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1
Octavia
Rain thunders against the car, fog rolling down the hills of the moorland as we speed past. The stars in the night sky that usually shine so brightly hide behind the dark clouds looming above. Lightning cracks in the air, and a shiver rolls down my spine, as if I can feel the icy wind outside cutting my skin. A squeal escapes my lips, and my driver gives the barest of glances in the rearview mirror, shaking his head before focusing on the road again.
My palms sweat the further we go, my stomach swirling with nerves. Every bump in the road makes my stomach drop, and bile creeps up my throat. I can’t ask the driver to stop; he wouldn’t even if the colour of my skin turned green. Once my father gives someone an order, he expects it to be followed exactly. It doesn’t matter if I feel sick or even if Iamsick. He will deposit me at my home covered in my own sick, another disgrace upon my father’s door. I would have angered him before I even arrived. I’d risk being returned to the boarding academy where families send their disgraced bloodline.
I can’t go back. I’ve finally left after three years, dragged out by my arm and thrown into the back of a black Rolls Royce. We've been travelling nonstop for two days, only pausing briefly for restroom breaks and to refuel the car. I might have been upset about the entire thing if it didn’t mean I would get tothemquicker. I wanted to bask in the fire of their gazes and feel the warmth of their skin.
It’s been three years since I’ve seenthem, three years since my father found the diary where I wrote my deepest, darkest desires, page upon page filled with them and everything I have ever dreamed of them doing and saying. He read it all; he saw my darkest shame, my sickness—every single word.
I never intended for anyone to find it. I don’t even know how he did, but I can never forget the disgust in his eyes when he barged into my room and dragged me from my bed, the shame in his tone as he called me a vile disgrace to his bloodline. He slammed my head into the wall, screaming that I was a sick and twisted little girl who needed to be punished. I needed the sickness in my mind carved out.
He beat me black and blue, and in the morning, before even the staff were awake, he dumped me in this very car and sent me away.
“Get her out of my sight. You will never step foot in this house again, Octavia. Not until the brothen’s sisters banish the sickness from your mind.”
I left the day before my twentieth birthday; I didn’t even get to say goodbye to them. They were absent due to work, meeting with the heads of other families. They promised they would be back for my birthday; they never missed it. My father would throw a big party every year with extended members of our family, our bloodline, but then he would leave, and they would do something special for me the next day, just the three of us.
It was always something I loved. It went from teddy bear tea parties to ice skating on the river, and then, on my eighteenth birthday, they snuck me out to a club in a nearby town. That was the year I gave my dark, twisted thoughts a voice. I let the tiny whispers turn into a roar, and I could no longer drown them out. Dancing with them in that club, feeling their bodies moving next to mine, grinding against my back, changed everything.
To them, it was an innocent night dancing with their little sister, trying to show her some fun. But to me, it was the night of my sexual awakening, the first time I acknowledged that I don’t look at them like a little sister should. It was the beginning of the end.
I don’t know why Father has sent for me now, why he decided that my time with the sisters should end. I haven’t cured the sickness; I still want my brothers more than I want air in my lungs. No matter how many beatings the sisters gave me, or how many times they withheld food, my desire never changed. I went along, saying and doing whatever was asked of me, just so I could be with them again. But the sisters were not naïve. I saw in their eyes that they didn’t believe me, so why has he brought me back?
Whatever the reason, this time, I cannot slip up. This time, I have to push my sinful feelings down as deep as they will go. The one thing clear to me while I was away was that I cannot live without them. Bastian and Dorian are my black heart and poisonous soul. Without them, life becomes obsolete. Nothing is worth living for if I don’t have them. I cannot be separated from them again. If I am, I won’t be walking this Earth anymore; there will be no point. Father must believe what I felt has disappeared.
“You’re home, Miss Stone,” the driver says, breaking me out of my thoughts.
My head whips around, my gaze meeting the dark brick castle now in front of us. The fluttering in my stomach turns wild,my heart beating rapidly in my chest. The driver jumps out, quickly opening an umbrella, shuffling around to open my door. The cold winter air smacks me in the face, goosebumps running across my exposed skin. As soon as my shoes connect with the wet ground, lightning flashes in the sky, thunder rumbling in the air only a few seconds later, and the entrance to the castle slowly cracks open. I shake as I move forward, a foreboding feeling swamping my body. The moorland has welcomed me home with its lightning and thunder; now, it’s time for my family.
I feel I am safer with the lightning.
2
Dorian
Bastian opens the door, impatient as ever, and of course, my dramatic twin pulls it slowly, like we’re in some horror movie. I’ll give him his due—we’re not far off. Perhaps less horror and more violence. I doubt they would even show a movie with all the things we do. Our life isn’t for the weak; honestly, not even the strong survive here. You have to be a sadistic kind of vicious to thrive in our world. Our reputation is so terrifying, crime lords tremble at the mere mention of our names. Our bloodline breeds apex predators, and the rest get slaughtered. Everyone, that is, apart from our angel.
Our little sister had the misfortune of being born prey, something that would have been wiped out the moment she showed she couldn’t stomach the violence that comes with our last name. Fortunately for her, she was born beautiful, something our father took more and more notice of as she grew up. Women in our bloodline receive the gift of being brides, either to the highest bidder or to the last man standing in a room covered in blood. He would have made a lot of money and forgedimportant connections if it wasn’t for the simple fact that she wasn’t his to give away.
My claim on her happened at birth, the second she came screaming into the world and took her mother from it. Lucinda Stone died before she got to even hold her darling daughter in her arms, bleeding to death from complications. At six years old, I was the first one to hold her and claim her as mine. A saint before she even took her first breath by sending that poisonous woman to her grave.
Technically, my dear sweet sister is more like my step-sister, or adoptive, depending how you look at it. The cunning viper my father married after my mother disappeared was already pregnant. She saw her opportunity to rise higher in the bloodline and grasped it tight in her sharp, red-painted talons. She stomped over the competition, stabbing her Louboutin heels into their backs, all with a sweet smile on her face. My father was obsessed with her, so much so that I’ve often wondered ifmymother’s disappearance wasn’t a calculated plan on his part.
In his foolish want for beauty, he let that viper of a woman make a mockery out of him. She was in the early stages of pregnancy when he declared his intention to marry her. He realised his mistake too late and had to choose between exposing her deceit or acknowledging the child as his own. The former was never an option; he would have lost his standing in the family, demoted to nothing more than muscle and a cautionary tale. He claimed the child as his, and that was it. No one questioned him, so sweet Octavia became mine.
I wasn’t the only one who laid claim to her. I saw the twinkle of joy in my twin’s eyes as he gazed at our sister, covered in her mother’s blood, screaming into the night, waiting for warmth from a woman who would have never given it to her. We were besotted with the little murderer; she was a dark angel born justfor us, a sweet doll for two little boys who were desperate for a shining light in a world of darkness.
Father kept her as his daughter; she was part of our bloodline even if she wasn’t his. Lucinda was his third cousin, twice removed, and he would never abandon his bloodline, even if he had nothing to do with her. Octavia knows none of this, and that’s the way it will always stay.
He left her to the nannies and the help to raise, but he also left her to us. We were the ones he put in charge of her when we were just six years old. We were Stone men in the making and had to learn about the responsibilities our bloodline demanded of us. We didn’t get the luxury of a childhood, the comfort of love that a family is supposed to give. We got nothing, but from the moment I set eyes on my dark angel, I vowed she would have everything we didn’t. She was mine, and no one was going to take her away.
That thought didn’t extend to my brother. He is me and I am him, each one half of a shattered soul. We didn’t need to exchange words to know what the other thought; we just knew. That day, whether she wanted it or not, we tied her to us, and no one was going to break it. She was ours to protect, ours to care for, and then, she became more. Our protectiveness changed, our possessiveness developed, she grew up, and she became ours in a way neither of us expected.
At the ball held for her eighteenth birthday, I noticed our father watching her, saw his cunning, calculating mind swirling. He didn't see the child he was tricked into claiming; he saw a girl turning into a beautiful woman, surrounded by darkness and depravity yet radiating an exquisite light. Eyes flocked to her; everyone in the room took notice, and I saw all their greedy wants. There is nothing more tempting than a pure light of goodness smothered in a sea of darkness.
I kept a close eye on him from then on, monitoring his every movement, but he was watching us too. He saw the little gameswe started to play, how we were twisting her mind, carving out the perfect path for her to fall down the dark hole with nothing to hold on to but us. He saw everything, and he acted when I least expected it, sending her away to a boarding academy, making sure her relocation all happened underground. It took us three years to find her, but eventually, we did, and now, our dear father is rotting in a hole of his own making.
