Ink

Chapter 7

When my academic talents were discovered I was six years old.

Although I was gifted with heightened intelligence, all I wanted was to be normal.

Believe me, it is just as cliché as it sounds.

Apparently, fate had another plan.

I was on track to be the youngest member of my society inducted into university. That, however, was not what I wanted. Per my own request, I attended school with kids my own age and progressed with them as we grew older. I sat in the same classes, but did work far ahead of my peers.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, holding myself back kept me from being the girl I feared I would become. One that was given everything and idolized as if she could do no wrong. I wanted my youth, and I got it—although I would still consider it to be accelerated.

My sister was the lucky one. She was born normal.

She was interested in the arts and would stay up in her room and paint for hours, play the piano at our family gatherings, and sing beautiful songs that she had written.

Her talents astonished me, and I always supported her. Hell—I wanted to be her.

My father, however, was not.

He wanted her to be like me—and because of that she would never be good enough to him.

I think that he loved her—or perhaps he didn't.

My father had a permanent smile etched onto his face that made it hard to distinguish any emotion other than blind love for the king.

Although in my eyes she was the lucky one, I'm sure in her own she was an outcast. 


When she and her friends began to talk about leaving Illinkus to somewhere free of our government, my father banned her from associating with them.

She still snuck out on occasion. I'm sure he knew that she did because she had a habit of being loud in times she shouldn't be.

At some point, I guess he gave up on her.

I think that's when it happened; her breaking point.

If anyone had ever known that she thought the way she did, she would have been turned in to the secret police. I thought he was protecting her, but maybe isolation was the key to her undoing. If I could go back I would have done so much differently—been an aly to her in her time of need.

Truth be told, I was afraid.

After that, she refused to eat or drink as she slipped into an alarmingly depressive state.

We never brought her to a hospital because we had a personal physician. Unfortunately, she never did get better.

I remember the morning they came to take her.

It was the first time in months that she had eaten breakfast at the table, and the first time I had seen her eat in a long time. We ate silently at the table as a family for the last time. She was pale, ghostly pale, and I could tell that on top of food, she was also skipping feedings as well. Our kind could regress into nothing without human food, but a lack of blood in our systems would only speed the process. It was then that I came to the conclusion that she wanted to die, and there was nothing I could have done to save her because if I had, I don't doubt that my father would have begun to question me as well. At the time, my fears ushered me into believing that my father was right by doing it to her.

My sister was taken after breakfast by large men in white suits.

Her frail body could hardly stand from the chair.