She is the snake in the grass, a switchblade in the boot, a gun in the stocking.
I could feel Vectra watching my every move. I was not allowed to see Ari or be anywhere near him, and my insistence on breaking the rules fueled Vectra's disdain for my very being.
Her eyes changed color constantly in the presence of the Sensitives, oscillating between deep dark purple and clear navy blue. Her power to subdue us grew with each new season after the diamond storm. Not one of my siblings knew just how far-reaching it truly was – did she have the power to disintegrate us? Return us to the original form, to dust?
But she didn't stop me when I elbowed my way through the Assigner's palace. She huffed and issued grandiose warnings I didn't care to listen to, but she never attacked. Not that even death herself could stop me, and Vectra was many things, but she wasn't a ghoul. Did the storm affect her powers somehow? Was she not strong enough to stop me?
"You are overdoing it, Mila," she said, crossing her arms. I kneeled before Ari, in and out of stasis, mostly comatose and unable to regain his true form. Stuck in a body that was merely a vessel of his essence. The water from the Well of Hubris was doing nothing to cool off the heat waves emanating from Ari's core. He was shaking, sweating lava, consumed by the light. No matter how much relentless energy I put into cooling him down, my chaos to his light should be enough to even out the clashing surges of power summoned by the storm and currently poisoning him. Nothing was working.
I looked around the room. Areilycus' quarters never resembled anything more than a circular arena of empty wealth – not that it was his fault. The Assigner insisted on minimalism; we weren't allowed to bring possessions into the Sacred City, and we weren't allowed to read or indulge in sentient-like activities. We gathered in the palace, communed, convened; it was all so very boring. Areilycus' private space never had anything more in it than a large bed with sheets and blankets made of golden stardust. The Assigner insisted he'd sleep in close proximity to which his essence was made of. It was a rule designed solely for him.
The only truly remarkable 'decorative' addition that screamed pure Ari was the ceiling - a star map of Tripolis outlining the planet and its moons, the star systems around it, the celestial bodies, the asteroid fields, the stars. Ari loved the stars. The map was always in motion, just like the universe, a living organism, a projection of the real thing outside of windows of the Sacred City.
I tried to pry out of Vectra a couple of millennia ago why this was the case, but she always dodged my questions expertly and dismissed them as annoying curiosity. Vectra. I looked at her next. With her bald head, pallid skin, rings on her thin brows. Her mask of stoicism was slipping. The woman who wasn't a woman, the man who wasn't a man, a witch with a heart of a healer, a servant with the mind of a leader. Could I pull all the secrets from her now? When the Assigner was far away…
"The water… why isn't it working?"
"I don't know, Anchor," Vectra said, turning to look out the wall-covered window into the open space. Tripolis could be seen in the distance, all its moons and affiliated star systems blinking in the distance like flickering flames of a candlelight.
"But you do," I insisted. I walked over to her, stood by her, our height difference comical. She was tall, imposing, the administrator of the city. She had to know what was wrong with my twin.
"Is this punishment? I know I've been a little…"
"A little?" she turned to me, anger fusing her brows together. "If we all die tomorrow, Mila, it will be because of you." I felt the guilt pooling deep inside my gut. We had a little fight with the Assigner before I was sent to anchor Tripolis. So what? It was almost a ritual to fight with him before the job.
"I didn't say anything as outrageous as to warrant a death sentence for my twin." Vectra scoffed. "You challenged his authority. The man who created you, who created us all for the betterment of mankind. We serve, Milada. We do not question our purpose, we do not decide the fate of the Sensibles, we serve them. Do you understand? We each have a role." But I'm not an actor, I wanted to scream. I didn't know what I was. But I felt as though there was a woman inside me that had been erased. Chaos was only a part of who I was, not the whole package. But I couldn't say that out loud. Not if I expected her to help me. Although Vectra's telekinesis probably figured out my thoughts without the help of my apparently big, ungrateful mouth.
"Have you ever seen a Sensitive go through a rotation like this?" Vectra looked upon a helpless, crude matter my Ari was stuck in. A prisoner in his own body. How cruel. How unbelievably cruel of the Assigner to do this to him.
"Yes, I… once," Vectra admitted reluctantly. A part of the reason why she was so frugal with her words was that she had been a terrible liar. Not only that, she despised deception. If she couldn't tell the truth, she'd rather cut her tongue out.
I was almost afraid to ask. "What do I need to do?"
Vectra leaned against the reinforced glass with her elbow, clear as the most beautiful morning on Tripolis. "You can't do anything. You must let the storm sickness play out."
"What?" I raged. The chaos in me was rising, agitating the walls of the palace. Vectra clocked it immediately and placed a hand with long, thin fingers on my shoulder.
"You want me to watch him die?"
"He can't die, Mila, he's immortal," she assured me like I was born yesterday and just got here.
"Yes, he can!" I shouted and pointed at him with the sharp end of my pointer nail. "He's dying right now! And then what will happen to Tripolis without the Lord of Light?"
Vectra winced, her striking eyes drawing the pain she felt. I couldn't unsee the empathy in them now even if I tried. I would see this look for the rest of my life. And I'd know that this was the moment I decided to commit to the rebellion in me instead of fighting it.
"That's the point, isn't it," I deduced, horrified, my voice completely losing its usual fiery cadence. "Tripolis is not meant to survive."
Vectra sighed at my persistent prodding. "There is a celestial event happening in the near future. A meteor shower set to destroy Tripolis and its moons."
"The Assigner has seen it?"
"Yes," Vectra said. "But not the outcome."
"We are the protectors, what other outcome could there be other than—"
"It's not that simple, Anchor."
To me, it was more simple than photosynthesis. Ari was exposed to radiation and now he's squirming in pain. There was a ping of nervousness at the back of my head, traveling down my spine, and suddenly my entire being started shaking. I didn't realize until Vectra placed a hand on my shoulder.
I ran back to Ari's bed, took him by the hand, and pressed it against the cold surface of my cheek. A chasm opened inside my gut, rotating around itself, self-sustaining like a supermassive black hole.
We were supposed to be together, Areilycus and I. We were two halves of the same being, created from the unique combination of stardust and moondust. The Assigner used his gift to breathe life into us, to give us consciousness. We breathed because he willed it, and in the Sacred City, that meant our will was inconsequential. Created to serve. Created to obey.
It went against my fundamental nature, and the only reason I survived as long as I had was that my twin stood by my side. Now Vectra was telling me that my Creator's will was to take away the life of that which brought me happiness.
We were different, not like our siblings. Cleo loved nothing and nobody; she was a chronic egoist. Vlach was more a cyborg than a Sensitive, Luther recently bound his essence to the Howling Comet out of fear of what he might do, Bara would love nothing more than to overthrow the system that kept Tripolis safe, and Fiona remained neutral no matter what atrocities were happening on Tripolis or even here in the Sacred City.
Not one of my siblings would speak up against the Assigner, and even if one of them would, I could never pay the price they'd demand. Vectra plopped down on the opposite side of the bed, looking down on Ari with pitiful disgust.
I grabbed the cloth, soaked it in the healing water, and squeezed it with my palm, letting the pure blue liquid drip down on Areilycus' burning skin. Across his forehead, down to his neck, to his torso. I washed his feet in it, wrapped it around his ankles, creating a cold balm.
Vectra watched me work for hours. And for hours, his condition never improved. The storm was raging on Tripolis, the Sacred City slept, and Vectra and I were growing sick of one another.
She of my whining. I of her indifference. Sometime between the third day and the end of the cyclical standard month, she lay next to my ashen twin and placed her elongated palm against his forehead. I was just delivering a new batch of the healing water when the golden canopy of moving stardust particles above them began to grey. Vectra had her eyes closed, her forehead wrinkling with deep focus. I watched her with bated breath, my silver heart inside my chest going haywire. I squeezed my fingers together, waiting for Areilycus to wake up.
Five, ten, twenty minutes had passed. He still looked dead. Vectra came out of meditation severely depleted. Her skin went from pallid to dark to purple to green, unstable just like her fluctuating power. She lifted her gaze from my brother to me, shaking her head.
I will not let him die.
I must have projected this thought across the stars; the strength, the conviction behind it reverberated through the Sacred City and far beyond its borders. If I couldn't find an answer in Tripolis, then I'd have to look for help elsewhere. I'll have to break the ground law of my existence—the only true unbreakable vow, the cardinal rule under which I'm allowed to draw breath:
'Never leave Tripolis.'