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I woke up with the idol to my cheek. Pressed. Tight. It belonged there, touching me. It was mine. I was hers. It was warm from my skin, smooth where I’d worried it, working by touch in the dark until my power knew the shape better than my eyes ever could. I’d carved every feather, every curve of those wings. Three inches tall, small enough to hide in my fist. It could look like a weird chess piece if you didn’t know what to look for. It never left my side, not since I’d made it.
It’d stay in my pocket during rounds at the hospital, my fingers finding it between patients, tracing the delicate sweep of Her wing joints while I nodded at another mother’s empty gratitude. It’d comfort me through their lies. She wouldn’t lie to me. She couldn’t.
I rolled onto my back and brought it up to catch the morning light. The calcium lattice was perfect - I’d made it from the rib of a blonde hero who died at Canberra. She’d live on, in memory, and I was so very thankful she’d donated it to me. The wing structure was so impossible, so Hers. Like nothing else. I remembered the way Her wings moved through the sky, the way they’d carved through clouds and made the air sing. My chest ached. I curled my fingers around it and pressed my fist against my sternum, and I wondered if I could carve out my chest and bury Her inside.
I loved Her. I loved Her the way I loved Victoria. The way I loved Vicky, which meant it was ruined and wrong and I couldn’t stop. The thought made my throat tight. Millions dead. Millions more in quarantine zones, screaming at shadows or building shrines out of their own teeth. I understood now. They knew what she was, what she meant, how worthy of adoration she was. I’d seen the footage, the little that was shared. I’d devoured every article, every single passage from any book about Her. I’d even stolen the Endbringer edition of the cape magazine Vicky always ordered.
And I’d spent three hours last night after the hospital holding this thing against my lips, wishing it was Her kissing me back, remembering the sound of Her song.
My alarm hadn’t gone off. My eyes drifted over to the clock on my nightstand. It read 7:58. My heart immediately raced. It hadn’t gone off - today was Monday. I was supposed to be at school. I hadn’t woken up in time. I was going to be late. I lurched up, and then my door slammed open.
Victoria didn’t knock. She never knocked.
“Wake up, sleepyhead!”
She landed on my bed hard enough to make the frame creak, blonde hair everywhere, her aura washing over me like warm honey. I wanted to lose myself in it. I loved it. I loved her. Simurgh, I loved her. The feeling crashed into the other love, the sick one, the one that sang to me in my sleep, and I wanted to throw up. I wanted to kiss them. I wanted to kill them.
“You’re going to be late, and you know Mom’s going to-”
The idol flew out of my hand.
I watched it arc through the air in the half second before it hit the floor, bone against hardwood, and my power screamed that it was fine, undamaged, perfect, but I was already moving. I lunged for the edge of the bed and Victoria caught my wrists, laughing, thinking I was playing.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said, and her grip was careful, so careful, that way she always was with me because she loved me and she was perfect and she knew I was so so fragile. “Come on, Ames. Time to face the day and go to school. I know you were at the hospital until stupid o’clock, but-”
I yanked against her hands. My heart hammered against my ribs. The idol was on the floor by the dresser, six feet away, and I needed it back before she saw, before she asked, before I had to lie to my love and my Vicky and watch her believe me because she always believed me and she owed me and she trusted me and I was already lying by not telling her and-
“Vicky, let go.” My voice came out strangled. I pulled harder, and she tightened her grip, still grinning, still thinking it was a game. This wasn’t a game. I loved her. It couldn’t be a game with her.
“Not until you get up. You can’t sleep through breakfast, it’s the most important deal of the day, doctor Amy. Mom’s already in a mood and I’m not-”
“Let go!” I thrashed, and her smile faltered. I saw the exact moment when she realized I wasn’t joking, the way her eyebrows pulled together, the little crease between them that I wanted to smooth with my power, my thumb. I jerked my hands again, and she released me immediately.
“Amy?” She shifted back on the bed, just straddling me now. It was a dream. She was wearing her school outfit, and I’d rather she be wearing nothing at all but she needed to be off me, I needed to get up, hide the image of Her. Victoria shifted slightly, the mattress dipped. “What’s–”
I couldn’t stop looking at my dresser, at Her, at the floor. My eyes kept darting down, finding the Idol, checking that it was intact. Victoria’s gaze followed mine. I watched her notice, watched her face change from concerned to curious, and my stomach dropped through the ground, into hell where it belonged. Where I belonged.
“What’s that?” She leaned over the edge of the bed.
“Nothing.” The word came out too fast, too desperate. I lunged for her, trying to grab her arm, pull her back, but she was already moving. “Vicky, don’t-”
Her hand reached down.
I could stop her. I was touching her forearm, my fingers wrapped around her skin, and I could feel every muscle fiber, every nerve. I could lock them all. Freeze her in place. My power was already there, ready, eager. I could take it back before she saw what I’d made, before she understood what it meant, before she knew what kind of person I was.
But it was Vicky. Victoria. Golden hair catching the morning light. The curve of her jaw. Every little flaw that she refused to let me fix. I’d fix all of them. I’d make her even more perfect. I loved her more than breathing. I loved Her more than dying. I couldn’t hurt Victoria, even for a second. Not even to save myself.
My hand fell away.
Victoria picked up the idol, and turned it over in her palm. I watched her examine it, watched her face as she recognized the wings, the too-many wings, the silver-white of the bone. She looked at it. She looked at me. She looked back at the idol.
Something broke in my chest. This was it. This was when everything fell down around me, when I was taken away from Vicky, put in the birdcage, when everything that Carol said about me was proven true, when I was put in the Birdcage where I belonged.
I started crying. What else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t stop. My life was over. It wasn’t even delicate, soft tears, the kind that would make her rush to comfort me. It was ugly sobbing that I could barely breathe though, that boiled up out of my gut where all the rot lived. I pressed my hands over my face and doubled over, my shoulders shaking, and I could feel her staring at me.
“Amy.” Her voice had gone quiet. Careful, restrained, in a way she often wasn’t. “Amy, what-”
“I’m sorry!” I wailed. I choked. The words were mangled by how hard I was crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry-”
The bed shifted. Her hand landed on my back, warm through my pajama shirt, and I wailed harder, because she was touching me and I wanted it and I wanted Her and I wanted to claw my own brain out. She was rubbing circles, trying to soothe me, because Vicky loved me and didn’t deserve the freak of a sister she had, and deserved so much more than me and-
“Hey. Hey, it’s okay.” She sounded freaked out. Victoria didn’t do well with crying. She wanted to fix things, punch things, make them better with force and charm and smiles. She didn’t really like being at the hospital with cancer-ridden kids, because she couldn’t punch the problem away. But she… She was trying. For me. For her freak fuckup of a sister. “Just breathe, okay. Can you- Amy, I need you to breathe.”
I tried. I tried listening to my goddess of a sister. I sucked in air and it felt like glass, jagged shards ripping through my throat. I’d never speak again. I deserved it. I breathed out and it sounded like an animal. A dog to be put down, rabid and dangerous to everyone around it. My face was wet. My nose was running. I was disgusting. I was exactly as disgusting as I’d always been. My outsides just matched my insides now.
And she knew. Vicky knew now.
“Look at me.” Her hand moved to my shoulder, gentle with pressure. “Come on. Look up. Let me see you.”
I lifted my head. I didn’t deserve to see her, to look at her countenance, but I couldn’t disobey my love. So I looked up. My vision was blurry with tears, but I could see her face; she was worried, confused, and a little scared. She still had the idol in her other hand.. I couldn’t look at it. I couldn’t look away.
“What is this?” She held it up between us. “This is- it’s- the Simurgh. Why do you have-” She stopped. Her eyes went wide. “Did you make this?”
I nodded. A fresh wave of sobs hit me, and I wrenched out of her touch, wrapping my arms around my stomach, rocking forward.
“How long?” Her voice cracked. “How long have you-”
“AMY! VICTORIA!” Carol’s shout from downstairs cut through the air like a gunshot. “You’re going to be late!”
I jumped, startled like a rabbit. Victoria froze. I watched her face shift from concern and uncertainty to panic in the space of a heartbeat. She looked at the door that was hanging open. She looked at me. She looked at the idol in her hand.
I moved before I could think. I lunged for it. She let me take it. She let me take it. I knew she was perfect. She didn’t even try to hold on to it. I shoved it into the pocket of my pajama bottoms. The bone pressed against my hip and the sensation settled something in my chest, even as my heart kept trying to break out of my ribs.
“We have to go,” Victoria said. She was staring at me like I was something dangerous. Something that might explode. But we’re- Amy, we’re going to talk about this. We have to-” She settled herself. “We’re not going to school today. You’re going to get dressed, and I’m going to fly you to ‘school’, and then we’re going to talk about this. We have to. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
I nodded. I couldn’t speak. My hand found the idol through the fabric of my pocket, and I wrapped my fingers around it like a lifeline.
“This isn’t-” She stopped. Started again. “This isn’t right.”
I knew. Simurgh, I knew. I pressed harder on the idol until I felt Her wing-tips dig into my palm, and I nodded again.
Victoria stood. She moved to my bedroom door, and slowly shut it, before leaning her back against it. “Get dressed.” Her expression went complicated again, looking at me with something I’d never seen before on her. Not quite fear. Not quite pity. “Whatever this is, we’re going to figure it out. Okay?”
I couldn’t tell her there was nothing to figure out. That I was already lost. That I’d been lost since Canberra, since I’d looked up and seen Her against the sky and felt everything make sense. Instead, I nodded one more time.
She offered a slight smile.
I believed her lie.