Chapter 1

Jessica awoke to the sound of rain. Her tongue was dry as sandpaper, and the feeling she had when she grated it against her soft palate made her wince. It took longer than it should for the saliva to come, and for many seconds her swollen tongue felt alien in her mouth. As if any words she spoke would not be her own. As if voice had been stolen.

She swallowed thickly. Her mind was moving slowly, her reactions were dulled, her eyes listless. One breath to ground her. She realized one of her nostrils was occluded. Sensations were coming back to her now. At first, they were the basal mammalian instincts that she had little control over – the position of her body in space took form in her mind. She was side-lying, and the skin beneath her shoulder, hips, ankles, and knees ached dully from the pressure of it. Her face was mashed against the stone. She shifted her neck stiffly and suddenly there was air in both nostrils.

Another breath to ground her. Fuller this time. The air was musty. She smelled the dampness, could feel it in her bones and in the achy shivers that crept up her neck. There was mold too – she could smell the decay of soft, damp wood, the rottenness of wet straw left to fester. There were other smells too – iron, a heavy, oppressive scent made slightly sweet by the moisture. There was also her own smell – filth and fever and fear.

Slowly, Jessica's eyes adjusted to the darkness around her. She realized it was not rain that had woken her, but the steady drip of water from the ceilings of her cell. There was a single chair in the corner, the wood soft and weak from rot. Underneath her was straw. She could feel the prickling against her skin now. Jessica shifted slightly and was met with the clang of iron on stone. So, she had been bound.

Jessica ignored the protests of her aching muscles to sit up and examine her manacles. It was only then, when she had a full view of the dungeon where she had awoken that she realized where she was. Jessica laughed bitterly, a bark of derision that echoed across the empty room and made her dry throat scream in protest. It was official. She'd come full circle. This was the dungeon she had escaped from, all those years ago, when she had still believed in the chance of a happy ending.

It was only after the wedding that Amon had started to use the dungeons. He had assumed that the marriage would bind them to his will, that accepting his hand had been the ultimate submission. It was not a foolish assumption – it had taken a long while after they had arrived at the castle for Neus and Ariadna to stop waking in the middle of the night. Neus had had dreams where the twisting fire had not stopped at her wrists, and that the unbreakable vow had eventually encircled her entire body. She always woke up screaming, feeling as if she was burning alive.

At the time, Amon had thought the nightmares advantageous. The fear of the vow had been enough for Neus to marry him. He assumed it was enough for Neus to obey.

But the dreams had been his downfall, in the end. Because it was only because of the dreams that Neus remembered the exact words of the vow she had made when she was five years old. She had vowed to marry Amon. She had never vowed to stay.

She'd been married less than a month when Amon first sent her to the dungeons. By then, she knew that her escape was drawing near. Her whole life, Neus had never been able to keep her emotions neatly tucked away. She had suffered for it, but it was a lesson she never fully learned. As her escape drew nearer her tongue grew bolder.

The first incident was forgetting to say "please, my prince" when asking to pass the salt at the dinner table. She had spent the night in the dungeon, sleeping in the straw. The scurrying of rats had woken her in the night. The prince had laughed at her screams.

The second time she did not scream. She did not want to give him the satisfaction. The third time, she stopped waking to the rats. Her tongue had grown bolder with each week, and soon she was sleeping in the dungeon more often than she was not. It must have been what had alerted Amon to her plans – because the week preceding her escape, she had suddenly grown unusually quiet.

She'd been sent to the dungeon the night before for no reason at all. And he had kept her there all day, which he never did. Neus had almost been sick with worry as she watched the sun sink lower and lower in the sky, and still no one had come to free her. Chestnut would be out there, and Neus would trapped here. And soon, Neus would not be able to hide the secret that had pushed her escape plans forward, forced them to flee earlier than they had planned.

Neus rested her hand on her stomach, though it was still flat, as she gazed out the window. She was started from her thoughts by the sound of soft footsteps.

She had been expecting the heavy tread of the prince's dragonskin boots, and so she was caught off guard. In a moment, her sister had stepped out of the shadows.

Ariadna approached the cell door hesitantly. Neus, confused by her appearance, made no move. She was worried any sudden motion might scare her away, as if she were a skittish cat slowly approaching an outstretched hand. The door to the cell unlocked with a tap of Ariadna's wand. Neus gazed upon her sister's face.

They were so alike, but so different at the same time. Ariadna had always been the sweet one. She took the time to twist her hair when it was wet, so that it lay neatly around her round face in even ringlets. Her eyes were a shade darker brown, emphasized by her preference for eyelashes that clung in bunches, like a babydoll. Her cheeks were rouged. Her dresses were always neat, the pleats folded with the utmost care.

Neus' curls were always wild, framing her face in a shock of movement. Her dresses always hung asymmetrically, and they were never without a hastily (and clumsily) repaired tear. But still, Neus and Ariadna were alike. The fingers that met as Ariadna handed Neus her wand were mirrored. They were the exact same height, so that when Ariadna brought her eyes to meet her sister's the gaze was met evenly.

It was Neus who broke the look, but too late. Too much had been understood. Neus turned quickly hoping to outrun the accusations.

"You're leaving, aren't you?" Ariadna called out. Her voice trembled. Neus' shoulders sagged. "I… I can't stay here. Surely you must know that." Ariadna let out a small sob, quickly concealed by a hankerchief to her lips. Neus, despite herself, turned to face her in surprise. "He'll kill you, when he finds out about the baby" Ariadna said when she had gained her composure. Neus' could not contain her surprise. How did she know about the child? She looked at her sister for answers, but the other girl did not reveal any. Neus sighed. She didn't have time for this. "He won't hurt you, Ariadna. You're too… good." Ariadna's face contorted in pain. Neus knew she was holding back more sobs. "He loves you" Neus whispered softly. Ariadna turned away from Neus' comforting touch. A few seconds passed where Ariadna seemed to battle silently with herself. What she was fighting, and what won, Neus would never know.

"Neus" Ariadna said at last, turning to face her twin. She was interrupted by a distant chiming of bells. Neus heard the hour and was reminded of the urgency of her mission. She had no more time to waste. "Neus please –" Ariadna whispered.

But Neus had already turned the corner, had already started running for her life. She had left Ariadna before she had even finished her plea. She knew what she was going to say. And Neus could not bear to hear her sister beg her not to go.

Jessica, who had once been named Neus, laughed bitterly again as she leaned against the wall of her jail cell. "Are you happy now, sis?!" She called out, her voice rusted and grating. To Jessica's surprise, she heard the soft padding of footsteps approaching. Jessica watched as the far details of the room appeared under the warm, dancing light of an upheld torch.

Jessica hissed in pain as the light came full into few, shying away from the fire as her overlarge pupils were scorched. By the time she had recovered, her sister had already slid the plate of food under her iron door. It was a piece of bread, a slice of cheese, and a single glass of water.

Jessica ignored the food in favour of the woman who stood before her. With a great effort, she heaved her weakened body to standing. The weight of the iron pulled at her arms, so that they dangled uselessly at her side, tugging uncomfortably at her shoulder sockets. Jessica attempted to take a step forward, but the effort of dragging her ankle chains was too much, and she tumbled to the ground.

Jessica was about to pull herself back up, by sheer will more than by any remaining strength, when her sister spoke softly. "Please, Neus. You are so weak." Jessica sat up. She was a pace closer to the door now, but still the spit she aimed at her sister's feet fell short. "My name is not Neus. Not anymore." The other woman did not respond. She never did.

Jessica had been performing the same routing for months. She would awake to pure darkness, she would scream out for her sister. The confusion was new, the having to remember where she was each time she awoke was new. It was a troublesome sign. It meant that the torture – the legilimens that Amon attempted whenever Jessica was strong enough to withhold it – the torture was slowly eroding her mind. It was a sobering realization.

"Aren't you happy" Jessica spat out at the retreating figure. "You never wanted me to go, and now I'm back. Right where you found me before." Ariadna's had her backed still turned, but she paused for several moments. Jessica was reminded of the moments she had turned away from her all those years ago, moments before she had run away.

Ariadna still did not speak, but her pause was the most reaction Jessica had ever elicited from her. The excitement of getting a reaction, any reaction at all, spurred her to speak again, despite her aching vocal cords.

"Don't you remember, Ari?" Jessica asked, slipping into the habit of calling her sister by her childhood nickname without noticing. "I was standing right where you are now. And you knew, just as well as I did, that it wouldn't matter if I ran or not. Not in the end. He would kill me either way. You knew it in your heart, I know you did, because your heart is almost my own. And still, you looked at me as you asked me to stay. You said 'Neus, please don't go', don't you remember? It was so very selfish…" Jessica had not meant to say the last part, but the solitude and the torture, and the lifelong habit of running her mouth, had gotten the best of her. It had been a private thought, how selfish it was of her sister to beg her to stay, for her own comfort, when she knew that staying would mean the slow death of her sister.

Though Jessica believed what she said was true, it had still been a private thought. She had not meant to speak it out loud. But it was the last words that had seemed to make the biggest impact on Ariadna, because when Jessica had spoken them out loud Ariadna had dropped the torch.

Jessica watched amused (with a twinge of guilt), as Ariadna scurried after the rolling torch, cursing as she picked it up. The rolling of the torch had brought Ariadna's face close to the cell, and as she lifted the fire back up, Jessica saw tears glistening in her eyes. Ariadna met her gaze for only a second, before she turned away.

Jessica watched in bitter disappointment as her sister walked again towards the exit. She thought she had been getting somewhere. "Coward" Jessica called out frustratedly, not really expecting a reply. Ariadna paused again.

"You got it wrong." She said, so quietly Jessica almost believed she'd made it up. "That night, the night you ran away. You never heard what I said." Jessica watched silently as her sister approached the archway of the corridor that would take her out of the room. She never turned around again, and she never raised her voice, so that Jessica had to strain to hear the last words. "Please don't leave me here. That is what I said."

The soft padding of footsteps grew softer as Ariadna retreated down the stone corridor, leaving Jessica to interpret her confession.