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From the second after that first embrace, Coronabeth could tell that there was something terribly wrong. It was noticeable, of course, in the way a dog can tell when its owner has been around other animals for long. That suspicious instinctive sniffing around for danger, itching to smell treason.
It was only now that she could register, alone in that huge unfamiliar room inside the coloniser’s base. At least they were still in New Rho, Corona could feel it in the air. Since everything changed and she received her epithet there had been a constant change in the state of things. So much so that it began to feel normal being sent to different quarters, being placed in different shifts and sleeping strange and few hours.
Crown adhered to change pretty quickly as far as anyone could tell, it had been like that ever since her mother died. She remembered how it used to be before, of course, the same way she remembered before being severed from her sister, before BOE’s rescuing, before Jody fell sick and Camilla spent three weeks in complete and absolute silence. It was all foggy now, before. Sometimes she felt like she could barely remember it. Sometimes it was so very hot that she couldn’t sleep, and tried remembering the sound of Ianthe’s breath or how her hair smelled like.
At some point it would simply never come to her. At some point she just forgot. This was a new after too, and one she had no idea how to deal with. All those months had been spent in a rush of desperation, in pure instinctual survival that kept Corona going every day. What had gotten her out of bed for a year, what had kept her from taking upon the mercy of a lieutenant’s gun to her guts had been the fact that somewhere in the galaxy there was a huge and quiet shuttle with the shine of a thousand suns orbiting around with her twin inside.
How she had imagined Ianthe, how she had dreamed her. It had barely hurt, lately. She had barely felt anything. But after those first delirious hours where Corona felt so dizzy with longing and desperation simply to touch, to have her sister there, she finally realised – as always too late – that there was something wrong.
For the first time in over a year, Coronabeth was quiet. Unmoving. She sat down in the complete dark on a large fluffy bed like the one they used to share back home, gazing at nowhere and being smouldered by the horrifying realisation that they would never have it back. Not what they had. Not like before. And before, once more, became a scene covered in mist in her mind’s eye.
She could think of nothing else, most of the time. Days had passed, she was sure. Food was brought for her. She could sometimes hear her sister boss people around in her overly-familiar bitchy tone, with a voice that came deep from the back of her throat. Sometimes Corona thought of Nona. She avoided thinking about Camilla, which for some strange unknown reason brought her shame. No, it should be more obvious than that. Crown was not stupid, she knew why.
Camilla was probably killing herself and everyone around her trying to come up with a way to make the plan work, without having had any previous briefing on it. They had pretty much improvised. Coronabeth took what she could. As she often did. Nona brought a pain to her chest. Dying, laughing, loving, haunting Nona holding the Ninth’s body so smoothly. She felt like she could cry, yet no crying ever came.
Coronabeth avoided thinking of Jody altogether.
“How many times must I remind you to report everything back to me? I try not to be the mean cunt around you guys, I really try. It’s not what the Emperor would have of me. She has the upper hand but this has been sent in my name. The saintly presence which generously blesses you all right here in this cheap-ass excuse for a planet is mine.” The voice grew closer as Ianthe’s boots echoed on the floor. “I truly don’t know what part of it is not clear for all of you.”
“We apologise again, Holy Lyctor. The Tower Prince has demanded that we-”
“I do not care what she has demanded of you, General. I could not give a shit about her sorry ass right now. I’m the one in charge for a reason.”
“You understand, Holy Lyctor-”
Ianthe scoffed. Corona could imagine her stopping in the middle of the corridor and crossing her arms with a sour look on her face. She glowed now, like there was light under her skin. It didn’t feel like touching another human being. Ianthe could tell that Corona knew.
“I see that you two must never have dealt with the Saint of Joy, if you’re so insistent with obeying direct orders. Let me phrase it in a way you would understand it, my darlings. Whenever you learn any conspicuous little fact about this place you will bring them to me. Not to Kiriona, not to whomever the fuck you were used to reporting to before. Me, Ianthe Naberius, Eight Saint to serve the King Undying. Your superior and leader of this mission. Must I explain it any further?”
Silence. A couple hesitant steps. Corona imagined what would happen if she locked her sister in a room with Passion for fifteen minutes. The thought might have brought a smile to her face, but at some point in the last few days her body had simply stopped responding to her demands. Over a year of grief pressed constantly against her chest, and now she felt like she could do nothing but feel that hurt.
Back to square one, it seemed. She wondered if Nona would still love her if she saw her like this.
“No, Holy Lyctor.” The first voice answered in a barely contained tone. Through her every day wall conversations, Coronabeth could tell that they all wholeheartedly hated Ianthe.
“Good. Now I’ll tend to my poor sick sister who was almost brought down by this hellhole of a planet. I wish they would just give me the permission to flip it already.”
This made Corona’s heart race again. She thought of the school, the children Nona hung out with and all their weird names. The dog she looked after, the apartment. Camilla and Palamedes’ recorder. The lip balm she had worked her entire ass for. Jody’s decaying body. The sea. The old women who went out of their apartment complexes without masks to broom the sidewalk of dust.
The door clicked open. A flash of yellowish light, and then darkness again as it closed. During the last couple days, something else had happened apart from Coronabeth’s unique lack of response to the world: with her quietness, Ianthe had grown awkward too. They no longer knew how to be together, how to be one. They could never be one again, not with Babs in the middle. Not with Crown Him with Many Crowns in the middle. Not with everything that had happened, not ever again. It was clear that there was a line neither of them could cross.
At first they both threw themselves at it, at one another. It worked for a few hours. The entire first day even, maybe. But now Ianthe was quiet. Not cruel, nor ironic. Not scoffing or pushing or being hurtful. They could barely even touch anymore, laying on the same bed at night and staring at the ceiling, incapable of speaking to one another.
Corona wished she could just dissolve herself, become ash. Become dust. Not even die, just cease. It was exhausting. They would never have it back. They had lost it forever.
“Can’t fucking see.” Ianthe murmured under her breath, low to herself. Corona’s heart ached suddenly, a thundering animal, disgusting and wanting. Wanting out, out, out. She still craved her sister, she wanted Ianthe. But getting her seemed impossible.
Her bedside lamp was lit. The room had only a window that faced concrete. It felt pointless, so Corona kept it closed. By her own choice she was staying inside in the dark. There was nothing to do but wait, anyway. For what they would be able to pull out. Kiriona was around sometimes. Corona could hear her and Ianthe speaking, her sister funnily at ease. It hurt her too much to go out and see it. She had no wish to face the corpse she had spent months tending for on her own. She stayed inside, she stayed in silence. A couple days ago, maybe, Ianthe started to truly believe that she could be ill.
There was a rustle of fabric as Ianthe crossed the bed and stood in front of Corona for a moment before dropping to a crouch. Inside the safety of these inner corridors, she used her own body. Babs was sleeping on his coffing, beside Kiriona.
“I got you something that might make you feel better.” And with her skeleton hand which glowed even in the weak lamp light, Ianthe placed the dress on the bed beside Corona, who let her fingers rest over the soft silk of the fabric.
She could tell why her sister would imagine that would work. It was almost perfect Third silk, almost real. Like what she was used to wearing every day except for her hours of practice with Babs. Except for bedtime.
“I see.” She said simply, still looking. It made her feel nothing. She would hope to feel anything at the tenderness of the fabric.
Ianthe sniffed in that hard way she did when uncomfortable, as though something was blocking up her airpath. She touched the index of her skeleton hand to its thumb and it made a soft clicking sound.
“Corona.”
It hurt. It hurt too much, they were too distant. They would never understand one another again, they could never get through that. God got in the middle. He always fucking got in the middle of fucking everything. It could never be simple again, yet Corona wanted her sister with the same want she had always had. The same deep desire to cease being, to fold into one. To be burnt, used, consumed.
“Baby. Let’s have dinner together. In the library, like we used to. You’ll dress up and I’ll pretend not to and I’ll have a book with me and you’ll try to pry me away from it.”
Corona realised her fingers were closing around the fabric. She wished to die. She had been wishing to die for a long time now, but not quite like this. How could she do it? How could she ever forgive Ianthe?
“Oh, I-” She started, chest heaving. They kept stumbling around each other, asking. Trying to slip back in.
Ianthe’s skeleton hand grabbed hers over the dress. Could it ever be the same, like before? Even like on the first day, in the first hours the fact that they were ruined forever didn’t even matter. Corona was weak, that had always been her biggest flaw. She could fight, yes. And she could wrestle. And she could debate for hours and stomp her foot and she could survive in the wild. She got Camilla to share a bed with her once, when it got really rough, and they didn’t touch at all but at some point both their breaths got noticeably calmer.
But she was weak, weak when it came to Ianthe. She barely had anything to give in anymore. Everything looked different. In the back of her mind, she could still hear Nona’s laughter, Jody’s soft pained breathing. She could hear Pash’s petulant stumbles, a walk back from school, the hostile and loud sounds of the streets. How ugly everything looked, and how real. It was still there, Crown was still there. But right now, in the dark, she was losing.
Which was obvious. Everything suddenly seemed deeply obvious, as her eyes locked with Ianthe’s. There was a way out of this, just one. The same thing she had been doing all her life. Could she go back to it? She should not. She knew it was stupid, humiliating, and reductive. She had crawled out of the pit of herself and she was there, now, and stronger. But then-<
“Please.” Ianthe murmured, eyes lost to Corona’s knees. Her brows were furrowed like she had forgotten how to beg. It didn’t surprise Crown at all. Ianthe had other strong suits.
She was breathing hard, scared of herself. Her hand slowly let go of the fabric, and she sighed. This was exhausting, wasn’t it? It was exhausting to fight it, giving in was so much easier. Dying would be easy if it was like this. Corona dropped to her knees like a penitent, like a lost girl who had finally found god again. She supposed she could say that truly now, having a saint by her bed.
She fell to her knees and pulled Ianthe to her hard. Her muscles were tired from the lack of movement, slow like on the first days after Canaan House. Ianthe held her tight, bones against Corona’s lower back, finding the curve of her spine and circling it with her thumb.
There was one way for this to work, the same one Corona had known her whole life. Maybe they could go back to how it was before, if she could only forget. Once she left herself again it would come easily, she knew. Just as it always had.
“Say you’re mine.” Ianthe pleaded against her shoulder, pressing her face against the soft skin there. Her flesh hand travelled up the rolls of Corona’s stomach and stopped in the side of her boob. She could barely move now with how close they were. She experimented leaning back, pushing her weight against her sister. Ianthe, now capable and strong, held her firmly.
It was easy, so easy. She just had to wait, and to forget. To forget Nona’s awed eyes admiring her when she did something the girl deemed impressive, Camilla’s rigid and contained inch of trust. The Commander’s eyes softening up minutely when Crown succeeded into something particularly impossible. The cashier’s face that one time she beat a guy up who was trying to harass her.
She had to forget her gun, her uniform, her tag. All the encompassing idea of self she had with so much effort made for herself. They would come at any second, but no one was there then. There was no one to save her. There was only Ianthe, there had only ever been Ianthe.
So it shouldn’t be hard.
“I’m yours.” She murmured back, still quietly.
Her sister let out a huge breath of relief, and nestled her face on the crook of Coronabeth’s neck.
--
“How are you hanging on?”
The step by step was simple: cleaning with shampoo, adding protein with conditioner, letting it dry slightly with the help of a silky rag, then more protein, some gel, the pomade and some serum so it wouldn’t look too dry. And his cologne, which she couldn’t find anywhere in the base.
“And, like, shouldn’t you be wearing some gloves or something? I don’t think he’s that well-conserved.”
Corona looked up over her eyebrows, trying her best to shoot a charming look. A part of her had half unlearned that, was much too serious now. She lifted her lips slightly to the side.
“I didn’t wear any gloves to care for you.” She shrugged. “But then again you were in a much better state of conservation.”
Kiriona cleaned her throat, then bent her neck to both sides until it cracked. Her muscles moved like she had no limbs, much like a fish. She bent and curved into strange spots sometimes, without seeming to notice. That had always been the cute thing about her, how unaware of her body she always seemed.
“Yeah, well.” She crossed her legs the other way, seeming uncomfortable on the large iron chair beside her coffin. Corona was methodically squishing Bab’s curls. One by one like he used to do. Not like she did with herself, she liked hers wild and messy. “I should thank you for that, I guess.”
“You don’t seem about to thank me, Prince.”
How long had it been now? Two, three weeks? She could no longer remember. Hours folded into one another. Tea-time, war discussions. A bomb, another bomb. A planet gone, and then another. At some point she had truly forgotten how it felt like to be out there. During the day sometimes she sewed. Before the rapiers came, Babs used to patiently sit down with Corona while Ianthe studied and teach her how to sew. She never managed to be as good as him in either of those things. But insistent, devoted Naberius just kept going anyway.
Kiriona tapped her foot on the floor impatiently and watched. After some time, as Corona was already applying the pomade on Bab’s hair, she seemed to finally lose her patience.
“Coronabeth.” She got up abruptly, crossing her arms in front of her chest and stepping a bit closer. Corona could tell she still hated being near Babs, even though he was unbearably dead. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” She demanded in that impatient tone that still managed to sound concerned even now she was dead. She still couldn’t help it, Corona considered. Still not half as dead as she should be.
“Don’t be jealous, honey. I can do your hair too if you jut give me a minute.” She winked, smiling again. After a few days, as she imagined, it came back easily to her. The flirty air, the disconnectedness. At some point in Ida on some of her best days she had managed to be like that.
“Hey, I mean it. You’ve been pretty fucking weird since you arrived here. Have they done something to you? Have they- Or to the others?”
Corona blinked down at Bab’s hair. She couldn’t get into that. Not now anyway. She touched her palm to the cold heavy curls on her boy’s head, slowly closing her fingers around it to scrunch them in a vicious grip. She could feel the pomade against her fingers, and it didn’t make her feel better.
“What do you think they would have done to me?” She asked, controlled, and looked the Prince dead in the face.
Most of the time, Kiriona looked pretty miserable. Corona would watch her during their meetings, her awkwardness when they were having a meal she just refused to share since she claimed food tasted like nothing to her mouth. But Crown’s presence brought something of Gideon the Ninth back to her, that buffing annoyed concern.
“I don’t know, torture? I can think of at least a thousand fucked up things they could have submitted you to. Trust me, I have a repertoire in that.”
Corona smiled despite herself, and shook her head.
“And to think they kept believing you were her.” She said awed, watching Kiriona’s face distort minutely with confusion before falling into her now usual emptiness. Corona stepped closer, getting face to face with the other girl. She still took it pleasurably to make people have to look up to meet her eyes.
It never really got old.
“You seem to think you know a lot about me, Gaia.” Coronabeth said. It sounded like Ianthe to her ears, which both hurt and calmed her.
“Your sister’s prone to monologues.” Kiriona crossed her arms in front of her chest, keeping her distance.
Corona smirked. Of course it was easy, she thought to herself, it always had been easy for her to do it. To fall into her old patterns. Charming people was her specialty, but it used to be enjoyable. She got a thrill out of it, of having anyone she could possibly want and then only truly wanting the people she couldn’t really have. Her eternal paradox of pleasure, always caring the most for who treated her with indifference.
Now it felt like nothing. It had been feeling like nothing since Canaan House. Corona barely found any pleasure anymore in knowing that people wanted her. Which didn’t mean she forgot how to use her tricks.
“Truth is, Highness, that I know more about you than you do about me.” She let her voice smooth out, reaching a hand to touch Kiriona’s hairline. Red hair had always driven her crazy for some reason. The way you just couldn’t mistake it for anything else. Kiriona’s arms remained crossed but she didn’t back away. “I took very good care of you, you know? I doubt you ever had anyone touch you so nicely when you were alive.”
Corona’s fingers ran through the girl’s short crop. Her thick, shiny hair. She let her nails graze the scalp and Kiriona cleaned her throat. It was a pity, really. Coronabeth could tell the other woman wasn’t feeling shit anymore. It would have been so easy before. Still, maybe for old time’s sake, the gesture made her gulp.
“I would wash you,” Corona continued, hand sliding down over Kirona’s ear, playing with her earlobe before coming down her neck. In a weird way, she could feel the closeness of the toothy wounds. It wasn’t anything she could explain, but there was no denying they were there. “comb your hair, let it dry on the sun. I’d lay you down gently, button you up when I was done.”
Kiriona licked her lips.
“Corona.” She cleaned her throat again. Then something seemed to dawn on her bright yellow eyes. She narrowed them, then they went wide and then she lifted one eyebrow, in an overly familiar gesture that Corona could easily attribute to her sister.
Corona tipped Kiriona under the chin, making her look up further. Nothing, she felt nothing. Worse even, she knew the other girl did too. Once she had been so horny for these huge muscles and her soft belly. And thighs. And those hands. Her square jaw. The irregular freckles over her nose. Such a beautiful girl, such a delicious one.
But nothing, nothing came.
“And at night when they locked us in I would cuddle you sometimes, when they fell asleep. It took so fucking long for Camilla to actually relax enough to sleep, but I would wait.”
Kiriona blinked at her.
“I’m sorry.” Then, insanely she called: “Crown.” And then again: “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” Corona lied. She braved her face closer, and Kiriona finally untangled her arms from one another. Gently, very gently, she touched Corona’s cheek with the back of her index. Her thumb found a spot near her chin and made tiny circles there.
Being touched still felt good. Corona still craved it, how she had craved any kind of physical warmth. She would have taken almost anyone. Almost anyone at that point.
“I gotta go. You should talk to your sister, maybe. But later, she’s with the general right now.” Slowly the girl untangled from her and headed to the door. Corona should have seen it coming, but the rejection still hit.
Kiriona looked back.
“I’ll see you around, eh?”
“I’m sorry about your thing.” She meant the chest.
Kiriona scratched her scalp awkwardly.
“I’m sorry about yours too.”
It didn’t feel any better.
--
Ianthe was always busy now, with whatever it was that the Cohort was even interested in doing there. From a battlefield sort of perspective they would hardly ever not get the higher ground in any country. You couldn’t really compete with their army of child-murderers, but BOE tried their best.
Corona watched as her sister flew around from a meeting to another, always energetically, always bossing someone around. For obvious reasons, she was not allowed in the rooms where these encounters took place. The rational part of Coronabeth’s brain knew that she should do something about it, look for evidence they could use. Her true self was caged somewhere inside her chest continuously shouting for her to fucking move.
But she didn’t. What Corona did was wait for entire days, tend to Babs or sew or read a book and wait for dinner time when the flesh would come with something cute for her to wear for dinner. Ianthe insisted on having dinner under candlelight as they would do back home. Like a proud, busy husband she would always arrive a bit late and slide the blazer off her shoulders to rest it on the back of the chair. Like a pretty, loyal wife, Corona waited.
“Oh, Emperor Almighty, that was shitty.” She fell on her chair with a sigh. Corona had been patiently waiting, fidgeting with a couple golden rings back and forth. The clicking sound didn’t calm her like it used to. “Why is everyone such an idiot? I mean, you think you’ll ascend and be presented to the best of the best of people, right? You’d think they teach them something at Cohort except for sweating and looking dumb.” She bent her neck to both sides, making it crack.
Corona watched her silently, only half there. Sometimes she spaced out for hours on end, only faintly listening to what her sister had to say. In the small round table they shared, the twins sat always mirroring each other. Sometimes Crown caught herself mindlessly reproducing whatever pattern of movement Ianthe was taking at the moment, and stopped before it would get on her nerves.
Apart from these moments, she avoided thinking of her actions. She avoided thinking at all, so she could be with Ianthe for a day longer, a dinner longer. While the time didn’t come where it would all crash down. Sometimes it felt like a weirdly long dream she couldn’t bring herself to wake up from.
Sometimes it just felt far too real.
“How was your day, baby?” She rested the side of her face on her skeleton hand, hair falling over her eyes as she gazed at Corona in her casual nasty way.
Corona knew that dinner was the time when Ianthe had just returned to her body, after puppeting Babs around for endless hours. This meant she always looked a bit crooked and sometimes would hit her head on something, having forgotten her body’s height.
“Fine.” Corona replied as she did every day. She turned her hand palm up on the table, and Ianthe interlaced their fingers gently, letting her thumb run over Corona’s sweaty palm. Those were the small, tiny moments she could enjoy. Just as before. Almost just as before. “Took a turn around the place, then took a second turn around the place. Then I took another turn around the place.”
Ianthe hummed, lips raising slightly to the side.
“That’s what happens when they don’t send us any officer hot enough for you to toy with. I wonder how the rebels kept you busy.”
Corona took a deep breath.
“I had a lot to do.” She said simply.
“I can tell, your pretty hands are ruined. They should get whipped for that.” Ianthe’s fingers massaged over the calluses on the top of her palms and tips of her fingers. She had been so sweet, since Corona started pretending for her again. She just couldn’t resist it, couldn’t help mimicking their parents’ dynamics with her. Just like busy Mummy she’d complain in an easy voice about the boredom she was having to suffer, how people exhausted her and how they should all be punished.
Corona was always more like Daddy. That was her sin.
“Were any of them hot?” She looked up from analysing Corona’s skin, eyebrows furrowed and hair almost completely covering her face. She remembered, then. She still knew that this was how Corona found her the hottest.
“Some of them were fuckable.” She rolled her eyes, letting herself smile softly. “There was this girl who just got on my nerves. Oh, we just hated each other.” Corona reached forward, letting her free hand trace over Ianthe’s face. Her twin’s eyelids dropped softly. This close to the light of the candle, Corona could see her pupils dilating big and black, eating up the violet on one side and the blue on the other. “She had nasty burn scars all around here.”
Corona traced the side of her sister’s face, her jaw, over her chin.
“And here.” She dropped her fingertips to Ianthe’s neck, feeling her swallow hard at the touch. Then the side of it, running up her jugular. They still hadn’t touched properly. They had now gone back to cuddling at night, but it seemed as though they unlearned how to treat the other’s body, how to approach anything else.
Truth be told, Corona had lost some of her ease when it came to sex. She had more important things to care about and no time or privacy for it. Many of her ovulating nights had been spent in the showers trying to get a grip of herself. Now that she could take, and take and take some more, she felt like she didn’t really remember where to start.
“Did you fuck her?”
Corona smirked, scrunched her nose a bit.
“Would you like me to say that I did?” She knew the answer to that, of course. Both the real answer and the one Ianthe would give when asked.
“You know there’s nothing I like more than hearing stories of you whoring yourself out, darling.” Ianthe’s eyes were almost closing, peaceful as a cat. “Especially to people who aren’t worth even getting near you. Even breathing the same air.”
She had been a tad more possessive than what she used to, but it was probably just the longing. Her way of showing she had felt Corona’s absence just as much. Her skeleton fingers closed around Corona’s wrist but gently, soft bone rasping over her skin. She could tell how much Ianthe could feel with that hand, how strong the sensation was.
“Baby.” She breathed out. Slowly her eyes opened again, colors switching. Corona imagined that if she looked deep enough maybe she could see Babs’ soul floating around inside her sister. “You look so good today.”
“Come on, Ianthe, you can do better than that.” Corona chuckled to herself.
And Ianthe, for some reason a bit touchier today, with a surge of passion from those first few moments when they reunited, this Ianthe dropped herself out of the chair and crawled to Corona, fitting herself between the older twin’s thighs.
She rested her cheek over Corona’s knee, nosing the soft fabric of the dress. She didn’t even look like her usual horny self. There was something more to it. Something almost sad that Corona felt she should have recognized.
“Corona.” She whispered against Crown’s dress, almost pleading. She couldn’t help but dropping a hand over her sister’s hair, reaching to pull it out of her face. For once obedient, impossibly passive, Ianthe let her, baring her throat. “Corona.” She rasped again, slightly more desperate.
“What is it, baby?”
Ianthe leaned into her, resting her face on Corona’s belly, hands grasping the sides of her thighs.
“I love you, Coronabeth. I do.” She said, face hidden.
Corona’s stomach turned, that sharp familiar pain pulling at her again. Like a pull, the invisible umbilical cord always there, connecting her to her sibling. That whole body surge, wanting the closeness. Yet unable to get it, the hunger they could never truly satisfy. Her chin trembled for a moment, and god how it hurt. How horrible it was.
Somehow even worse than absence.
“Prove it.” She breathed out. “Prove that you love me, Ianthe.”
Her sister’s hands ran down from the sides of her thighs down to her hamstrings, fingers softly caressing the hairs on Corona’s legs. She had always been hairier than Ianthe everywhere, and her sister adored it. She lifted the hem of the dress, still gentle. It hit Coronabeth then that this couldn’t last. This kindness was not a coincidence, nor was it a mistake. Ianthe never did it for free, not really.
Something was about to happen, she knew. What was her sister going to do, what had she done?
It hit Corona that they could have killed everyone. They could have killed Camilla and Nona and Phyrra and Jody. And that could be why Ianthe was being so nice. Out of guilt. It was usually her only kick for being this gentle. Panic rose in her throat.
“Did you hurt them?” She struggled out in a weak voice, feeling herself start to shake slightly. How weak she was, how weak again. “What did you do, Ianthe? Did you kill them?”
“Shh, shh. Baby.” Ianthe’s eyes were closed, brows furrowed like a suffering saint. She mouthed the side of Corona’s knee, wet kisses over her leg and heading for the inside of her thigh.
They hadn’t even had dinner.
“Ianthe.” Corona pleaded again.
“Hush, my love.” She slowly opened her eyes and they were wet with tears when she looked up. Corona felt like crying in return. She brought her free hand to her sister’s hair to join the other, letting her nails softly graze her scalp.
“Tell me you didn’t do anything bad to them.”
“Let us be just us for now, Corona. Just you and me.” She nuzzled her face deeper into Corona’s thigh, worshipping the skin with kisses and tender bites. In a flash Corona remembered how good it felt, how she loved being the centre of attention, the object of desire.
Her fingers closed more eagerly over her sister’s hair, pale and oily no matter what kind of products they tried to use back home. Ianthe parted Corona’s thighs a bit further, aiming for her, going slowly as though they had time.
Even now Corona knew better, but decided to forget. It was a conscious effort and it took all her might to just let it go. She always grasped so tightly, in such a worried way. When Ianthe’s mouth finally reached her cunt Corona saw stars.
How long had it been, her body pleaded. Too long, too long.
“Ianthe-Ah. I love you.” She whispered, breath labouring immediately. She wrapped her legs around her sister’s back, pulled her in. Ianthe, now strong and unkillable Ianthe held her ground, strong.
She seemed eager to show Corona that, how frailty could never touch her again.
“Do it harder.” Ianthe spoke against her. “Let me do it for you.”
Corona’s entire skin caught fire and she pulled, and bent her torso and let her nails graze the skin of her sister’s arms. She pressed, pulled, used her strength, for the first time really used it, put her body into it, and Ianthe held it. She licked Corona’s opening, made her way up back to her clit and sucked. Hard.
“I love you. Ianthe. Ianthe.” Corona started to pant, pulled one of her knees up to give her twin more space. She was so embarrassingly easy, it had been too long. It wouldn’t even take a second.
Ianthe sucked harder, worked her skeleton fingers and massaged the rolls of Corona’s belly, eyes shut in pleasure. Her eyebrows were relaxed, for once. She was lost in it, moaning too. Her index found Corona’s entrance and she gasped loudly, covering her mouth with her hand.
“God, I missed you.” Ianthe mumbled against her, chin dripping already with Corona. She felt dizzy, leaned back against the wall and let Ianthe take what she wanted, let her body have it. She gripped and pulled, and pulled and her body pulled back. Deep in her stomach she felt that fire stoking itself, her entire soul, her love for her sister. Deeper and harder than anyone could ever imagine. So big that she couldn’t fit it in herself.
Her eyes flooded with tears as the moans escaped her lips. She couldn’t really remember a time when either of them had been so romantic.
“More.” She pleaded in a small voice. Straight from her chest, straight from where the fire was. She was so fucking turned on, endless nights of imagining this, of dreaming Ianthe.
The second bone finger entered her, hard and firm. It shouldn’t have felt so good, Corona figured. It should be hard and uncomfortable. She buckled against Ianthe’s mouth and with a pleased grunt her sister let her ride it, let her take it.
“Oh-fuck. Fuck, fuck, I love you.”
Ianthe went harder, harder even full into her animal self. Before she couldn’t hold it for long without biting off Corona’s skin, without taking some thalergy. It was magnificent, what she could do now. Corona knew, knew there was so much more. Just imagining what Ianthe could do now she was a Lyctor made her heart hammer on her chest, pleasure building on her whole body.
When she came, she was still calling her twin’s name, and Ianthe didn’t let her go for a long, long time. Corona was out of herself, free of her body, her mind peacefully quiet. Just for a moment. She slid down from the chair and Ianthe got her, held her close. So close that she could just pretend they had this one body. One mass of body and neurons and pleasure. The way Corona had always wanted. The way it had to be.
She imagined herself inside Ianthe, inside her the way Babs was, and it felt so beautiful and broken and so impossible now that she had already been rejected. And it hurt because she would never be able to do it, because Naberius had taken her place. It hurt that all Corona’s existence had had this one sole purpose that she would never be able to fulfil.
Even as she cried and Ianthe shushed her, even as her sister caressed her hair so softly with her fingers still wet, she couldn’t help but remember what her place should have been. She held Ianthe tight against herself, they tangled on each other, muscle pulling on muscle so hard that it hurt. And then Corona reached down her hand, trailed it down her sister’s stomach to reach for her, to know if she was wet. And then Ianthe gently pulled her wrist away, and whispered:
“I’ll have to go.”
And it all shattered again.
She was so overwhelmed that she could barely register what happened after that. Only that Ianthe did get up and she did leave and Corona stayed there on the floor which was cold and she wept like those first few days of disaster. With a strength that shook her stomach, shook her whole body, burned her from the inside. When her mouth found her forearm and bit hard on the flesh of it she could barely feel it. Barely taste the blood.
She let it bleed, let it dirty her face and drop on her dress. Her body seemed to have left with Ianthe too. There was nothing there, nothing. And in this empty she stayed for what could have been hours, distressed and starved and so angry she couldn’t even begin to think about it.
At some point she made herself get up, she wobbled out of the room and wandered around the side of the base she was allowed in. She ended up in an open door, on a balcony she hadn’t seen before. New Rho’s moons were shining under the ever insufferable heat. Corona suddenly remembered where she was, and what that meant, but couldn’t bring herself to care.
“Hey.” A voice called from somewhere on her right. Corona stumbled forward, and there was Kiriona in her priestly white suit, a drop of sweat running down the side of her face and smoking a cigarette.
“I thought you didn’t have any bodily functions anymore.”
The other woman shrugged.
“It’s weird. Some of them are still here. Some come back from time to time. I’m not really functional, you know.”
Corona nodded. She knew, of course.
Silently, she came to stand beside the Prince, resting her arms over the iron bars circling the balcony. From afar, she could see there was a fire. Maybe near the centre. She couldn’t quite place where.
The wound she had opened herself hurt against the cool of the iron. Kiriona reached into her pocket, and offered her a cigarette.
“Where’d you get those?” She asked more out of the absurdity of owning something as expensive on this planet as a whole package of cigarettes. Of course that as God’s child the girl could have everything she wanted, she thought then, and took it.
Kiriona shed her a light. It was a dark filter, smelled like Phyrra and tasted ridiculously cheap.
“Front door guy.” Kiriona explained half-heartedly.
Corona huffed an almost chuckle.
“Front door guy.” She echoed.
They watched the city burn in silence.
--
The day before the end, Corona had a strange dream. She was wandering through the halls of Canaan House, completely alone. The house was deserted, dead-silent and cold like a Ninth House graveyard. For a moment, Corona welcomed the feeling, not remembering the last time she had felt anything but terribly hot.
The corridors would shift, slowly becoming the BOE base they were first led to, then her own quarters in New Rho and then going back to the first level in Canaan, which connected the library to the rooms of the Third. Crown went without question, not hesitating a single step. It led her finally to a huge room adorned with gold, its four walls almost completely covered by fake balcony windows in Seventh style. Some resemblance to a white light could be felt from behind the curtains. It led nowhere, it populated nothing. The floors were made of fake bright wood.
Her footsteps echoed as Corona made her way to the only thing the room possessed inside itself: a black marble statue of Harrowhark Nonagesimus. In classic fancy, she looked pissed off besides herself and was holding a broken skull. Half a skull. Palamedes skull, if Crown had to be more specific. The eyes of the statue followed her as she moved, seeming progressively angrier.
“This is not the right one.” Said the statue, dead-eyeing Coronabeth.
Where to, Corona wanted to ask, ever incapable of making her own decisions. But something about the statue made her feel colder, lonelier than she had ever felt. That, which she supposed must be Nonagesimus’ charm, was undeniable.
She turned around and walked away, closing the door safely behind herself. The next room, where in her mind’s eye Corona knew was where the library should be, was covered in wires from top to bottom and smelled like burned plastic. It felt like a multitude of tree roots, all tangled on each other in different colors. In one of the corners, a short figure dressed in grey was crouching down and seemingly trying to solve the issue which was causing the burning smell.
A faint curtain of smoke took hold of the space.
When the figure turned to her, it was wearing Palamedes’ glasses. Wide eyed, the face that belonged to the Reverend Daughter pushed them up her nose, paralysed for a moment. It opened its mouth and said, with Camilla’s voice:
“Still not the one.”
Corona nodded once, taking a look around. Before leaving, she pointed at the ceiling.
“You should check for that one.” She said, and the wire snapped up in a bright orange spark.
--
Second House quarters were all perfect and polished. Unadorned and plain. In the back of her mind she could hear Ianthe yawning in boredom. Harrowhark was now sitting at the head of the large metal table where they held the meetings in Blood of Eden. It was taking the space where Jody’s bed should be. On seeing Corona, the girl pulled out a ruby red rapier from her waist, went en guard, and coughed.
The sound came painfully strong from her chest, and charged. When she finally stopped, Harrowhark spat some blood onto the floor. It turned into the shape of an anatomically accurate heart.
“Not yet, Highness.” The voice of Marta the Second informed her, and Corona left with a grunt. She was growing colder and colder by each room, so she decided to take upon the hint and head to the rooms the farthest away from everyone else’s.
The corridors changed and folded midways. Sometimes Crown found herself walking backwards or sideways like the flesh constructions from their childhood books. But something about Coronabeth, both from before and after, was that she was terribly, hopelessly spoiled. Which made her stubborn. Or as Ianthe would put it, a hard-head. So she kept going until in the middle of one of the corridors a door snapped open and a thin, black-robed arm pulled her inside with more force than should be possible for someone of Harrowhark’s stature.
It was not Harrowhark the First who greeted her there, not the girl Ianthe spent hours restlessly talking about. Here was the Reverend Daughter in the flesh, veiled and ready like on that first hot day when they arrived.
“What are you doing here?” Harrowhark demanded.
“Excuse me?” Corona straightened her back, one hand flying to her waist to seek for the comfort of having her gun. Metal met her palm, but not the kind she was expecting. When she looked down at herself, she was wearing the Ninth’s rapier. To her bigger shock, Corona could see that she was now entirely dressed in black.
“I think I was clear enough when I ordered you to check on the laboratories that even an idiot such as yourself would understand.”
Corona’s mouth hung open for a moment of deep shock. Then she managed a:
“Fuck off.”
“I will have you respect me, Nea. Do not forget that you signed a blood deal over this. After we’re done you can curse me all you want in your moron Cohort uniform.”
“Nongesimus, what-” The thought hit Coronabeth like a rock to the head. She hurried inside the room, desperately seeking something that could reflect.
“We have a deal, Crown. I’ll have you honour it.”
The room was pitch dark, covered in black curtains in different states of decay. Corona opened them, one by one, desperate to see her face. When a mirror appeared behind the velvet curtain, she let out a soft gasp. She was half expecting herself to be wearing Gideon the Ninth’s face. Instead, her hair was tangled in some sort of bone arrangement made to resemble fingers, a dark veil covering all of it up until her forehead. You could still catch a glimpse of blonde, though not much.
Corona couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her face completely free from hair, yet she was not herself.
“Crown.” Harrowhark called behind her, but Corona couldn’t be bothered. She touched the tips of her fingers to her cheek, mesmerised as they came out ashy with face-paint. Every inch of her skin until half of her neck was used to produce a miserable-looking skull, its fine lines drawn to perfection. Its brow furrowed, cheekbones round.
“This is your work.” She stated, still unable to unglue her eyes from the mirror. She was all dressed in black, torso and arms and legs completely covered by nun attire, bone-bead prayer hanging from her neck and over her breasts, reaching her bellybutton. And over the traditional pieces of cloth, the familiar black-leather cloak that had belonged to Nav. The cavalier’s attire. It made Corona look fuller, her shoulders even wider.
“Of course it is. You’re too incompetent to do even this properly. I should have you-”
“I’ll do it.” Corona caught herself saying as she turned on her heels, eyes wide. Her breath caught on her throat. She touched her waist again. The Ninth House black steel was still there, warming under her palm. “I’ll search the labs. But you won’t like what we’ll find in there.”
Harrowhark eyed her fiercely, her brow seemingly insufferable. She snapped her veil away with one hand as if to be able to look even more hateful.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Corona shrugged silently, looking around the room.
“Why would you pull me here?”
Harrowhark’s stare followed hers for a moment. She looked deeply tired, eyes bloodshot. Her breaths were shallow as though something was hurting.
“So that you could see.” She replied simply.
Coronabeth blinked away, unable to think of anything to say. An awkward silence fell between them. Harrowhark looked like she would speak at any moment, but never did.
“My hair…” Corona trailed off, remembering the dozens of bone pins holding her braid in place. They would never be able to untangle it. Hair adornments were for Ianthe’s oily strands, Corona had to contempt with either a scrunchie, her crown or nothing at all.
“It’s ghastly, I know. I can hardly forget about the amount of it that you have. I should have ordered you to shave it in the proper cavalier manner. How no one has suspected you yet is beyond me. But of course they would be too busy, distracted with your-” Harrowhark cut herself, eyes lowering to Corona’s cleavage for just a second before coming back to her face, still angry.
Coronabeth snorted at that.
“Oh, she did say you were a nasty thing deep down.” She marvelled. Then just to spite she leaned down as you would a child, bringing her face near the other woman’s. “If they are all looking it means you can too, you know?”
Harrow’s hands turned into fists, mouth twisting down in an attempt at disgust. She trained her eyes manically from the left side of Corona’s face to the right. Just for another millisecond they lowered to her chest again, but the other woman caught it and smirked.
“It’s not like it’s much, anyway. Not with all these layers of clothes on. I can do much better if you’d let me.”
Harrowhark was almost shaking in rage now.
“I’d rather eat grave dirt. I’d rather poke my eyes with your offhand. I’d rather swim in flames, I’d rather shove an entire femur-”
Coronabeth laughed, amused. Oh, why hadn’t she tried Harrow before? She could actually get now what Ianthe meant in their late night conversations.
“Oh, lighten up, Nonagesimus.” And then, in her best impression of Gideon’s register, she offered: “None of that is what your mom said to me last night.”
Unpredictably, Harrowhark flew on her. To be fair, Corona should have been expecting it. She had seen The Ninth argue when they didn’t know they could be heard and it got pretty nasty. That Harrow was this angry was no secret. The fun part was what laid underneath all that.
“Shut your mouth, I cannot stand you for a second longer.” She said passionately as bones took hold of Corona and held her against a wall that wasn’t really a wall but just a bunch of flowing velvet curtains. Her face was close to Corona’s torso now, and the taller woman knew she hated it.
“I can’t hear you from up here, sorry.” Corona replied, barely containing the glee that the conversation caused her. Quarrelling with Ianthe was never fun, it got far too serious too fast. And Babs was actually too nice and would give in if Corona pressed even a bit. But this. This felt like Jody almost.
“I’ll peel off your skin and feed it to the fish for your petulance. I’ll tear off your eyeballs and squish them in my hands. I’ll remake you back with all the bones in the wrong places and keep you awake as you watch it happen. I’ll scratch off th- Why are you looking at me like that?”
Corona’s mouth was hanging open slightly, an awed expression on her face. She felt her stomach turning again, but this time pleasantly. Then, without knowing why, Coronabeth dropped to her knee. She leaned on the other, and bowed her head. This was a familiar position, but not because she had done it before. But she remembered the day Naberius went to his knees, hair so full of pomade it would barely move. Corona remembered how her stomach turned, how empty it felt.
How she wished more than anything else in the world she was the one doing it instead of him.
“One flesh one end.” She said, eyes glued to Harrowhark’s face.
The girl’s mouth hung open in a soft O. Her thick-gloved hand rested on the crown of Corona’s head. Her eyes were so dark, so intense. She moved slowly, as though underwater. It was beautiful, it was fulfilling. Saintly, even. Coronabeth had revoked god, had regretted him a thousand times. But she would take him back if he would let her have this.
“One flesh, one-” Harrowhark started, as though in a trance. Her voice was deep and pleasant, full like a chest full of air, like a mountain walking on two feet. Then she blinked away in surprise, pulling her hand away like it was burning. “Tridentarius!” She branded, sounding undignified. She sounded like she had just found herself with her hand inside Corona’s pants and didn’t know how it had gotten there, gazing at her own fingertips weirdly. “What the fuck?”
--
Dazed, Corona found herself in Septimus’ sickroom. Of course she’d end up in the place where, according to Camilla, Palamedes had burned himself and the entire place down. It smelled strongly of smoke, walls and furniture completely destroyed. She crouched on the floor and leaned in, checking for fragments.
“Camilla took all of them, she didn’t leave even one! Isn’t she so smart, I love her so much!” This came out between strong coughs that sounded pretty much exactly like Dulcinea’s.
But the voice, Crown would recognize it anywhere.
“Nona!” She stood up in a second, flying to the bed.
The girl was leaning back against a dozen burnt pillows, long hair falling over her face and a typically seventh foam coloured dress on that made her seem less Nona-like. Before Corona could even sit the girl was already throwing herself in her arms.
“Crown! Oh, I miss you so, so much! Will you come back soon, from the place where you went to that Camilla said you weren’t supposed to go to because it would only complicate everything and you might never really come back from? I told her she was wrong and that I was sorry, of course, because she’s Camilla and Camilla’s never wrong, but this time she was! Because you are coming back, aren’t you?” She spoke in her usual quick-paced manner, barely making any pauses and without breathing at all. She pulled back, big round yellow eyes looking into her soul.
Corona would have liked to say she knew what the girl would find there and was terrified to realise she had no idea of the answer.
“Crown.” Nona crooked, mouth hanging open for a moment. She pulled her hair out of her eyes with a flap of her hands and leaned in again, as though now she could see Corona better. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“Like what?” Corona looked down to her arms, seeing that her hands and arms were covered by grey fabric. Cool, impermeable fabric covered her body. Practical, comfortable and modest. “Shit, I’m Camilla.”
Nona looked like she tried to give Crown a nasty look for the swearing but her face contorted back into a warm laugh.
“No, you’re not Camilla at all. You’re Crown. And sometimes you’re Coronabeth, and you’re never Tridentarius, not anymore. But you’d still like to be a princess, wouldn’t you?” Nona was smiling knowingly to her, like Corona had tried to hide something from her and become really silly in the process.
As it usually was with Nona, you couldn’t help but love her.
“You’re my princess, Nona.” She touched the back of her index to her bony cheek, caressing it softly. The girl closed her eyes like a puppy, leaning against the touch so genuinely that you couldn’t mistake it for something else. And then she started coughing again.
“Why is it us here, now? Why you instead of Harrowhark? We were replaying the Ninth dynamic before, right? So why Camilla and Dulcinea now?”
“Who’s Dulcinea?” Nona asked in a half sleepy tone, leaning more against Corona’s hand as the coughing stopped.
“Someone Palamedes and Camilla loved.” Crown said simply, and leaned back against the wall, pulling Nona with her to rest. She looked Seventh in which she was dying and it was undeniable. She looked fragile and exhausted, and Corona felt her chest tighten with it.
“Don’t be scared, Crown.” Nona said, head against Corona’s chest. She adjusted herself so that her cheek was resting between Corona’s boobs, which made the taller woman laugh. “You’re always so scared.” She lamented.
Coronabeth’s heart ached as she held Nona close, caressing her hair. Tears slipped softly from her eyes, and everything suddenly felt very quiet. Nona breathed quietly against her.
“Crown?”
“Yes, baby?”
“No one else in the universe will ever love you like I love you.” Nona spoke in a sleepy voice, nosing Crown’s left boob. It reminded her of Ianthe for a moment, which made her smile. She loved how unsubtle girls could be about wanting to touch her. “And no one else in the universe will ever love me like you love me.”
“No one.” Crown echoed in a small voice, holding Nona tighter by the shoulders. She seemed more fragile with each moment they stayed there, as though her atoms were dissolving into the air.
“So, is there really a reason to be scared? If there’s no one else.”
Corona looked up at the burnt ceiling, tears slipping from her eyes.
“I guess not, Nona.”
Nona nodded slowly, the sound of skin on fabric filling the room as Corona cried softly.
“Plus, I’ll be your princess if you want.”
--
Her eyes snap open with a jolt. Coronabeth looked around herself in deep confusion, having forgotten where she would be. How had she even gotten to bed and when? What had happened the night before? It was all a blur, and the dream remained in her mind’s eye, clearer than reality.
She felt before seeing the eyes on her. It was still pretty dark, and Ianthe had let go of the childish habit she had back home of sleeping with a lamp on. Still in total darkness, where Corona could dream better, she felt the patient stare upon her.
Her mind had the sudden realisation that Ianthe had been probably looking at her as she slept. It’s not like they had never done it before, only that her twin used to be the one to fall asleep first, always a victim of her frail and tired necromantic form.
Ianthe’s eyes followed hers as Corona sat up, leaning against the headboard and mimicking her sister’s position.
“Nightmare?” She asked softly.
“Not really.”
“I used to dream you were being torn apart and I couldn’t put you back together, back in the Mithraeum.”
Corona rolled to her side, draping an arm around Ianthe’s stomach and resting her body over her sister’s torso. Ianthe sighed deeply, as though letting go of something. Inside her ribcage, her heart was pounding, strong and slow.
“That shows that you were terrified of messing up and not being able to fix it.”
Ianthe’s bone hand tangled in her hair, pulling the curls apart from one another in a way that Corona kind of hated because she knew what her hair would look like later, but allowed it because it was her sister.
“Or maybe it was a prophetic dream and you’ll have a terribly dramatic death the way you always dreamt of.”
Corona yawned, nuzzling closer to Ianthe. Allowed herself to feel small.
“We’ll have a huge reception with everything we can afford. Thousands of people, Cohort salutations. I want BOE and the Emperor to raise a white flag just for one day so they can all be at my funeral, like in Third’s battle against the Second.”
Ianthe hummed, seeming deeply concentrated. Her legs were stretched in front of her and she was wiggling her toes, making the joints crack over and over.
“What else?”
“I want Seventh doves, a Ninth prayer and traditional Third dances. Everyone will have to make a speech. I want Daddy to sob his eyes out, I want even god to cry. And you’ll be in full attire with your pristine robes in your own body, completely torn apart.”
Ianthe scoffed.
“You suck ass. Anything else, my liege?”
“Then I want to be burned. Like they do in the colonies.”
Ianthe’s hand stopped in her hair, and Corona could tell she was thinking very hard. And that it didn’t please her.
“You want to get toasted like a simpleton? What happened to parading your body around and using your measures for a statue? What happened to honouring the locks of your hair for all eternity, glassing you and keeping you perfect, beautiful, forever?”
Corona shook her head.
“I don’t want that anymore.”
Ianthe’s heart was beating faster now. Even though Corona didn’t see her face, she knew her sister’s mouth would be turned down in disgust.
“You’re so stupid for wanting to die like them.”
“I was left to die at their hands.” Corona answered immediately, trying and failing to keep the regret out of her voice. “Seems only fair.”
“Think whatever you’d like, dearest. When you die I’ll be the one to do as I see fit.”
“You wouldn’t dare disrespect my dying wishes. I’ll revenant the fuck out of you.”
Ianthe chuckled to herself.
“I’ll eat your ghost soul like breakfast porridge.”
“Oh, so now you want to eat my soul?” She lifted her face, eyes narrowed in amusement. They looked at each other with soft smiles playing on the corners of their lips. This would be lost too, Corona knew. But why care about it, if it would be unstoppable when it came?
“Depends on how petty you’ll be about it.”
Corona poked Ianthe’s chest between her breasts.
“Naberius.” She called. “Come fend for me.”
Ianthe’s eyes switched colour, just for a second. The smile kept playing on her lips.
“Keep dreaming of dying, baby.” Her eyebrows raised lazily. “As if I’d ever let you.”
Corona laid back down over Ianthe’s breast, cheek against the tender meat of it. She thought of Naberius, and fell back asleep.
When she woke up, there were sirens and she knew. She knew she could forget about it.