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The first mistake Adaine makes is visiting her sister.
She should've known better. Nearly fifteen years of bickering and condescension and outright mocking and not one pinch of genuine sisterly compassion that she can remember, and she still cares – somehow, Adaine still cares, no matter how hard she tries not to. No matter how many times Aelwyn makes it clear she doesn't give a shit in return.
There have been times when Adaine truly wished her dead – wanted to hit her so hard she landed in a bed and never got up again – but she is, as she has been told many times, weak, and the sight of her sister really bedridden, color drained from her face, clutching to the book she's barely reading like a lifeline, makes her chest seize up in sympathy. Or perhaps horror.
"Hello, sister," Aelwyn rasps when she notices Adaine's presence. There's a strange gleam in her eyes, gazing up at her from her nest of silky white pillows. Her blonde hair is dulled from its usual honey-gold, drawing attention to the bags under her eyes and the sallow tint of her skin. "Come to mock me for succumbing to a commoner's illness?"
"No," Adaine says quietly. It’s been several days since the diagnosis, but she couldn’t bring herself to come to the room until now. She knows some days tend to be better, and some are worse, for the first week at least. Nobody close to her has fallen to it, yet, but everyone knows how it goes. The first days are simply exhausting, sucking your energy away. It’s only later you truly develop the fever and slip into the last sleep.
She shuts the door behind her and takes a step in, taking a deep breath before she turns to face the bed again. "Why, did mother and father tell you dying would dishonor the family?"
Aelwyn just smirks at her, somehow still insufferable while she’s lying in death's palm.
She's not that much taller than Adaine, standing up. She's not much larger in any dimension, save only presence. And yet, even looking down at her, resting in bed and just barely able to keep her book propped up, hands trembling infinitesimally, the younger princess still feels like she's staring up at a statue. Another of the massive ones, in the front hall, that give her the creeps with their dumb serene eyes, always looking down their noses at the disappointment. Usually she pretends they're her parents. Sometimes she tries to picture herself as one. She can never get that quite right.
"Of course they did," Adaine mutters. And it's a joke, and she’s not surprised that was how they reacted, but it's suddenly the least funny thing in the whole world.
Aelwyn has never, to her knowledge, been a disappointment to their parents, never faltered in her brilliance or social graces – and that flash of ugly, gleeful schadenfreude that came from hearing she’s fallen is gone almost as soon as it came. Adaine knows she’s a failure, and she hates their parents for what they want from her – perfection she can't give, talent she doesn't have, experiences she doesn't want – but for the first time in a very long time, she considers that maybe asking perfection of someone who has always delivered is unfair, too.
Anyone can get unlucky. Even someone with her sister's golden thread of fate, apparently. The sickness really is out of anyone's control. The palace doctors and mages said as much.
"Well, as much as I simply adore your company, if you're not here to gloat, and you're not going to bring me more water, please leave," Aelwyn says, gesturing weakly back towards the door. The glint is still in her eyes as she regards her sister, but the smug look has faded. Maybe despite her sarcastic tone, somewhere in her darkened heart, she’s having thoughts similar to Adaine’s.
Adaine hesitates, but… is she really going to refuse? The glass by the bed is empty. A few rays of sunlight from the half-covered window glance off the angular base, drawing her eye to the last glinting drops at the bottom. "I can bring you water. Anything else?"
This is the second mistake Adaine makes.
She knows Aelwyn is a talented caster. Perfect, even. She has excelled in her lessons since she was a child, and could now trounce the head mage any day. That’s a lesson she is never allowed to forget, when her own attempts at fancy spellcraft always blow up in her face or never fly out at all because she’s having a breakdown about getting it right, and her family can only ask why she can’t be more like Aelwyn.
She knows Aelwyn is cruel. A thousand little pranks, little looks, little comments that ball together into one big nasty hateful person that has never shown her tiny, stupid, younger sister any kindness unwrapped from the thorns of sarcasm or faux politeness.
But she knows herself, too, and no matter how much Adaine hates her sibling, she will never stop wishing things were different, or caring about her. It shakes her, too, beyond the cold shadows of their father and mother, to see Aelwyn so tired. It will only be a month or so until it’s… over, but it may take Adaine even longer to get used to the idea that Aelwyn is going to be gone. She may have wanted her to go away and leave Adaine alone many times, but not really dead. Not gone forever.
So when Aelwyn thinks for a moment and makes a request for some reading from their mother’s library, Adaine holds her hope and her pity to her heart and waves away her own instincts. What might Aelwyn do with one book, lying down, and at half her strength? Perhaps she’s looking at theories on curses to discover more about the sickness. Plenty of scholars have theorized that it is, or was, a curse that grew awry.
The third mistake – because, of course, what other number could be as auspicious? – is handing the book to her sister and lingering in the room long enough for Aelwyn to motion for her to stay, flip to the right page, look up in triumph, and begin casting.
"I, Aelwyn Abernant," she begins, quick as anything, and Adaine looks around frantically by her bedside as she feels her limbs freeze up and stiffen out of her control. "–do, on this day–"
Adaine struggles, but the spell has her in its looped clutches. The beautiful gold of her sister’s spellcasting has never made her want to throw up more. Her chest gets tight, and she can still breathe, but it feels like she needs to drag the air in and out of her lungs. It’s familiar in the worst way possible.
"—curse my sister, Adaine Abernant, and charge her with finding a cure for my illness before a fortnight has passed, or succumbing to the same and dying as well."
Adaine's limbs are returned to her control, and she promptly collapses. Her glasses knock against her nose as she hits the floor, thankfully one blanketed with a soft carpet that breaks the fall.
"What – did you – do?" she demands between gasps of air, pressing her palms to the carpet to stabilize herself and looking up at the edge of the bed helplessly. She can't summon the force to push off of it just yet, with her chest heaving and her anger and panic building.
“What did you DO?” She yells again, when Aelwyn doesn’t respond. Adaine’s strength returns, and she pushes herself up again, still panting, with one hand on the end of the bedframe.
Aelwyn looks worse than she does. Her face is grey, and her hands shake with large tremors. When she sees Adaine rising, she grins, half victory and half grimace of pain. “Adaine,” she says haltingly. “I– can’t do it – myself, so y-you’ll have to, I’m-m afraid. Find me a cure before a fortnight passes, or you will be a–afflicted as well."
Adaine stares at her sister, feeling her own heart racing in her chest. She almost doesn't believe it – she's been fucked with before – but that was real magic. She felt it. Frantically, she runs over a checklist of the symptoms in her head.
Loss of strength: no, she feels fine, now that the spell has relinquished its grip. Difficulty with memory: she’s light-headed, but can recall her favorite book as a child still, word for word. No. Loss of motor control: her hand flexes into a fist and out easily. No.
Right, listen to the words of the spell. She's not ill. Yet. But even as that relief crashes into her, another wave of fear throws her higher. There is no cure for the creeping sickness. It is always slow, and painful, and ultimately – fatal.
“Aelwyn, there's no cure. You’ve just sentenced me to death as well, you, you idiot!” she gasps, the combined rushing of her fear and anger in her ears making her own words nearly inaudible, and please, not again, she can't do this now, not in front of people.
Her hands are shaking, she knows, and she can’t stop them, can’t figure out how to get herself under control when any attempt to calm down leads her right back into thinking about what just happened.
Aelwyn glances away from Adaine, and her hair slides over her face. Small mercies, but she’s still trembling, and she can't get nearly enough air. It's fine, she should get herself under control (Really, Adaine? Get ahold of yourself ), but it isn't fine, it– isn't fine at all, her sister is dying right in front of her and in the last act of a crab in a bucket she's decided to kill Adaine too, and she's going to die —
“If anyone could do it, it would be me, of course, but you’re nearly as good, as much as I – ugh – hate to admit it, and with myself indis– indisposed, well...” Aelwyn says, and her voice takes on a strange tone. Not a cruel one. "Do calm down."
It takes Adaine a moment to even hear the words, let alone comprehend them. Her mind is still racing seven leagues a step, whirling in frantic circles, making her unable to focus on anything physical but the – damp, awful – sweat on her face against her glasses and the tightness around her chest, not at all a spell this time, and what she knows has to be her impending doom.
Even once the meaning of her sister’s words registers she has to concentrate and run it back several more times before she believes it. The shock nearly jolts her out of the terror entirely.
“D–did you just compliment me?”
“That’s what you’re choosing to focus on?” Aelwyn takes a deep breath for dramatic effect. Or maybe she’s still struggling to get air in her lungs. “Honestly, Adaine… so vain,” she says with a smile, always so fucking smug.
“Shut up,” Adaine hisses, but her heart isn’t in it, unfortunately being predisposed with calming the fuck down so it isn’t beating through her chest. “I’m going to– I’m going to fix this,” she stresses, clenching her still-fluttering hands into fists and turning away from Aelwyn.
“I sure hope so,” her sister calls as she slams the door open and shut behind her. Aelwyn’s voice is soft, but it follows her down the hall.
The grey death comes slow, but inevitable. It sucks one’s energy out, day by day, until it is no longer there to keep their heart pumping and lungs moving. Magic can prolong it, but no cure has ever been found. Nobody has ever found a cause. Every year, Fallinel watches hundreds die.
Adaine has to change that if she wants her sister to live. If she wants to live herself, even, unless she finds instead a way to break her curse. And she knows how powerful her sister's magic is, even as depleted as it must be in her sickbed – halting it would be nearly as impossible.
The first mistakes were countable, but she has a feeling as she packs her bags, stuffed with any book from the castle library that might be helpful, that she is about to make so, so many more.