Epilogue
Rain Atlas Jett
The Jett family home wasn’t exactly a home, per se. It was built like a castle and housed ghosts, ones that glided through its dark halls in silence, letting out hushed hisses at poor maids and hosting silent dinners.
One wife.
One husband.
Three daughters.
One son.
On the outside looking in, the family of six looked perfect. A strong male heir and his levelheaded twin by his side, their younger sister readying herself for an ambitious career, and the youngest, with three wise influences to lead her right.
Two proud parents who helped foster such quintessential children.
Except, Rain remembers what the world seems to have forgotten. Rain remembers that they are seven. Rain remembers that she has a brother. Rain remembers that she has a younger brother. She also remembers that his name was almost a taboo to utter.
And yet, she still does.
“Will Marlon be joining us?” She tried keeping her voice steady at the candlelit dinner table.
The dining room was far too bleak a place for Marlon. It was everything he hated, she noted. The table was too large for the otherwise large family.
Even now, Rain noticed the number of empty seats almost swallowed them up. Somehow, in a much more fundamental way.
This place gave her such an existential sense of isolation that she couldn’t help but find herself counting down the days for when she could return to Castle Hill.
Despite herself, Rain found comfort when her thoughts drifted to her six peers.
To their loud, unguarded voices and chaotic nature.
She thinks Kayan would like them. August’s rambling, Ajax’s mocking, the air of teasing that always seemed to engulf Paris, Marigold’s…
silence, Sasha’s scheming plans, Wolf’s–
“Rain…” Her mother was always the first to speak, careless of her husband’s authority, because in the sewers of their relationship, she was always the one pulling the strings.
Her lips pursed and her eyes tightened. “I won’t repeat the warning I had given you in September.
M–... Your brother will join us when he is ready. ”
“I want to hear nothing of the matter again. Let it be put to rest at once,” Her father says, attempting to assert his quasi-power.
For a moment, only one, Rain, wishes she could scream. She wishes she could scream, and tear out her hair, and throw herself back against her chair, and bang her head against the thick wood until she draws blood.
She glanced at her older brother and then her older sister. Though, she didn’t expect anything out of them save for subtle sneers and eye rolls. They always hated Kayan and what he represented in the Jett family.
Akira Ishaan Jett, only thirteen, wouldn’t turn out to be like those lost causes. Rain would make sure of it.
The former looked at her with slight unease, hoping she would drop the matter and leave them to continue their silently stilted dinner. The latter didn’t blame her. She was seated right next to their mother, and her voice was grating enough in a low tone.
But something made her pause.
Your brother will join us when he is ready.
She’d done everything right. She achieved the highest scores this term, she reigned supreme over Castle Hill. She was a prominent player within the Founder’s Society. Does that mean…
Silently, she lifts her spoon and pushes it into the heavy soup in front of her. Watching the silver be swallowed and smothered by the liquid. An ironic metaphor for her reality, Rain thought.
Pushing open the door to Kayan’s bedroom was not an emotionally taxing act. She always found herself in her brother’s bedroom when she missed him dearly. When the walls of her own began closing in on her, and her throat tightened enough for her breath to come out laboured.
Her sleep was always dreamless in his bed, but she slept. That was all that mattered.
On any given day of the holidays, Kayan’s room was the epitome of cleanliness. His sheets were tucked tight under the mattress, and his floor was spotless, always remaining vacant.
Today, his floor was riddled with crinkled shirts that often had vulgar slogans printed across the front or a rock band that was so beneath the Jett family’s taste, they didn’t even know they existed.
Despite her surname, Rain knew that they existed, and it was all thanks to Kayan.
Bowie
Queen
Sweet
Led Zeppelin
She couldn’t get him to shut up about them once he started.
She paused at the rumpled sheets, the drawn curtains, and finally, the boy–man standing next to his nightstand.
“Kayan.” Her voice came out thick and watery as the image of her little brother standing there before her seemed to punch her gut. A wave of emotion tugged at her heart and pulled at her throat.
Kayan, despite only being sixteen, held formidable mental strength, turning at the door’s swing with steeled walls behind his eyes. However, they all came crashing down as he dropped the trinket in his hands at the sight of his sister, bright hazel irises softening. “Atty.”
“Kay…” Rain let the whispered nickname wash over her in waves of relief.
His hair was cut short in a tousled fringe, different from how he liked it. He always did have a hairband around his wrist for when he needed to tie the strands curling around his ears back, but that was how he liked it.
Then again, Rain wouldn’t know if his preferences had changed since she’d last seen him.
He was so different, taller, bigger, and appeared much older.
She stepped forward on shaky legs, and she must have blinked too long because her feet were lifted off the polished floors in an instant, and she was promptly engulfed in a lung-crushing hug.
She didn’t mind.
“Kay–oh god, Kay. You’re here.” Her words came out muffled against him, though she knew they would come out with struggle despite it, as pressure grew behind her eyes.
Rain, as opposed to how Castle Hill had her, was so full of love and happiness in that moment, she could almost burst.
Her brother, whom she hadn’t seen for close to a year, was in front of her, in the flesh.
She was distantly aware of the door shutting behind her, but she couldn’t be sure because Kayan was here and he was safe.
The last thought made her pause. She scrambled out of his embrace and began running her eyes over him. “Are-are you okay? Are you healthy? Where did they keep you? Kay, what happened?”
Her voice was frantic, but Kay, ever so blasé, did a slow turn with his arms stretched open. “In good nick, as you can see.”
“And then some,” Rain noted with wide eyes. “What were they feeding you? It can’t be anything decent.”
Kay let out a low chuckle, but she didn’t miss the note of bitterness underneath it. “Wasn’t anything you couldn’t scarf down when the circumstances required it.”
The comedic tone didn’t hit as he’d expected because Rain shuddered. “Kay…”
He sighed, a breath coming from an exhausted part of him. “Let's… not–”
Rain reached up and placed her hands against his cheeks, in part for reassurance, to avoid pinching herself, and in part for him. “You need to tell me what happened, Kay. I-I came back and you were… gone. Again. What happened? Please.”
Her brother broke their eye contact first, finding the floor particularly interesting because he must know he couldn’t exactly ignore her beseeching stare.
They remained like this for some time, in somber silence. Rain, in anticipation, Kayan, in avoidance.
She let out a breath and tiptoed around his room, avoiding stepping on any of his precious shirts, ironically carelessly thrown around. She made her way to his bed and took a seat on the edge, waiting for him to join her.
For a long time, he remained standing, and she let herself reminisce about the last time they’d been here together.
Marlon Kayan Jett was always the black sheep of the Jett family. He broke far too many rules to be called a simple troublemaker.
He was always the bravest of the five children in indulging his desires.
He didn’t think too long about what he wanted, and even less when he went after it.
He was rebellious when he got his piercings, dyed his hair all sorts of absurd colours, wore ‘commoner’ clothes, listened to ‘preposterous’ music, and ate greasy food at the dinner table.
Rain thinks the straw that broke the camel’s back was when he legally changed his middle name to Kayan.
She didn’t know how he’d done it as a minor, but she was more worried about how their parents would react. That was the first time they sent him away.
He was fourteen.
First, it was a boarding school in Germany.
After a series of pranks that, according to Kay’s biased narration, unjustly resulted in a pursuit of him by a very naked professor across school grounds, he received his first expulsion. From then on, it was a boarding school in America.
Their parents had been the ones to pull him out of that one when he returned home with a pack of hash in his luggage and especially reeking of the pungent smell.
When it seemed all hope was lost, Rain began to hope and pray that Castle Hill, under the ‘watchful’ eye of his older sister, was Alistair and Emmeliana Beaumont Jett’s only solution. She even hinted at it, as subtly as she could.
Instead, Scarlet and Dorian, the twins from hell, had slipped a military academy pamphlet across the table one particular morning, and it was settled.
Kay returned each holiday with bags under his eyes but a fiercer glare and a stronger passion for rebellion.
Something must have happened between last winter and this one because the next time he was sent away, he didn’t return. Not for the spring holiday or the summer. Rain was entirely shut out of any information on what they’d done to him, but he was here now.
And she had to know what led up to it and the gaps since then.
The weight of his body made the bed dip next to her. “Kayan means important person, did you know?”