(Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial‘s prompt: FFF47: Don’t Take My Heart. Set in Code F&D. Enjoy!!)
Her eyes were slits and inhuman and Iridesca tried to suppress her flinch. Castore saw through it and her fingers grew tighter, colder and longer at her wrist.
“Aurum is too kind to you.” Castore hissed. “Don’t take the heart because frankly speaking, you. Do. Not. Deserve. It.”
“Now, is that any way to greet your older sister you haven’t seen in centuries?” Iridesca responded haughtily, removing her wrist from Castore’s grip as gracefully as she could. “And Aurum and I are both older than you. Don’t meddle in affairs you know nothing off, little sister.”
Iridesca brushed her dress off, looking at Castore with feigned curiosity. Castore glared at her. “Now, shall we go off to the laboratory? I assume Aurum told you to come get me.”
“Stop pretending to be human. It doesn’t suit you.” Castore said, turning away from Iridesca. “I volunteered to come get you. Aurum’s working on the heart you asked for.”
Castore refused to acknowledge Iridesca for the rest of the way back, darting so that Iridesca had to twist and run to actually keep up with her. The path was forested and the feel of magic in the area was strong and deep. Iridesca had to fix her glamours by the time they reached the laboratory, but Castore just glanced at her and laughed.
“Don’t bother. No one here is human and the wards will just unravel your glamours anyway.” Castore opened the door and swept in without waiting for Iridesca’s response. True to her word, as soon as Iridesca stepped through the door, the glamours on her faded, unravelling her elaborate braids and her elaborate gown.
“I don’t recall the wards doing this when I was last here.” Iridesca said, following Castore into the kitchen.
“So it turns out that not visiting unless you need something from Aurum has its effects.” Castore remarked, pulling a knife out from a drawer and cleaning it.
“Wasn’t Aurum living with the witch or something?” Iridesca asked, giving up on her glamours and sitting at the table.
“Hex is out. Which again, you would know if you visited or you know, so much as wrote to Aurum.” Castore tossed the knife back, letting it fly past Iridesca and embed itself into the wall.
“I’m in the human court, you know that. I have-“
“Yeah, yeah you have important things that need to be done and important machinations and manipulations and whatnot.” Castore waved off Iridesca’s irritation. “You’re so busy killing faerie and sanctioning magical being’s deaths that you don’t have time to write, yeah I understand that.”
“Do not speak of things you do not understand.”
“Oh, you don’t think I understand?” Castore changed her eyes again, turning the whites into the green of the forest and turning one iris pure silver. “I walk the Pathways every day and I hear about you, sister. It’s not like no one knows who you are, dear Iridesca. Beings talk, you know. And even if they didn’t, you’re not subtle at all.”
Castore leaned in, letting her body become lean and faerie-like. “I know exactly why you want that heart and I’m telling you now that you do not deserve it.”
“And what do you know, kyosira votschi?” Iridesca slipped into the old dialect by accident as her eyes changed to slits. “You were taken in when you were too young to understand and you never grew up in the faerie world. You don’t understand how the only power is the one that you own, no? You don’t understand how it’s kill or be killed? I control the courts of the humans now. You don’t understand, so do not deign to tell me what I should or should not be doing.”
“One day, you will regret this, Iridesca-” Castore begins, only to be cut off by Aurum coming in.
“Oh, Des! I didn’t hear you come in but I’m done with the heart you asked for.” Aurum’s labcoat still bore the stains from her work. The heart itself was in her hands and her hair was a mess.
The heart was beautiful, covered in silver and gold enchantments to keep it beating and to sustain whoever needed it. It was roughly the size of a human’s closed fist, and it glowed.
“You mentioned in the letter that you needed something that would save someone on the brink of death, reso? I couldn’t use necromancy per se because that requires access to the actual body but I did the next best thing.”
“Aurum-“ Castore began, looking between Iridesca and Aurum. In this light, their similarities were clear. With Iridesca’s glamours removed, the fact that they were twins was obvious, what with their face shape, their tendencies, their fingers. Even the way that they began their magic was similar, Castore thought, as Iridesca took the heart and wrapped it softly in her own weaves.
“Castore, kyosira, would you mind helping me with dinner? Hex should be coming back soon and I just realised we still don’t have anything to eat today. Des, would you care to stay? We can catch up.” Aurum’s eyes were smiling, shining their normal soft gold. Her skin was still gleaming from her metalwork. “We haven’t talked in so long.”
Castore very carefully did not laugh at that.
“I didn’t realise that you had a ward for removing glamours now.” Iridesca responded. “It’s a bit impolite if you have faerie, isn’t it, kosi?”
Aurum shrugged. “Hecate figured out how to do it. Since so much of our work relies on the exact nature of magic, stripping off extraneous magic that isn’t absolutely necessary is just good practice.”
“I’m afraid I must decline then. I should get back to the palace soon.” Iridesca said, gripping the heart and walking out the door. “I assume you coded and wove it the way you normally do.”
The door closed behind Iridesca. Aurum turned to her younger sister, expression quietly, bitterly sad. “It’s okay. Iridesca has always loved power and been vicious about getting it. It’s how we survived our childhood, so I can’t really blame her.”
Castore did not say anything but began looking for food.
Aurum would not witness the fury that Castore went into when Iridesca came back barely a year later to demand that she lift the ‘curse’ placed over the kingdom, but only because she was a whisper away from actually being dead.
