They locked horns, shooting up into the air.
Fifteen feet up in the sky and they were grabbing at each other, twisting and turning in a cyclone of fury.
In a fit of anger, one twin shot a force at the other, flinging both of them apart.
They tumbled end-over-end and recovered, hovering twenty feet apart and facing each other.
With yells of outrage, they flew at each other, head on.
Simon and I stood there, staring up into the sky in horror.
BOOM!!!
I flinched, covering my face.
One of the twins had thrown a lightning bolt at the other. It was returned in kind.
Another BOOM!!! ripped through the air.
I threw a hand to shield my face. The blast whipped our hair into wild disarray.
Simon grabbed me and threw a shield around us both.
"Damn! These guys are loud!" He gasped.
"Are they trying to kill each other?" I wailed.
Simon gave me a wilting look. "Please. This is nothing. They're just throwing off steam. They'll be down in a minute when they run out of energy."
True to Simon's words, the twins sank back down to terra firma once their energy had been depleted.
But their fight did not end with the descent. If anything, it intensified, now that they did not have to expend their energy to keep themselves aloft.
The twins were evenly matched in physical abilities, so landing a blow was difficult.
After minutes of struggling, they were both deadlocked into a stalemate position where neither could gain on the other.
That was when Corwin had a chance to speak.
"She was never exclusively yours to be stolen, Connor," Corwin stated matter-of-factly. "I may have been guilty of not being clear with you about my intentions, but I am certainly not guilty of thievery."
"Damn you. You knew how I felt about her!" Connor tried to throw a punch at Corwin. Again, he was thwarted.
"You knew I'd been trying to convince you for ages into accepting her as my girlfriend. I didn't want to make a move on her until you were ok with it because I didn't want you to feel as if I'd left you behind, or that you had been relegated to third-wheel position or something."
"We're brothers, dammit! We're twins, you and me. We're suppose to be tight. What the hell, Corey!"
Corwin let his brother rage on at him until Connor finally fell silent.
"We're brothers, yes," Corwin agreed. "But we eventually have to live our lives as separate people, Connor. You can't go through your whole life waiting for me to agree or validate everything you want to do."
Connor inhaled a ragged breath and turned his head away. "I'm okay with what you just said. I knew that eventually we wouldn't be as close as we've always been.
He turned back to Corwin with unshed tears. "But Corey, why did it have to be her? Out of all the women in the world, why did you have to go after the woman that I cared about?"
Connor heaved his body and the twins broke apart.
Rolling into perfect fighting form, they emerged facing each other, their stance defensive, their eyes glaring.
"You think I did this on purpose?" Corwin asked. "I did everything I could think of to fight my attraction for her."
He beat his chest in frustration. "I fought it tooth and nail the entire year we were assigned to watch over her. But you kept trying to convince me what a great girl she was."
"For the last few weeks, I tried desperately to feel nothing inside, and when that didn't work, I tried to feel hate, but that didn't work either."
He turned back and pointed directly at Connor. "You had a whole year to talk to her and tell her how you feel, but you blew the entire year away, and ended up doing NOTHING!"
He shook his head and stared Connor down. "Your problem is that you talk too much and don't do enough!"
Connor shouted back, getting into Corwin's face, "And your problem is that you don't talk enough and do too damn much!
He breathed harshly. "What did you think I'd do if you just came to me and told me that you were going to pursue her? I'd be a little upset, but I'd accept it. How you did it behind my back is what made me so mad!"
"Argh!" Simon's shout cut through the twins' rabble.
"What's a brother gotta do to get some peace and quiet around here, eh?" He gave a loud growl. "You are both too noisy, and look at Nana. You're scaring her!"
He inserted himself between the twins, separating them with the width of his shoulders. "Look, the reason why you are both attracted to her is because the two of you are identical twins, even if you do have some minor differences."
"You," he pointed to Connor, "you can't blame him for having feelings for her because he's just like you, only a little smarter."
"And you," he pointed to Corwin, "you can't blame your brother for liking Nana either because he's just like you, only a little funnier." Simon snorted in disdain.
"Right now though, neither of you are very smart, or very funny."
He pushed the twins apart and then looked at me.
"How do you feel about being married to one of these goons?"
I shook my head. "I don't know. I don't feel married, and I don't know them well enough to be able to say much more about it."
Simon turned back to the twins. "You heard the lady. Soul-bonding or no Soul-bonding, if a woman says she doesn't feel married, then she is most certainly NOT married, I don't care how magikally plausible it may be.
"That just feels forced and coerced, and I don't think I like that very much. Right Nana?" he asked without expecting any answer.
Before I had a chance to respond, Simon had spoken again. Obviously, he had not finished what he wanted to say.
He turned back to the twins. "It seems obvious and clear to me that at this moment, she belongs to neither one of you completely."
He stuck a finger up as the twins tried to argue that point, "—although I do have to agree with you both that she is very fond of the two of you."
"However!" Simon growled. "It's going to take a lot more than a few weeks of wind-surfing her around for her to accept one of you as her man, so I'd say you both still have an equal chance."
He snorted. "But you guys need to step up your game because right now, you're both so lame that if I were her, I wouldn't date either one of you!"
Simon threw his head into the air in feigned haughtiness and then gave a surreptitious wink at me.
I had to bite my knuckle to keep from laughing out loud. He was the youngest member of our team, but for the moment, he had turned into the most mature of us all.
After that bout of fighting, the twins stopped talking to each other for the rest of the afternoon.
It made things a bit difficult because Simon had to be the intermediary for everything.
I was inside my tent, rolling out my sleeping bag and getting it ready so I could take a quick nap.
Through the fabric of the tent, I could see the shadow of a tall Osiris-twin-like shape with that recognizable slouch and the long hair which was starting to curl at the ends as it grew past shoulder-length.
The shadow walked back-and-forth, back-and-forth, back-and-forth in front of my tent, like a sentry.
I sighed.
If I didn't say something, this shadow would be moving back and forth like this all day long.
I poked my head out.
It was Connor.
"Are you standing on guard duty outside my tent flap?"
He turned to me with a surprised look on his face. "Does it look as if I am?"
"Yes."
"Sorry. I was just—I wanted to talk to you about something important, but I didn't want to interrupt what you were doing."
I regarded him for a moment. If I did not accommodate his need to communicate with me, I had a feeling he would be pacing back and forth for hours.
"Come in. You're not interrupting anything important." I lifted the flap and waved a hand.
Connor folded his body in half, took off his shoes, and followed me into the tent.
"Your tent looks nice." He said as he looked around the interior of my tent.
"It's exactly the same as yours."
"Yeah, but for some reason, it feels nicer."
"It's probably because my bedroll and blanket both have yellow daisies printed on a blue background. You guys have just a simple black sleeping bag with some grey blankets."
I babbled on, trying to fill the awkward silence. "Color and design make a big difference in any space. Next time we go buy stuff, I'll decorate your space."
I turned to Connor. He was zoning out and not even listening to my inane chatter, his eyes looking mournful and his mouth petulant.
"Connor!" I called out, tapping him on the arm with my fist.
"Hmmm?"
"Are you ok?"
"How OK do you think I should be?" He snorted, roughing up his long red hair in frustration. It bounced back no worse for the wear.
"Just the other day, I asked you if you had a boyfriend and you said no. And today, you're Soul-bonded! What the hell?"
I frowned. "Does Soul-bonded mean that I have a boyfriend?"
Connor laughed, a raw, mirthless sound. "No. It means that you are MARRIED!"
"Huh?" I gasped. "Doesn't marriage require a wedding ceremony and some signed registry?"
"Nana, we're mages. Marriage for us goes far beyond the paper registry. It's a binding of the soul and the mind and the spirit. How is it that you are born into a magikal family and don't know this?"
I shrugged, staring at his angry blue eyes, besieging him for understanding. "I don't think anybody ever told me what being mage-married means. My parents certainly aren't Soul-bonded."
"Besides, if you're talking about this," I raised my encircled wrist, "I can assure you that your brother put it on me so that he could track me if I were to be kidnapped or if I somehow disappeared like Simon did on Topaz Mount, or like Tory did."
I shrugged. "I certainly don't feel married at all. I haven't known you and Corwin long enough."
"Nana," Connor shook his head. "Not all married couples are Soul-bonded, but all Soul-bonded couples are married. That's how it works.
"Regardless whether you feel or don't feel married...regardless whether you know him or don't know him...and certainly, regardless of whatever reason he chose to Soul-bond with you, the matter still stands. You are now married to my brother."
Connor's shoulders slumped. He was looking so upset that I found it difficult to look at him. I could see the pain in his eyes and it was clear that he felt betrayed by his brother.
I inhaled and tried again to reach him. "I haven't been in touch with my parents all that much ever since I was placed at the Academy.
Surely they would need to be notified, and would have to grant their permission for me to be married. I can't see how this could possibly be valid."
"Oh it's valid alright," Connor gasped, laughing uncontrollably. "Firstly, you are past the age of consent. You don't need your parents approval.
He held up two fingers. "Secondly, anybody can do a quick energy reading on the both of you to know that you've been bonded. Anything that affects you will affect him, and vice-versa."
I looked down and pretended to study the ragged dirty lines of my fingernails, but then I caught sight of the gold rings on my fingers.
"Corwin told me that the gold rings I'm wearing have magikally registered me into your family registry."
Connor glanced at the rings on my fingers. "Yes. The first registry was yours and mine because I placed it on your finger first. Technically, you're my bride."
I lifted my eyes and gazed into his deep blue eyes. "Then aren't we married too?"