Perfect Ruin (Internment Chronicles, Book 1) by DeStefano Lauren

Author:DeStefano, Lauren [DeStefano, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-10-02T14:00:00+00:00

16

Death is the end of some things. Not everything.

—“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten

IN THE MORNING ON THE WAY TO THE academy, Pen can’t seem to stay awake. Not that she’s trying. She has her head on my shoulder and her eyes are closed.

The crowded train car forced Thomas and Basil to take seats elsewhere.

“Out late with Thomas?” I ask.

“You don’t have to sound so hopeful about it,” she says.

“It’s just nice to see the two of you getting along,” I say.

“I suppose I should get used to him,” she says, and sighs. “But we weren’t out very late. I was working on my coloring for the festival after I came home. The art instructor was furious when she realized I’d crumbled my portrait of the glasslands.”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” I say.

She sits up, blinking lazily. “Artistic license.” She yawns. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Not a talentless commoner like me,” I say.

She pats my cheek. “We all have our own skills,” she says. “I can color still life and scrub tonic stains out of the furniture. And you are a professional diplomat.”

“Am I?” I say.

“To a fault,” she says. “For example, you’re always kind to your brother, even though he’s been picking on you since day one. Most little siblings are brats. I’m so relieved my parents never entered the queue after I was born.”

The train slows to stop. “If I’m such a diplomat, why aren’t I at all popular?”

“To everyone who matters, you are,” she says.

While she’s adjusting her satchel over her shoulder and standing, the light catches her face and I see the cosmetic powder around her eyes. She never wears cosmetics unless she’s trying to hide something, like that she’s been crying. It would do no good to ask; she would only take her own advice and lie.

“You didn’t need a sibling, anyway,” I say. “You’ve always had me.”

“Yes.” She hooks her arm around mine and leads me down the aisle. “After so many years, we’re rather stuck with each other now. We’re like a double birth.”

A double birth is when two children are born from the same womb at one time, and sometimes they’re even identical. There’s a story in the history book about one such pair. Their names were Odette and Olive. But while they wore the same face, they couldn’t have been more different. Odette was content with her life, while Olive was restless and ever unhappy. She seduced Odette’s betrothed by pretending to be her; Olive fell so in love with being her sister that she drowned Odette and assumed her identity. Years went on, and Olive, pretending to be Odette, married her sister’s betrothed and bore numerous children, all of which were born dead. Convinced that she was being punished by the god in the sky, and driven mad by grief, Olive confessed what she had done.

Double births were banned after that. If two were to be born of the same womb, the first was allowed to live, while the second was drowned before it finished its first cry.

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