Page 34 of Coronation
Zelda
My sister and I were never alike.
With only thirteen months between us, our parents undoubtedly believed they had created built-in best friends, but that wasn’t how it turned out. Some of my earliest memories are of begging a disinterested Sybil to make flower crowns with me, or her beating me at chess—the only game she was ever interested in playing. Monica, our kind but no-nonsense nanny, was forced to mediate a lot of bickering, and even as adults, we’ve never quite seen eye to eye.
She thinks what I do is frivolous, I think what she does is dull, and we’re both proud of each other. Not that either of us will ever admit it. Doing so would mean forfeiting the twenty-three-year-long standoff we’ve had going over who is more annoyed with the other, and if there’s one quality we definitely share, it’s stubbornness.
So, naturally, I had my agent negotiate two days off in myDark Housefilming schedule so I could spend an afternoonin the most boring way possible: watching my sister cream some old guy at chess.
The hotel hosting the tournament was clearly chosen for its modern aesthetic. For a game that has stood the test of time for centuries, it seems kind of pointless for the chess association to go through all that trouble to rebrand the game. Even the boards are sleek and contemporary, adorned with playing pieces made of glass instead of wood or marble. Dramatic, black-and-white posters of the players line the hall, all of them glaring into the camera as if prepared to go in for the kill.
Sipping the coffee I purchased from the airport, I pause before the one of my sister, staring up at her intensely focused expression. People are moving past me in the hall leading to the hotel’s ballroom, talking earnestly about the matches they’d like to see, or who will be besting who.
“Hot, right?”
Looking around, I find Sybil standing just beside me, staring fondly up at her own likeness. I snort. “A little melodramatic for my taste.”
My sister smirks, turning to look at me through blue eyes that are precisely the same shade as my own. “Wow, and this coming from the girl who did a movie where she shaved off all her hair because her horse died?”
“I made almost a million dollars off that movie. Remind me, what’s the prizeifyou win today?”
“Ha. That’s cute. I will most certainly win, and the prize will be more than enough to pay for your funeral when you inevitably succumb to Botox poisoning.”
We hug.
“Come on, let’s get something to eat,” Syb offers when the unpleasantness is over, nodding toward the glass-fronted hotel restaurant. “I still have a few hours to go before my match starts.”
“Are you nervous?” I ask, falling into step beside her.People are looking our way, obviously starstruck, but with this crowd, I know better than to imagine it’s for me. Anywhere else, maybe, but my sister is chess royalty and has been since she unseated a reigning world champion at thirteen years old.
Sybil flips her curtain of dark hair over her shoulder. “If I was nervous, I would be upstairs working on my end game, not down here buying you organic tofu or whatever it is you actually eat.”
Ordinarily, I would have a sharp response to that. Maybe I’d tell her that eating organic tofu might get rid of her frown lines or ask if there was a specific designer she favors who happens to only make clothing in gray or black. Unfortunately, today I can’t quite work up the energy for it.
It’s been just over two weeks since I woke up to find myself alone in Fernmoor House, and I still haven’t quite recovered. In fact, I’m not sure I ever will, not after falling asleep in Ben’s arms, filled with hope and excitement for what the morning would bring. Though it seems impossibly naive in retrospect, I wasn’t afraid. I wasso surehe was as invested in this tiny ember of a relationship as I was.
The lack of fight must raise some red flags for Sybil, because she frowns at me when we stop before the vacant hostess stand. “What’s wrong with you?”
My lips twitch because it’s so like my sister to express concern in the most hostile way possible. “What makes you think there’s something wrong?”
“You haven’t insulted my shoes.” We both look down, and I’m horrified when I feel my eyes begin to burn. They’re so boring. I can’t believe I missed that.
Before I can formulate an explanation for this oversight, however, the hostess arrives. I follow her and Sybil mutely through the restaurant to a table at the very back. My sister quickly deems it unsuitable due to its proximity to thedaylight spilling in from a nearby window, so we’re shown to another, half-hidden behind an oversized fern.
“This isn’t about Xaden again, is it?” asks Syb once we’ve been seated and our glasses filled with water.
I shake my head, staring at the bizarre modern painting on the wall behind her. “It’s nothing.”
My sister purses her lips. “Can we not do the thing where you pretend everything is fine, and I have to pry whatever it is out of you? There are only a finite number of hours in the day, you see.”
To some, her words might seem blunt, and they are. There’s a familiarity to this dynamic, though, and it’s strangely comforting. I agreed to meet her in London months ago, long before I needed a bit of home, but now I’m so grateful I did.
“I met someone,” I admit, finally looking away from the painting to meet my sister’s eyes. “I liked him.”
Sybil’s head drops a few degrees to the side, studying me. “I’m noticing the past tense here. He didn’t like you?” she presses, a flicker of indignation in her expression.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” I insist, feeling as though I’m trying to convince myself right along with her. “We spent a few days together, just a spontaneous thing, you know? It’s not like he was my boyfriend or anything.”
Voicing that out loud in such a casual way—as if the words don’t fill me with self-disgust all over again—is like a punch to the stomach.No, Sybil, he wasn’t my boyfriend. Just a literal king I met at a rich-people sex party that I felt a bizarrely intense connection with, and who left without so much as a “see ya, pal” when he was done with me.
