Spoiled
A Caster Chronicles Fanfiction
Ridley Duchannes wasn't sure how old she was the first time her sister Reece told her she should eat less sweets – the first time she winced as Ridley indulged in her fifth of their mother's homemade macaroons or shook her head as Riley unwrapped her third lollypop in under two hours – except that, back then, Ridley wasn't Ridley yet, and they all called Reece Annabel.
Her older sister always was a bit of a killjoy.
Hardly surprising she had more fun playing with her cousin Lena. Lena could be a bit of a goody-goody, but she never seemed as overbearing about it as Reece.
"You'll spoil your teeth, Julia," said not-yet-Reece, half-remembered by Ridley years later as sitting primly across from her, one arm draped over the side of an upholstered chair, balancing an open book with shimmering gilt on the leather spine, face slightly flushed from the fire in the grate, a Caster-fire with sparks of green and gold in the crackling flames.
She'd only sucked harder on the candy. Delicious.
"You'll spoil your dinner – I'll tell Mama."
As if their mother, Delphine Duchannes – who got confused halfway through baking those macaroons of hers because she couldn't remember what year it was in the kitchen, the appliances changing before her eyes like the world was one big kaleidoscope around her – would, or could, stop her.
"You know, you really should relax, Bananabel" – and Lena, on the floor drawing with a black crayon, giggled – "you'll give yourself worry lines and look as old as Gramma by the time you're Claimed."
Reece would scowl. She hated it when not-yet-Ridley used jokey petnames, especially on her.
But on the night of her sixteenth-moon, waiting to be Claimed, Ridley had spat out the cherry Jolly Rancher she was keeping in her cheek, her saliva looking like blood as she did so.
Her eyes drifted to Lena, sitting on the bed in the glow of a Disney movie playing on the TV Gramma said they could have in their room tonight, drawing – with Sharpie now, not crayon – in the margins of her Social Studies textbook.
What if I hurt her? What if I go Dark and hurt her?
Ridley's chest clenched. She didn't care about spoiling dinner, or even her teeth – she'd use a Cast to make them perfect again anyway, once she came into her powers, for the Light or the Dark – but she cared about spoiling, about harming, Lena.
Julia Duchannes looked away from Lena and stared into the sliver of age-spotted mirror that peaked from under the mess of gauzy scarves on her side of the room; her lips were stained bright red.
In her mind, she could hear now-Reece: "I'll tell Mama."
Even if her big sister was here (which she wasn't), even if she told their mother, it wasn't like Mama could do anything to protect Lena, no more than she could have stopped Julia from eating too many sweets as a child.
Anxiously, she bit her red, red bottom lip.
It tasted sickly sweet.
Julia Duchannes reaches for her suitcase – the suitcase she used to share with Lena until tonight – unwilling to spoil anything she's not willing to lose, anything she can't magically restore.
