fun for the both of us.”

[Isotta von Warfel]

The tip-tapping of Isotta’s wand had grown highly strung, her tolerance waning under the pressure of Awder's skill. The music moved yet faster and heavier, a pitch she could not quite reach herself.“Did baby brother learn a new spell?” She half-shrieked, cracking her neck with the stress of it.

Awder’s pale lips, severely thinner than the child-like pout of Isotta, moved only to offer the most harmful suggestion of smiles. His trademark in the business of secrets, always so ready to be told. And dear, how he knew about secrets, she suddenly mused with the proudest of grins, Awder’s own smile growing with the sheer inexplicability of hers.

What was in the envelope, did she suppose? Was it yet another one of those stolen secrets, snapped off his bracelet of her humiliation, now too tarnished from being examined so many times? Was he giving it back to her the way children often gave each other the toys they no longer had a use for?

Isotta understood little with such clarity as Awder, but they both knew the nature of real toys – her, the misshapen rag of Awder’s favourite doll when he did not much fancy playing with it anymore. And him... did Awder know she considered him an ‘it’ too? She had often admired it, it’s beautiful unmarred face and its cruel smile. The faux-lively eyes of its father – oh, how she liked to remind him of that – pupils dilating with darkness instead of light.

And the many times she had cut off its hair while it slept...

Isotta cirlced Awder now, the atmosphere moving aside with creeping obedience. She paced, wary and infuriated. Awder did not turn or shudder with the danger of her proximity, only maintained his posture, her rabid breath drifting from one shoulder to the other with a predatory undertone. “If it’s big enough to share, then let’s open it together.”

Without mirth, Isotta pressed the sharpened wand tip into the rise and fall of Awder's vertebra, her hand trembling with the revulsion of inadvertant physical contact. “Open it.”

[Awder von Warfel]

Awder did not pause. He opened the letter.

The consequence was a sharp exhale of breath behind him, and he relished in it. The wand in his back was not his motivation, but instead the knowledge that he knew Isotta felt she had the upper hand – she expected him to open it hesitantly, as would anyone else.

But he didn't. His lithe fingers tore at the page inside. They both waited with still bodies, silhouettes pressed like paint on a backdrop. After a long moment, where each breath Awder took was an inhale of Isotta's anxiety, he finally pulled out the card.

It was ordinary. Black with silver writing, the front had just her name with a small birthday signature at the bottom.

“What did you expect?” Awder whispered, head tilting to one side once he'd turned around to face her. “How caustic do you think I am?” His indignant words were followed by a twist of his lips – a small knowing smirk.

The letter drifted between them, falling open. A mordant tune rushed at them both, the sound of the wind wailing against the parchment. The inside of the card was void of anything for a second, before a spindly word appeared on it, the ink still wet.

Very.

Awder's smile gleamed in the moonlight. "I wished to read your mind.” He was blunt and unapologetic. The card lay on the cold ground, unmoving, and his darkened eyes scanned it indulgently.

[Isotta von Warfel]

Isotta gasped, wand falling from her fingers in disarmament.

To an outsider, there would have been no consequence to Awder’s insignificant act; for anyone remotely acquainted with the ruleless game Awder and Isotta played, this was an insufferable victory on his part.

Success sharpened the focus of Awder’s lovely face, his cheeks flushing with the thrill of a child who had just pushed a button he should not.

Of course, such a fleeting glimpse of emotion was not an involuntary reaction from Awder. What was revealed was only ever what he allowed to be seen, and in his own time he let the colour in his skin settle, restful and self-contained once more.

Read my mind? You’ll never hear so much as a whisper.

Isotta clasped her hands to her lips, unable to cram the traitorous thoughts back down her throat before they spread like frost upon the black parchment, music of graveyards trickling into their senses. The fingers of Awder’s magic had prised apart her jaw and reached inside, simply selecting what they had wished to take... Isotta choked on the realisation like vomit.

“How dare you...” A fissure in Isotta’s mentality collapsed, the foundations of her patience giving way to some dark, gaping hole. Another void to fill with rage. “How dare you!”

The moist, silvery scripture glistened. You already know so much – when will it ever be enough?

Awder made no attempt to stop Isotta as she dashed forward, snatching the leaf from his hand. Her eyes sunk into vicious, hateful slits, connecting with his in a bid to convey the finality of her next act, forcing upon him the reality that his achievements over her fears could be undone as easily as they were made.

The tearing of paper echoed in the high room, two halves of the cursed parchment falling to the floor at Isotta’s feet. Relief sent a shudder through the elder twin’s diaphragm, but she was not foolish enough to rest yet. It was no ordinary parchment, after all.

“Read that.” She breathed wretchedly, kicking one of the fragments towards her darker half.

[Awder von Warfel]

A twinge of success roared in Awder's fingertips as he let the sole of his shoe capture the slice of parchment and hold it. He could sense the overbearing shore of hysteria surfacing as Isotta backtracked through the night, emotions radiating off her like heat off the sun.

“I know you better than anyone,” Awder said with such conviction that no audience they could have acquired would have denied it. Leaning forward, he let his lips curl in a sneer that, at a perfect angle, resembled a smile. “I want to see how well you know yourself.”

The simple explanation settled the dust beneath them. It slithered across the floor like a snake, beckoning toward Isotta before pivoting away, unable to choose sides. Awder followed it in its quest, walking toward Isotta's guarded form. The paper previously under his foot flickered subtly in the wind, spiralling a few feet away before becoming as still as Awder's countenance.

He reached down and gazed at the parchment that lingered at Isotta's side, choosing it rather than the piece she kicked at him. “Gladly,” he remarked, nimble fingers plying the torn card closer.

A sentence glimmered onto the page, quivering in a cursive Awder did not recognize. Immediately, his eyes darkened, shining with emotion like the ink that dripped carelessly down the page. “What have you done?”

Peering at it closer, he read the scrawled words, seeing only half of the written sentence. A subject without a predicate – a galaxy without stars.

Her spells taste

Awder narrowed his eyes, before letting them graze the stones below until landing on the other jagged piece, wrinkled.

like blood.

[Isotta von Warfel]

The King now abandoned his own rules, quite freely encroaching upon the Queen, paying no mind to the risk in entering her sphere. Their movements merged into a reflexive dance for one moment, Isotta sliding back one step for every two that Awder took – but he was soon sharing the exotic air of her world, no longer in orbit.

I want to see how well you know yourself.

Her face distorted in agony. Isotta did not have Awder’s charm, did not have a way with even the most vulnerable of words. What could she say? Her understanding of her own self had always been splintered – she felt, and did, and acted, but she did not think, did not observe. Her motives were as mysterious to her as her own shadow.

But it was that shadow that Awder lived in. He explored the hollows of Isotta that she could not begin to fathom.

Yet what did she know of him?

One half of the crumpled parchment lay between their feet, twitching in the draft they could not feel. Ghostly, nonsensical words blistered upon its matt surface, the other remnant blushing with the second half of the message.

Her spells taste like blood. A weak, fluttering smile graced Isotta’s features, touched by the spectral compliment.

Awder’s attention had not lapsed, but now drifted into the tainted air of the clock tower, searching with spiritless eyes for an explanation. He would not be confused, merely curious. As he stared at the parchment furthest away, Isotta glanced at the one between them, eyes stirring as the silent voice responded to her question.

You know him well enough.

A glance at the other.

He knows this too.

Isotta ghosted past Awder, a dream-like quality softening the harsh lines of her face. She picked up the other half, cradling it in her palms almost fondly. “It knows me better than you ever could.” She whispered just enough for Awder to hear, her will melting into the silver ink. Tell me his secrets.

[Awder von Warfel]

He knows this too.

Awder watched the parchment darken in delight. He turned to Isotta, studying her for a moment silently as she regarded the one he could not read. Her expression grew silken in fondness and he smiled, too. It was as sinister as it was pure, and with the slightest shift of his brows he acknowledged her sudden intensity.

“Does it?”

The glistening words of the other half were finally retrieved by his gaze, and his smile broadened at one corner. “That would mean, Isotta,” he said her name coolly, a frostbite on the tip of his tongue. “It knows you better than you know yourself.”

The tip of her wand had been cast sullenly aside, now touching the half furthest away from them both. Awder's eyes studied it for a long moment, measuring the length with his eyes and being transported in mind to a day when they were both eleven. Freshly unleashed upon the magical world and given the tools to coercer their destructive habits.

“Ah, ten-and-a-half inches.” Awder picked it up, wincing suddenly at the burning sensation in his palm. His sister's wand was warm, buzzing with use, and he was not used to the feeling as his wand would normally grow painfully cold.

As it rested in his palm, the letters instantly drowned back into the parchment and left it blank. With a triumphant smirk, Awder twirled it once in his fingers before handing it to Isotta almost tauntingly. “Vampire artery.”

He wondered if his twin would come to the same realisation as he did and picked up the neglected half of parchment.

his secrets.

Awder stood completely still as he stared at it, the lifting of his lips the only indication he was a living figure. There was no doubt the card had gone back to reading Isotta's thoughts with the removal of her wand.

“They're mine.” With an even voice, he regarded Isotta suddenly. “You'll never know them.”

Though the parchment was right; the vampire speaking had suffered with them for five years after all. She did know him well, and he was all too aware of that piercing fact.

[Isotta von Warfel]

More letters spread over her shard of the paper.

Mistress, you do not need me to unearth

The words, though incomplete, whispered against Isotta’s skin with a thrilling sensation, reminding her of both the rough and smooth slants of velvet. Isotta’s chest now heaved unevenly with infatuation, her capacity for intimacy exposed by the seductive voice.

Something sharp touched her arm.

“What did you say?” Isotta murmured distantly, Awder’s voice prowling at the edge of her perceptions. Her eyes were sedate with the balmy fog of thought, lost and wandering along the same misty path without purpose, searching until someone might find her. It was Awder who came to do this – it was one of his aspirations that she fail to ever find her own way, after all.

Vampire artery?

Isotta turned upon Awder, crushing her half of the parchment inside her fist. “You think you make such sense, don’t you? So egotistical!” It was then she noticed her own wand in his hand, poised in offering rather than threat. A faint vapour rose from the gaps between his fingers – it was literally scalding him.

“Thief!” Isotta hissed vehemently, blind fright forcing her to snatch it from his lazy grasp. Three short but deep grazes appeared on the palm of Awder’s hand, her retrieval having been so urgent as to scratch him with her fingernails.

YEEES. Just like

Isotta had sensed the message rather than read it. No longer caring, she flew at Awder like a spooked bird, grabbing the other piece.

old times.

A grin spread across her lips with the same creeping charm as the vampire’s words upon the parchment. “It listens to me, it likes me more.” Spiteful and full of glee, she flung it back in Awder’s face, his designated half immaculate in contrast to Isotta’s.

“But what about yours, Awder?” She suddenly whispered, gaze gravitating toward the notoriously beautiful wand hidden somewhere on Awder’s person.

Inhibitions diluted, Isotta reached for him once more.

[Awder von Warfel]

“Old times,” Awder mouthed the words barely above a whisper. He had no chance to read the other half until Isotta hurled herself at him, her parchment wedged between sharp nails. The sentence sent a venomous trail down his throat – one that flared against his delicate lungs.

His piece grew slightly wrinkled in Isotta's manic hold, the look of clear triumph on her face almost ghostly against the translucent air.

“Likes you more?” He questioned, staring at his sister as she held the note in a spread palm, her own flickering from between her fingertips. “Surely I'm not the egotist here.”

His words were mocking, and when she finally returned his prize, Awder felt his insides grow cold at her utterance of his name. Though he often said hers with a force that held underlying tension, Isotta kept her distance. She did not function with control, only pure hatred, and the name was as foreboding as a the constant chimes of the clock before them.

“Snake venom,” Awder unravelled his wand from his front robe pocket. It was a heavy weight in his palm, and until he found the familiar ridges where he rested his fingertips, it felt like a stranger. Though most scarcely paid attention, both Isotta and Awder knew that his wand was unlike a friend but more of acquaintance. He did not use it often, and its existence was merely a fact rather than a privilege.

As soon as elegant wood was exposed, providing the oxygen around them with splinters, both crumpled pieces hummed lowly.

Serene as fire before the flames,

Awder forgot to breathe as he stared at Isotta with a blank expression. Her parchment was marked with ink of a new colour, a plastic blue. The hint of colour on a sailor's uniform.

Indulgent ashes hard to tame.

He felt the warmth in his wand, a peculiar and unfamiliar sensation on the wood. It was as though it were on fire.

“Wood from a siren's harp.” The moment Awder inhaled, both halves of the parchment erupted in a violent fire.

Shadows flickered against their faces for a brief moment until the flames disappeared. And in their wake, what sounded like a sinister lullaby shifted to life. Both Awder and Isotta knew it well, and the former felt his chest stir, reverberating with his wand. “Do you remember this, Isotta?” He called, turning to her with a smirk as sadistic as the siren who played it.

[Isotta von Warfel]

Neither Awder nor Isotta let go of the parchments as they erupted into flame, the heat licking harmlessly against their fingers. It was false, a mere solid illusion.

The words of the song were faint at first, as if rising up toward them from some murky water’s depths. They settled over Isotta’s ears in a thick film, but she did not need their exact pronunciation to recognise their melancholy, or to be instantly tortured by it.

Our tender hearts upon the pyre,

“It can’t be...” She gasped frantically, a glossy black curl tumbling into her face. She tilted her head this way and that, seeking to dislodge the musical hands that pressed themselves over her ears, forcing her to listen. “Not that wretched song again – it’s not fair!” Frustrated tears sparkled in her eyes. “Stop it, stop it!” She screeched, clasping her hands to her head and crying inexplicably.

They cook so sweet to feed the liar.

The twins did not need to discuss the terrible meaning of the melody, recalling quite vividly the only gift Nocturnus and Melancholia had ever given them – albeit one they had to share. A music box, crafted from the wood and strings of a siren’s harp, the lilting tune from her severed vocal cords. The siren had been killed in what they knew to be a very inhumane manner, and Isotta had thus regarded her ownership of it as a punishment, forever suffering the notes like a haunting.

Awder had felt differently about his share, of course. He had seen the distress it caused his sister. Consequently, there been few nights throughout their childhood Awder had not played it to Isotta while she slept, gradually indoctrinating her with an ill feeling she would never be able to suppress.

The most valuable fragments of that box had later been fashioned into Awder’s wand.

“ENOUGH!” Isotta screamed, ripping away several fiery strands of her own hair. Awder’s devilish smile cut deep into her pride, that old humiliation boiling in her cheeks, bleeding into everywhere it should not. “Give that to me, NOW!”

Without hesitance, Isotta tore his wand from his hand. The music faltered, sent off key by the new pulse that drove it, disturbing and erratic.

“You should remember too.” She warned dangerously, trembling with a cocktail of emotions she had no cure for. The hollow windows of the Clock Tower pummelled them with cold aumtmn night, and Isotta's eyes shifted toward the sheer drop several feet away, Awder's wand twirling in her fingers.

The blue and pearlescent inks alchemized. He remembers.

[Awder von Warfel]

The music stopped short, snapping to conclusion. Awder stared at the parchment for a long moment, before he raised his empty palm level to his gaze. His wand was gone, obviously twirling in Isotta's grip, and in its wake were singe marks drawn from his thumb to his forefinger.

“She still finds me displeasing,” Awder remarked. It was unclear exactly who he was referring to, though he himself remembered it clearly. His eight-year-old thumb balancing on the lid of their latest trinket, his eyes boring into the imperfect wood – finally lifting it to hear a note of melody, before dropping the lid shut... repeating the process until the soft singing became shrieks and vicious calls.

Isotta would not recall those memories. She remembered solely the rhythmic voice lulling her to fitful slumber.

Awder did not miss his wand. The lost weight of it felt almost relieving, as if the magnetic repulsion between both he and it was finally put to rest. But he knew his wand would not resist nor hesitate in damaging him, and Isotta was much the same way.

He did remember. A scowl touched his face for a brief second and the parchment flickered outward once, before recoiling against his fingertips. Awder was not fearful of heights, but the electricity Isotta wielded was well above any current needed to shock him.

A pale hand extended toward him; his own. In it was the parchment, and he willed it to speak to him. But again, his wand denied him.

Frequent carols will misguide,

Awder felt the rush of sea below him. Unseen fingertips ushered him down a plank... Another illusion, he knew.

Provide a means of suicide.

He could spare only a single glance in Isotta's direction before probing hands continued to push him forcefully to the edge. He could only wonder what she saw.

[Isotta von Warfel]

Something passed between Isotta and Awder’s wand, foreign yet familiar. It was so not much a sisterhood than a shared scorn, Awder having wielded both of them one way or another.

Isotta could clearly see the vengeful marks left upon her brother’s hand, and it stirred a warmth inside her, a fleeting satisfaction. It was justice for neither Isotta nor the butchered siren, though – with all their will power combined on this starless night, were those superficial calluses the best they could do?

Awder’s countenance, usually so trained, now had fissures running through it. They were minute but visible nevertheless, the subtle stress between his brows and at the corner of his lips hinting at a demon Isotta could not see. His eyes flickered left and right as though searching for something he had only a moment ago, patient yet stumped. They settled in the direction of Isotta – this time they looked straight through her, not into her.

“What are you up to?” She whispered. Her own hostility slipped in an instant, intrigued by the sudden display of vulnerability. Was it a trick? She gripped his wand tighter, feeling it pulse with empathy.

Two caged birds, all hope deferred

The parchments launched themselves from the ground upon an artificial wind, the magic of it tasting metallic.

Their captor weakens, already lured.

They spiralled about Isotta’s head like two courting butterflies, their edges blushing with embers for a moment before drifting over to the ledge – the one Awder gravitated toward, paralytic with confusion. “It’s not nice, is it?” She moved up close to him now, hissing passionately, freely peering into his clouded gaze. “To never be sure – to suspect it isn’t real, but never sure!”

If Awder could hear her, he was paying her no mind.

Show him the depths you know all too well. The silver ink returned, urging.

Isotta took hold of Awder’s cold hand. It felt wrong, almost perverse – but the promise of things to come quickly relinquished the feeling.

There was a texture of maternity in her voice now – the hollow, ineffective maternity of a child. “Come along!” She teased manically, dragging him over to the balcony with the roughness children so thoughtlessly exerted on their toys. Here, at the edge of their painful little sphere, was Isotta’s inadequacy to be eased for once?

A gust stole her breath and she released his hand, the burden of possibility preventing her from going any further. Doubt filled her without reason. She did not want to think about why she hesitated, or why she felt like crying.

COWARD!