Page 98 of To Touch A Silent Fury

Then he said four words I never expected to hear. “Is your brother alive?”

“My brother?” I echoed, the words sounding too loud even to my ears. “I have no brother.”

“Your twin brother,” he said, sternly. “He’s dead?”

The words chimed against me, and I could hardly breathe. “I had a twin?”

His face fell, ashen. “I thought you knew.”

It could not be. I would have known. Mother would have said. Twins were precious to the Twin Lands. More than that, twins were sources of power. Our rulers had to be related, because shared blood was always stronger. Be it cousins or an uncle and niece, it did not matter. But the closer the relation, the stronger their rule was said to be. Hanindred and Tavedwen, the first Swordblood and Shieldblood, were said to be twins. The two, in eternal balance, two halves and yet, two full people. The hunter, and the gatherer. The hangman’s axe and the lover’s poison.

I cradled the dragon and placed him back in his patch of sunlight. Then I fell to my knees on the brown rug before the bed, as if in prayer to the Five.

“Tani—”

“Mother always said she’d lost a child, but I thought it was before,” I whispered, pressing my face against the bed. “Long before me. Perhaps even before my father. Not at the same time. Not a womb mate.”

Whenever I had asked for a sibling, begged for one, she had told me I nearly had one. Except he should’ve been earlier, then came out blue, whatever that meant.

A twin? I almost had a twin?

I sat like that, my face pressed to the bedside, for a full minute. Then I turned my head, my hair stuck to my face, and stared at Seth.

He sat on the stool beside the vanity, sympathy lacing his expression. “I’m sorry you found out like this.”

“How did Theollan find out?” I asked, the wind gone from my sails entirely.

“He went to the Touchlands, spoke to them, and dug through some old records.”

I nodded. Then I thought back to his original comment. “What interest would the king have in my dead brother?”

“Little,” Seth acknowledged. “But an alive one, in hiding somewhere. A male twin waiting in the wings, plotting for you to access your Moontouched power.”

Ah, I understood now. The threat of the twin from the Touchlands. What he could be to me, what I could be to him. What we could have been, together. “A Swordblood.”

Seth stared at me. “Your names were found in a ledger in the chambers of Konidren and Kalidwen. Crossed out.”

My blood ran cold. The current Shield and Sword knew of me? Or had known, once. “If my brother had survived…”

Seth finished my thought. “You might have been the Shieldblood of the Twin Lands.”

A ruler of my lands. I was in contention.Wewere. Me and the brother I was never destined to have. “And now I’m a freak.”

Seth shook his head, his eyes widening. “You’re no freak. You’re the most resilient person I’ve ever met. In your shoes, I don’t know what I would have done.”

I was tempted to make some joke about his feet hurting in my small shoes, but it would have fallen flat. I didn’t have the energy to make it, nor the energy to remind him that he was the nephew of the most powerful of the five kingdoms. He would never be in my shoes, nor understand them.

Instead, all I could hear was his words.Your twin brother.For all that was in my blood, I would have loved to meet him. Then, some other recollection fell on me. Other words, spoken at another time. Only now, they sounded different to my ears.

I straightened, pulling my head off the bed entirely. “What is Theollan doing now?”

Seth blinked. “He serves his cousin, Prince Eamallan, Lord of Lavendell.”

Lavendell. “This Eamallan, he is Brascillan’s replacement?”

The name of the fallen prince stuck in my throat.

“His younger brother, yes. The youngest of Canenrill and Hyamis,” Seth said, with a sigh. “He is barely of age and, by all accounts, ambitious above his station.”