Sage #2
I know deep down that my brother loves me.
A little too much. Maybe in a way that no brother should love his sister.
Our mother made sure we knew that our love is disgusting, and part of me—just a little part that I usually try to silence—believes her.
But Silas thinks we are meant for each other; he likes to point out that we aren’t blood-related, and fate wouldn’t have brought us into each other’s paths if we weren’t meant to be together.
I want to believe that, too. How’s loving him so bad if it feels so good?
“Look at me.” His nails dig into the skin of my chin once we are at a stop, waiting for the light to switch.
“I said. Look. At. Me.” He repeats every word, reeking of authority, and Silas doesn’t like to repeat himself.
So I turn my head, looking straight into his eyes—beautiful blue eyes mirroring mine.
I will admit I can understand why everyone bought the lie of us being twins.
We certainly look the part, or at least we looked similar enough that our mother could sell the lie so well that even we believed her for years.
Until Silas figured out the truth, the vague memories we both had from our first years of life didn’t match our mother’s words.
“You are mine, and everyone who tried to deny us that will pay tonight. Do you understand, my dear sister?” He tells me in a voice that is both authoritative and loving all at once.
I nod. Talking right now will only make him angrier.
It’s not like I can argue anyway. What am I going to tell him?
He is not wrong. They made our lives a living hell for years; they deserve this.
They should pay for their crime, but is death the right payment?
“Okay,” I mumble under my breath before I turn my head back to the road, and the car starts moving again.
Silas doesn’t speak anymore. Silence falls between us, and my thoughts take me back to when I met him for the first time.
The image of a blond boy standing next to the woman who was about to become my mother fills my mind, even though she tried to convince me for years that this never truly happened.
Because remembering things like that made her story about us being twins so hard to sell, she couldn’t have that.
Yet I remember the day as if it happened yesterday.
I can see him so vividly, clinging to her side and clutching her long skirt in his tiny fist, as she explained to him that I was his sister.
Sister. The word that would become my curse for years to come, but at that time, at the age of four, seemed like a signal that I belonged.
It was a beacon of hope shining brightly.
I finally had a family. A brother. I remember smiling shyly as I reached out with my tiny hand to him and introduced myself like a big girl.
Exactly as Sister Mary taught me the night before.
She had spent hours that night with me, teaching me all the proper ways to address my new family.
Branding my new name onto my skin with the wooden ruler she used to hit our palms with every time we did something wrong.
But this time it wasn’t something I did.
It was the fact that I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be Grace anymore. Why did I have to change my name?
My four-year-old mind couldn’t understand why this loving mother, who wanted to adopt me so badly, couldn’t accept me as myself. Why did I need to become Sage in order to be loved? I will admit, years later, even after knowing the truth behind our chosen names, I still don’t get it.
She could have loved me as I was. I would have been the best daughter she ever had if she had just allowed me to exist as I was.
God knows how much I tried anyway to fit into the mold she placed for me on the first day: the one of the good Christian girl who obeys every rule in the house.
The one who knows how to behave and how to talk.
The young lady who smiles and looks at the ground when men speak to her.
The one who dresses modestly and says please and thank you.
The one who doesn’t let her brother fuck her in secret or tattoo her skin with words that tell the world what she is...
A sinner. A problem. Someone destined to burn in hell for eternity after she leaves this world.
I was only a few months old when my biological mother left me at the steps of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church before Father Nicolas brought me into the orphanage.
Sister Mary was in charge of it. I was placed under their care, since they couldn’t find anyone to claim me.
Four years I spent in that place. Four years of being taught the right way to behave in hopes I would get adopted by a nice Christian family.
When Mother walked into the building with a blond little boy next to her and told the sisters she was looking for a little girl whose birthday matched her son’s, no one really thought twice before they pointed her at me.
I still remember her face lighting up when she realized how much I looked like Silas.
She whispered to me as she knelt in front of me that it was God who brought me back into her arms, whispering the name ‘Sage’ again and again as tears filled her eyes.
I tried to look at Silas, thinking he would have the answer to why this woman was sobbing and calling me by a stranger’s name, but he never talked that day.
Sister Mary spent the entire night after that teaching me how to behave, and the next day I was ready to join their family.
I was told that from now on my name wasn’t Grace, but Sage.
I was told that the little boy was my brother and that woman was my mother, and at the tender age of four, even though I didn’t understand, I was simply happy that someone wanted me.
So when the woman returned with the boy clinging to her side, I went slowly toward them and offered my hand with a smile to the boy.
“Hello, I am Sage,” I said in a steady voice, and the woman looked at me with pride.
It was at that moment that I thought to myself, I have finally found a home.
They surely will take me with them. I did everything right.
Everything Sister Mary had told me. I even used the name she wants. And that’s exactly what happened.
Mother filled out the papers that day, and I walked out of the building with my new family.
I couldn’t have been happier that day, but it wasn’t long before I knew things aren’t always as ideal as they appear.
It wasn’t even a day before I learned I wasn’t there because I was the daughter she never had.
I was there to play a role, to fill a spot left by someone long gone.
I wasn’t there because I was important, but because I looked like a boy who had filled a spot, too.
A purpose. And that’s how the Vale twins were born—not by blood, not by fate, but because a woman filled with grief thought replacing the children she lost with two orphans was the right answer. But was it really?
Maybe Silas is right. Maybe everyone in that town deserves to die like Mother did.
They knew. They allowed it. They even fueled her delusion by believing her lies.
Revenge now seems like the right plan again, and I smile to myself as the last of my doubts drift away.
I turn to my brother, and my eyes follow the line from his ear to his jaw.
They stay on his beautiful lips a little too long before he turns to me, smiling.
And now every doubt has vanished again, because I would go to war for this man.
I would burn in hell for my brother. My fingertips trace the tattoo on my chest, the lines that spell the word Sinner.
“Yes, I would burn in hell for my brother,” I whisper, too low for him to hear.