Oops. I missed yesterday’s Fantasy Friday post. Did anyone notice?
Sorry, it was a busy day. As today has been. So I’m not going to chatter, just post today’s Twin Curse excerpt, and then get back to dewassing Reckless Rebellion.
This excerpt follows on from, but not immediately, the one I posted three weeks ago.
“Mianna? What’s wrong?” Terion asked, confused.
“It’s all our fault. If it weren’t for… us, she’d still be here,” she choked out.
He said nothing to that, and she looked up to see a stricken expression on his face. “Oh Mia,” he said hopelessly.
There seemed no way out. In fact, all that Mianna really wanted to do, was follow her twin to her death. How could she ever live without her?
She had never expected to have to. They were supposed to live long happy lives, then die together, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. Neither of them was supposed to ever have to live with being the only one. In fact, a twin was not supposed to survive the death of her other half. The emotional connection between them should cause her to want to simply give up upon the death of her twin.
Yet, though she felt devastated, she did not feel like giving up.
She took a moment to reach out to Brianna, to really search for her. As children, she had always been able to find her twin when they were playing hide and seek, and she had always known when Bri was in any kind of trouble. Now she realised that she felt no sense of trouble surrounding her twin. And it wasn’t due to her death. If Brianna were dead, she would know about it, she was sure.
She sat up, and wiped away her tears. “She isn’t dead.”
“Mianna?” Terion had a worried expression on his face.
“I’m not mad,” she assured him. “But she’s my twin, if she were dead, I would know it, and she’s not.”
“But… she wouldn’t stand a chance against the trolls?”
“She didn’t go that way,” Mianna said with certainty. “She’s at the ferry pier.”
Terion jumped up. “We’ll go find her,” he said immediately.
But Mianna put out a hand. “We can’t Ter,” she said sadly.
“Why not?”
She hesitated over how to put it into words. “It’s not right for either of us Terion. I can’t ask Brianna to marry you, but neither can I give you up. And anyway, Bri is the happiest I have felt her in a long time. She needs this. Needs to get away, to see the rest of the world. We always planned to, with Kylis. It’s fitting that she is going to now.”
Terion thought about that for a moment, before nodding, if not agreement, acceptance. “So what do we do now then?”
Mianna took a deep breath. “We mourn. Then we get married, and live our life.”
Terion looked a little surprised at that. “But what about Brianna. Will she come back?”
“I don’t know,” Mianna said sadly. “I hope so.”
I plan to have the first draft of Twin Curse finished this month, and ready to publish December or January. If you want to be notified when it’s released, sign up for my mailing list (no spam, I promise, only release notifications) below.