Aureate Fates

6

    LYRICAL INFIDELITY

                                      —DREW—

Drew wished his memory wasn't so sharp. He wished his memories could have blurred together in such a way that made them hazy.

But they weren't hazy, and he could remember each face as it smiled, each language as it was spoken, each paraphrase as he read it. His mother told him he was endowed a gift, told him that it made him stronger, wiser, and ready to memorize each crack within the world.

It was a curse as far as he knew. Even as he won golden medallions for his intelligence and helped his classmates cheat; he could never measure to Erik.

Drew's memory recalled the distaste his father had etched on his face when Drew could not lift a single box at six years old. Beside him, Erik had carried three.

Erik might have been a few years older than him, and taller and better and stronger and lean and feared—but Drew was something, too. Surely, he had to be.

"Take a break from that desk, son," his mother's velvet voice spoke from his doorframe. "We have company."

Her stormy eyes told him that this company was unexpected. He was to suit himself with the Orvar arrogance he always failed at. His brother was much better for that, as his mother knew, but she also knew Erik was elsewhere.

The second son would have to do.

"Who?," Drew asked, slowly setting aside his tiny tinkering's. He was working on an industrial mechanism; it worked as a quill, only the ink was within the appliance. No more dipping his quill in ink when the mechanism was finished.

The Penn, he called it. Drew decided to keep it a secret for as long as possible.

His mother, clad in a cherry satin gown and golden jewelry, lifted her chin slightly and frowned. "Just do as you're told, Drew. Escort me downstairs." She extended her hand, embellished with fine rings.

He released a quiet breath, but took her hand. It was times like these that he wished his older brother were here to carry out the elitist duties of the household. Erik's appointment to the Ghostly Five was a terrible thing—one that Drew had to suffer the consequences for.

Erik didn't live at home anymore, the chancellor awarded him with too many other estates to count on one hand. The endowments weren't exactly needed, however, because the Orvar's had vast properties scattered across the nation for decades, even before Erik's deal with the Ghostly Five.

Ghostly Five. A pathetic name. A pathetic group of hardened hearts, blind or entirely uncaring of the world at their feet. It was odious, and Drew supposed that he should have been grateful for his too little strength, his inferiority compared to his brother—because he could not fathom acceptance into the most cruel group in his country's history.

He felt obligated to buy entire batches of pastries from Blue bakeries, to run errands for overworked shops, to donate loads of gold to Blue schools all to make up for the barbaric actions of his brother. When the Penn was finished, Drew planned to distribute the first hundred batches to the schools in Blue quarter.

It would have to be done under the cover of an alias, but he'd be delighted to do it. His mother would disapprove, and his father would sneer, but he could endure it all if it meant undoing some of the intolerance his family so happily allowed.

Drew tasted ugliness. Saw ugliness when he was met with the company his mother warned of.

Madam Urias, though beautiful with her radiating smile and bronzed skin, was the ugliest woman he'd ever seen. Her daughter equally so.