Crimson Silk
Author's Note: This is a story I'm moving from an old Wattpad account, so if you recognize it, please don't think I'm stealing it!
Chapter One
“Wait for it.”
I raised my eyebrows and gave Aaron an expectant look. He stood in front of my bed, a mischievous grin occupying his expression and his finger raised in a signal for patience.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked.
“Just wait, Allai,” he said.
A crash suddenly resonated from downstairs, followed by a heavily accented “Bloody hell!” Aaron immediately bent double in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I stared him, waiting for an explanation to the noise.
“Aaron!” the accented voice bellowed from the first floor of our house. “You bloody little idiot!”
“Okay,” I said to my brother. “What did you do to Luke?”
Aaron gasped in a breath of air before managing to reply, “I moved the furniture.”
A laugh threatened to burst from me as I understood his prank. Luke moved around our house purely by memory, and a shift in the furniture would ruin his usually tactful navigation. I smirked and looked down at the floor, with the fleeting hope that I could somehow see the new furniture arrangement.
Aaron grinned at me. “Blind people are so much fun to play pranks on.”
“We bloody well are not!” Luke called from downstairs. I started laughing as I heard his voice; as usual, his Irish accent was amplified by his anger, turning it into an adorable mash of syllables and “bloody’s”.
Another crash came to my attention. I managed to stop laughing for long enough to call down, “Stop trying to move, Lukie! I’ll rescue you in a moment.”
“Can we please leave him down there for awhile?” Aaron pleaded.
I rolled my silver eyes and hopped off my bed, which I had been perched on. It was a relief to be on my feet again; I wasn’t the type to spend my summer days in bed. The only reason I had been there in the first place was because I knew that I had to read my summer literature books sometime over vacation, and today seemed to be an opportune time.
I brushed past Aaron, who was still giving me puppy dog eyes in the hopes that I would abandon Luke, and exited my bedroom. The long hallway that winded through the top floor of our house greeted me as I stepped out of my room, and I turned to the left to make my way toward the stairs. Had I not known exactly where I was heading, it would have been easy for me to become lost; our house was gigantic, although its old Victorian-style architecture made every inch of the stone-walled building gorgeous.
When I reached the top of the spiral staircase, I looked down at our living room to find a maze of couches, chairs and tables, all in a random arrangement any interior designer would have a fit over. Standing in the middle of the furniture maze was my brother, his irate expression holding a touch of perplexity.
“I’m coming, Lukie,” I said, starting down the staircase.
“The bloody idiot,” Luke muttered again.
When I reached the bottom of the staircase, Luke had turned toward the sound of my footsteps. His arms were crossed, and his thin lips pursed with anger. I began maneuvering through the maze to reach him. When I finally came to stand beside him and a leather couch, he let out an annoyed growl.
