Twin Fire Signs

Prologue

The Wings of a Moth

"You're much too young, foolish girl." My mothers voice had been gentle, but the brush strokes through Alimaye's hair had been punishing. "What have I always told you? Men," she continues without allowing Alimaye to recite her teachings, "will always use you. Nothing is real at this age." 

Their eyes meet by way of reflection through the gilded mirror, its rims swirling and splaying out like the fire that burns within Alimaye. 

But he wasn't a man, she'd wanted to tell her mother. He wasn't even close to becoming a man at the fragile age of sixteen. Compared to those whom filled the tables around him, he was nothing more than a boy with gentle eyes and the kind of smile that was gifted freely to everyone he'd passed. Everyone except for Alimaye. Those smiles, the ones he saved for her... those were in secret. Gifted in midnight passings among the palace halls and left this sacred humming beneath her skin. She'd go to bed, heat building in her cheeks, and would sleep harboring hopes to dream that it did mean something.

If Alimaye's mother had known, she'd have the boy beaten into oblivion, thrown out of the palace and his family would never again so much as let their eyes linger upon his face. 

It would be dangerous to play pretend with Alimaye. 

Alimaye had looked at her mothers reflection long after eye contact had been broken, the brush stokes returning to a kinder rhythm, one that took care to handle the tangles with ease. She wonders what age her mother had become the woman she is now. What age do people become so forgetful of their youth that they become incapable of understanding? She was tainted by time, weathered by the years, and any trace of who she could've been had been long lost to the tribulations of her forced path.

"You're so beautiful... they're vultures with motives. You must take care to remember this."

Why focus on beauty if Alimaye had been too young to feel beautiful? Yet beautiful she had been deemed, since she had first been wrapped in that scarlet blanket, the blanket made to match the fire burning in her eyes. It was then she was introduced to the Monarchy, at the tender age of thirteen.

"Strengthen your mind, before you slip into daydreams. Never stop dreaming, Alimaye, just strengthen your mind so that you can rationalize these thoughts."

Alimaye had nodded, gave her best serious expression, but inside she was in utter turmoil. She worried this conversation would lead to her precious Reeves being lost to her forever. Had someone seen them in the grand library, searching for books in the same section? Had they caught on to the cat and mouse game she'd excitedly been playing with him since her birthday had come to pass?

After her studies the following day, she searched for him in common spaces. In the garden, where they'd silently study the flowers. The kitchen, where he often worked when he wasn't planting seeds or harvesting goods. Anxiety seemed to swell, and the stones that adorned her skin and dress began to glow with the energy being sucked into them. 

She only felt better when she'd spotted him walking into the empty music room. She'd found that strange, considering that wasn't a place he had ever went. Even when Alimaye had hidden away and stroked the cords for a moment of peace, Reeves had never interrupted. She'd never seen him step foot into the music room, but there he went, sure strides forwards as if he'd long since been familiar with the path.

Alimaye considered speaking but quickly and quietly chastised herself. He was here, they were fine, she neednt go blabbering about. Alimaye considered waving to announce her presence from behind the statue of Morielle, one of the few that had still remained on their lands. She held a sunstone in the palm of her hand, ready to drop it close to the door she approached. That little tinking against their polished floors would be enough for him to turn around. His midnight hair had been braided back, the same as always, with that green fabric intertwined. It was something new he had been trying, something she wanted to tell him she liked. 

The night before, their fingertips had brushed again. Alimaye could almost hear it-- the sound of their drumming heartbeats, the excitement of the moment they'd been caught up in. They'd come close to sealing their secret with a kiss, and too often she'd dreamed of kissing the boy from the garden. 

On her birthday, he'd accomplished something both marvelous and impossible. Reeves had made it to her bedroom the night before her birthday. Alimaye was too awed to speak, too impressed, too wrapped up in admiring him for his bravery and courage. An impossible feat, given the guardsman and wards, but somehow her green-eyed beauty had managed.

He'd only brought her something sweet and then disappeared, but for that small moment, they'd breathed in the same air, and he'd exhaled so close to her lips. Alimaye's fingertips lift and touch them, feeling the curve of her own mouth in an attempt to recreate that feeling. 

Reeves continues further into the music room, footfalls a clanking echo against the decorated marble floor. 

It had been that exact moment Alimaye had learned that a moment can be fragile if placed in the wrong hands. That there had been nothing tangible between the brush of fingertips.

Alimaye should have understood what an illusion was before allowing herself to became deluded enough to call it reality. She should have known he created an alarming number of butterflies simply because he was so, so very eager to kill them all. 

And kill them, he did. 

Alimaye felt all of those butterflies, the ones fluttering around excitedly and relieved that he was here, collapse and sink into her empty, lovesick belly as Reeves greeted another with a kiss. Alimaye was sickened by the rot inside of her; sickened by a sadness she couldn't have imagined anyone was strong enough to handle. Not at her age, not at her mother's age, not at any. The feelings were swift and sudden and unwanted, and no one had prepared her for this. She'd never imagined, not in her worst of nightmares, that it would end like this.

It had come without warning.

 There had been no book in their endless treasure trove of a library that could have helped her navigate the foulness of how she was feeling. Of all the things her advisors had spoken about, this had never been one of them. Everyone around her had a purpose to turn her into a Queen, but nobody, save for her mother, had ever prepared her.

She should have listened.

Reeves looked more like a man then, his hands cupping the girls waistline, his mouth parted for a kiss deep and sinful. It was a sin to Alimaye. That belonged to her. Every palm stroke, every act of fingertips curling inland, had belonged to Alimaye. Hadn't it? Those secret smiles held a promise, hadn't they? He'd almost given her a taste of himself, on so many occasions. It wasn't a delusion, not when Alimaye had lived each day with the secret of Reeves. He looked nothing like the boy he had been when he'd entered the music room.

Like the moon came into the Earth's orbit, Reeves had become a focal point in her mind, and now she'd felt so small, so forgotten.

The sunstones of her headdress had glowed angrily. There had been too much energy for the stones to draw in. The jewelry of her wrists burned, the stones held by HyBrasilian gold had fallen off, collapsing to the floor. The ancient gold giving way to the flames. The girls giggle was short-lived, and what followed was a haunting scream. 

Heat permeated the air and spread like an incurable plague. She'd heard her name for the first time, but Reeves didn't say it as sweetly as she'd imagined. He'd bellowed it out, his sound filled with pain and anguish and fear. In the blink of an eye, Alimaye had set fire to the grand halls around her. The stone walls had cracked the way something inside of Alimaye had. The reds of her hair ablaze, her clothing - made to protect her in the event she'd start a fire - hadn't been able to withstand the heat. Alimaye hadn't meant to kill the boy she'd loved, or the girl he'd loved either.

There was no changing what she had done. When the smoke cleared and the last fires had been put out, Alimaye was left with a love sickness that would prevent her growth for many, many seasons, until eventually, the Princess became a Queen, and bound herself to a throne of sunstones, so that no one else could be harmed by her never-ending grief.