chapter 20
Avira
I didn’t tell Mama and Daddy about that shooting drama. I know Zoan’s sniper identity isn’t a secret for them. There’s only one person in this house whom everyone keeps inside a pink dollhouse. In my case, it’s a yellow dollhouse.
I haven’t seen him since last night. Now, as much as I’m mad at him, I’m also missing him. I’ve never ever fought with him. No matter my state of mind, I always spoke with him before going to bed.
I close my desktop when I notice the time. It’s past midnight. Because of all the drama in my life, I’m in a surprisingly favorable writing state—intensely irritated. When you write, the face of the emotion doesn’t matter, only its intensity does.
I slip on my flip-flops and walk out of my room, closing the door silently behind me. Tiptoeing, I reach his room and check the door. It opens.
I walk inside and close the door just as silently. The room is swallowed in darkness. Clouds obscure the moon, leaving no outdoor light. The eerie silence of the room does an excellent job of giving it a graveyard-like feel.
I look around, feeling blind. But to my relief, the clouds shift, letting a sliver of moonlight through. My eyes start adjusting to 0.1 lux of light intensity.
His bed is empty. I step closer. There’s no sound coming from the bathroom. Has he not returned? Well, I’m not going anywhere. I will wait for him. I have questions he needs to answer.
I proceed to sit on the bed when my eyes land on a figure huddled in the corner on the floor.
My body freezes mid-air as I meet eyes that seem to have absorbed all the light in the room, glowing in the darkness, not like the sun or the moon, which banish shadows, but as if the darkness itself was born from them.
His gaze is all-consuming, locking onto mine.
I lift myself slowly, keeping eye contact.
I don’t know what else I would see in this darkness apart from his glowing eyes, and even if I could, I don’t want to see anything else.
His gaze pulls at my very soul, demanding it leave me and reach him.
And I want my soul to merge with his, to never leave his blackened one, so he won’t have to live alone in the abyss he rules.
I walk toward him. No matter how furious I am, I cannot resist immersing myself in his darkness when I see it consuming him. If anything wants to consume my Zoan, it has to consume me first.
I settle in his lap, resting my head against his neck and wrapping my arms around his waist.
“I hate you,” I whisper.
He pulls me into his arms tightly. We remain like that on the floor for a long, silent stretch.
He presses a kiss to the crown of my head. “You were happy with him.”
I purse my lips. “So you shot him.”
His grip tightens, pulling me closer, melding me to him as if to fuse us together.
Zloban
I wanted to kill him the second she laid eyes on him and approved the way he looked. And I would have, if someone else had called him there to meet her.
But I realised my mistake the second he made her blush. I grabbed my Horizon and reached the rooftop. I set up, sighted the restaurant, and found it disturbingly easy to keep him in my crosshairs.
With every smile she gave him my resolve to shoot hardened, when he made her giggle I squeezed the trigger. And I missed, for the first time in my life I missed my mark because my Dove was so impossibly close to him. One mishap and I would have lost my life.
I pull her into me to feel her breathe against my chest.
I’d only managed to pull the trigger once, blinded by rage.
But the jealousy and burn evaporated the instant the bullet left Horizon.
The bullet traveled three kilometres in the air, taking three and a half seconds to reach its target, and during that stretch, my heart skipped into a hollow rhythm, caught in a suspended, blackened void.
It didn’t truly resume even when the bullet hit the wall behind them and fell to the ground, because he was pressing her down and I thought she’d been hit.
I felt the surreal experience of dying while still breathing.
My hands haven’t stopped shaking since, not until I held her just now.
That’s why I hate losing control of my emotions, and I never lose that control except where she’s concerned. Only she can snap my rigorously engineered restraint.
“Why are you sitting on the floor?” she asks.
“I don’t like mattresses when I’m not calm.”
She rubs the side of my waist, trying to calm me, but I’m already calm. The moment her fingers touch my skin all the tension vanishes from me.
I unwrap one arm from around her and slide it beneath her thighs, lifting her up into my arms as I rise. I sit on the bed with her still cradled against me, then lower us down without releasing her for even a second.
She shifts back slightly to look at me through the darkness.
“Zoan… will you answer me honestly if I ask you something?”
I nod.
“Do you love me?”
I nod again without a flicker of hesitation.
She smiles faintly. “Do you love me because I’m your sister?” Her face scrunches at the end of the question. I want to turn on the light to see her expression more clearly, but I know I wouldn’t want to witness every nuance that crosses her face.
I shake my head.
She tightens her hold around my waist. “Do you love me the way a man loves a woman?”
I nod.
“Will you marry me?” she asks, her voice edged with nervousness.
I shake my head and close my eyes. I can’t bear to see the look on her face.
“Why, Zoan? You know I love you, and not like a brother. I want to marry you.”
The hurt and vulnerability in her voice pierce through my bones.
I open my eyes. “I’m your brother to the entire world, Dove. No one will accept our relationship.”
“You care about the world but not me,” her voice breaks.
I cup her face in my palm. “I don’t care about anyone more than I care about you. But tell me, will you truly be able to bear the consequences of it?”
“We don’t have to tell the world,” she whispers.
I wipe away the stream of tears running down her cheek. “You don’t deserve to live like a dirty secret, Dove. You’ll marry someone who gives you all the love and respect you deserve. You’ll forget about this love in a few years.”
“I can’t love someone else, Zoan,” she says, her voice trembling.
“You can. Everyone can.”
She sits up on the bed, eyes blazing through her tears. “Maybe you could love someone else, someone you wouldn’t have to keep hidden, but I can’t.”
She gets off the bed and leaves the room, her retreating steps echoing in the silence.
“You are more than love, Dove,” I murmur into the darkness. “You’re my missing soul. I’m alive through you.”
I pick up my phone and open Roxion’s text from a few hours ago.
Roxion Marco: ‘Did you find something?’
He had called me right after dropping Avira off and told me about the shooting—how, according to him, Avira could have been the target. I’d told him I would investigate.
Roxion Marco: ‘And dude, I like your sister. She’s so full of life. But I don’t want to decide marriage on her behalf either. I want to take her on a few more dates. Hope you won’t kill me.’
She deserves this. She deserves someone like him.
I’ve known him for five years now. He’s a man who would never let a single tear fall from her eyes. He would keep my Dove happy, so happy that she would forget the very existence of mine.
Me: ‘I’ll let her know.’
But how will I exist when she falls in love with another man, builds a family with him, and no longer calls me every night to say good night, Zoan? How will I breathe when my Dove belongs to someone else?