Chapter Text
Emira was bored.
She flicked off her scroll with a sigh, then rolled over on her bed with a groan, staring blankly at the ceiling. She tapped a socked foot against her bedframe, accidentally pushing her school cowl off the mattress from where she had tossed it when she first got home. It fell to the floor with a whisper, but Emira didn’t pay it any mind. The small act felt like a rebellion in the pristine manor, where even its residents felt more like dolls than actual witches. She smiled humerlessly at the thought, but it didn't last long under the insistent, steady ticking of the old, grand clock that guarded the main hall.
It was too quiet.
Edric was off on a totally-not-date with some witch from the plant track, and Amity was still at a product demo with their parents, leaving Emira all alone with only the abomi-butlers for company. She scowled. Those demos used to be the bane of her existence, being forced to conjure illusion after illusion just to make their over-the-top weapons look more appealing to the even more over-the-top big wigs who bought them. She had nearly cheered when her mother informed her Amity wanted to take her place, and she all but pushed her little sister out the door that first night, all too excited to have the house to herself and watch the newest season of Cold Bodies.
She kicked herself up to a sitting position. Rewatching a show didn't sound half bad, actually.
She was halfway out of her room when the heavy oak doors to the manor were pushed open. She froze instinctively, ears straining for the tell-tale sound of polished, heeled boots on polished, marble floor, but the door slid shut with barely a breath of sound. It must be Amity then, she decided, altering her path from their massive home theater to the grand staircase.
“You’re home early,” Emira crooned, grinning mischievously as she looked over the balustrade, “Did mom and dad finally—”
The words turned to ash on her tongue, tumbling back down her throat and blocking her airway as she finally caught sight of her sister.
Amity was curled in on herself, staring ahead with dull eyes, like she hadn’t even heard Emira speak. Her hair had fallen free of its ponytail, pale green strands brushing scratched and bruised cheeks. She was clutching her arm close, fingers closed tight over a sleeve drenched in red.
“What happened?!” Emira rushed down the stairs, hovering anxiously and hands flicking nervously at her sides, as if she could dispel the sight before her like a bad illusion.
Amity blinked, as if noticing her sister for the first time. Blood seeped between her fingers, staining her pale knuckles.
“Nothing,” Amity said automatically, avoiding Emira’s eyes. She moved to escape up the stairs, but her sister was quick to step in front of her.
“That isn’t nothing,” she reached for Amity’s arm, but she flinched away sharply.
“I’m fine. It’s nothing I can’t handle,” she asserted, sidestepping.
Emira blocked her, moving up a step to look down at her sister, “What does that even mean? Amity, you’re hurt—”
“And why do you care?!” Amity shouted, finally meeting her sister’s gaze with a fiery glare of her own, “You never did before, why start now?”
Emira stared, wide eyed, as she searched her sister's expression. Amity couldn't really think that, right? They were family, Emira would always look out for her.
Except… she hadn't, had she?
Her stomach dropped. Part of her wished the floor would open up like the maw of some angry slitherbeast and swallow her whole to hide her from angry, golden eyes, but she couldn’t look away. The years of pranks, the years of teasing, the years of throwing her under the scuttle-bus so she wouldn’t get in trouble with her parents…
Even just last month, she and Edric were snooping around for her diary, scheming to put the vulnerable pages on every Hexside locker they could.
No, of course her sister didn’t trust her. Why would she?
Amity finally dropped her gaze, shouldering past Emira with her good arm. The echoing slam of a bedroom door reverberated through the cold, empty halls, but she could hardly hear it over the pounding in her ears as she stared at the drop of red that had fallen on the purple runner.
The drop of blood.
The drop of Amity’s blood.
~~~~~
Emira slammed her hand on the lunchroom table, shaking the old, plastic trays and tipping the half-full cartons of chocolate smilk. Viney, for her part, didn’t even flinch. She swallowed her bite of mystery-meat burger and looked up at her with a raised brow.
“I need you to help me get into the healing track.”
“Can I at least finish my lunch?” Viney laughed, picking up her drink, but her expression fell once she saw the desperate look in Emira’s eyes. “Or, y’know, no time like the present. I’ll catch you later, guys.”
The other dual-track students echoed confused goodbyes of their own, and Emira tried to give them an apologetic smile for interrupting their lunch, but she was sure it came across far too strained. She strode out of the cafeteria, the beastkeeper on her heels, only slowing once the chatter of the student body faded to a muffled mumble.
“I’m all for multitracking, but why healing?” Viney broke the silence, “I would’ve taken you more for a bard.”
Emira stared straight ahead. She could feel the other girl looking at her from the corner of her eye as she shrugged. “I just… I need to, okay?”
She quickened her step before Viney could ask anything else. Lockers and doorways blurred together, and Emira would’ve walked right past the registrar’s office if Viney hadn’t gently taken her elbow. Distantly, she heard the beastkeeper greet the clerk, and felt herself being led to an understuffed chair.
The scene from the night before kept replaying behind her eyes. The blood dripping onto the stone floor. The bared fangs and angry glare. The miles between her and her sister when they were only feet apart. How had she never noticed the distance? How had she let it grow so large?
“—and then you can… Emira?”
Emira blinked, catching Viney’s concerned look before dropping her gaze to the dark blue papers the girl was holding.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, “What were you saying?”
Viney cleared her throat, not looking away from the other girl as she said, “I was saying that for your first semester, you’re best off taking Witch-Demon Anatomy with Mr. Perl and Mixtures, Salves, and Ointments from Mx. Dermeau. They’re good teachers, and it’ll be easy to catch up on everything. And if you need a bit more help, I’ll be right here.” She winked over a pair of finger guns.
Emira’s expression crumpled. She dropped her head in her hands, barely holding back a sob.
“I’m a terrible sister.”
“Wha—No! You’re not!” Viney rushed to assure, patting her on the back awkwardly, “You guys…,” she trailed off, and Emira could tell she was trying the words that would upset her the least, “just aren’t… that close, yeah. Every family’s different, y’know? It’s not a bad thing.”
“Except it is!” Emira threw her hands up, absently grateful that they seemed to be the only ones in the office, “I can’t even remember the last time I had a real conversation with my baby sister. How sad is that?”
“Well—”
“We thought it was fun at first, Ed and I. Harmless pranks. Then Amity got old enough to be a tattle, and we thought we needed to teach her a lesson, but that’s not where we stopped, is it?” She looked at the beastkeeper through blurry eyes, “She tried to reach out— a few times— but we… we laughed at her, told her to go back to mommy dearest before she ruined anything else for us.”
“Ouch,” Viney grimaced, rubbing a hand up and down the other girl’s back.
Emira nodded weakly, “We left her alone. To deal with Dad’s absenteeism and Mom’s… everything. A—and then last night, she… she…”
Emira choked on the words with a sob, dropping her head back into her hands. The silence hung heavy. Even the sounds of the secretary shuffling papers in the other room— no doubt trying to give them a semblance of privacy— felt muted under the weight.
It was viney who broke it first.
“Hey,” she started gently, “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think Amity is completely alone.” Emira stared at her, confused, and Viney continued, “From what I’ve heard from Luz, she’s been hanging around her group of friends for a bit.”
“Luz?” Emira asked, cycling through everything she knew about the human and Amity. She was there at the library that night, when they tried to steal the diary, and she was there at the Knee when the twins were helping Amity to make up for said library incident. They seemed cordial enough with each other, which, looking back, was so different from how Amity interacted with literally anyone else that it should’ve tipped her off, but she never spared a second thought to it before.
She groaned, hanging her head, “I didn’t know.”
“Well…” Viney was silent for a moment, trying to find the right words, “the first step to fixing a problem is realizing there is one, so it looks like you’ve already got a pretty good start.”
Emira raised her head, sniffling.
Viney continued, looking at her with such warmth in her dull green eyes that it made Emira want to start crying again, “And the Emira Blight I know would never give up when things are just starting to get good.”
She reached out a rough, calloused hand to gently brush away the tears that had started to spill from golden eyes. Emira took in a shuddering breath, letting it out in a huff as she nodded. She wouldn’t give up. She would make things right between her and her sister, and she would make sure Amity never got hurt like that again, even if it was the last thing she ever did.
~~~~~
Edric was laying on an overstuffed couch, playing some game on his scroll when Emira finally got home. He didn’t even look up as she let her heavy bookbag fall from her shoulder. Her eyes ached and swam with countless anatomical diagrams. She fell in a boneless heap onto an overly extravagant loveseat.
“What took you so long?” Edric finally asked, an explosion of dings ringing from the device in his hand, “Too busy making out with your girlfriend to help me skip Mr. Houdeen’s class?”
Emira’s protest of “She’s not my girlfriend!” was muffled by the purple upholstery, but she turned her head to address her brother fully when she explained, “Viney was helping me with healing classes.”
Her brother glanced at her, then groaned when his screen went red with a dying sort of noise, “Since when are you taking healing classes?”
“Since today.”
“Huh, weird. I would’ve thought you’d pick up the bard track.” he started up the game again.
Emira threw up her hands weakly. Why did everyone seem to think that? Wanting to learn healing wasn’t that far out of character for her, was it? She sighed into the plush fabric, listening to the obnoxious noises of whatever game Ed was playing. She gnawed at her lip.
“Do you ever feel bad?” she started up again, not even sure if she could be heard over the zaps and dings, “About Amity?”
“Mittens?” he paused for a moment, tapping his scroll wildly, “No, not really. All we’ve done to her are pranks.”
“We tried to steal her diary to spread it around school,” she pointed out flatly.
Edric looked contemplative for a moment, though whether it was because of what she said or because of the game, she wasn’t sure, “We didn’t though, and we took her to the knee to make up for it.”
“What about the time we blamed her for breaking Mom’s favorite vase?”
Her brother cringed, and the screen flashed red again. He set the device aside, admitting, “That was… not our best.”
“And what about the time we dumped all of Dad’s tuberteeth jars into her abomination homework right before midterms?” Emira could still see the terror written across her little sister’s face once their mother had heard of the ill-fated exam.
Edric rubbed the back of his neck, looking almost as guilty as Emira felt. The stuffy air was heavy, and she could practically feel the weight increase as they silently combed through every past interaction with their baby sister.
Her brother sighed, blowing a long exhale through his nose, “We're pretty crappy siblings, huh?”
Emira nodded into the loveseat, fiddling with a purple tassel thoughtfully. The grand clock struck 5 o’ clock.
“You’re doing that thing again, aren’t you?” Edric said, looking at his sister meaningfully as he swung his feet to the floor, “What’s the plan?”
~~~~~
Dinner in the Blight Manor was always a tense affair. Emira sat straight in her chair next to Edric, not daring to even touch the shiny silverware as her mother glared holes through the empty chair at the other end of the table. She tapped one well manicured nail on the hardwood table, keeping time with the reverberating heartbeat of the grand clock. Emira spared a sideways glance to her brother, who nodded when he caught her eye, then she turned her attention to her little sister. She sat just as prim and perfect as the rest of them were, her expression blank as she stared at nothing in particular. What was most concerning, though, was how Emira could find no sign of the injury she knew still bled under her sleeve.
Amity gave nothing away.
And honestly, that made it worse.
How many times had she sat at this table, conspiring with her brother to get out of whatever responsibilities their mother tried to pin them with, while her sister hid her pain silently?
A long, drawn out groan drifted from deeper within the manor as the basement door finally swung open. The Blight matriarch let her tapping finger slow to a stop, her cold glare slipping from the empty chair to the dining room threshold.
Alador stomped into view, shaking dried abomination bits onto the ebony floor as he grumbled under his breath, scowling. Emira met her brother’s surprised expression with one of her own. It was the most emotion their father had shown in years.
A traitorous sliver of fear wriggled in her gut, but she swallowed hard to keep it down. They did what they had to.
“You’re late, dear,” their mother said, poisonously sweet as her husband finally sat down.
“Something got into the lab,” he spat, waving at an abomi-butler to bring the food, “Some kind of rodent. They chewed through all the wires and spilled the volatile mix into the flat mix.”
Odalia tsked, picking up a fork to pick at the meal placed before her, “You always keep that workshop of yours such a mess; that’s why they’re getting in. Would it kill you to clean up once in a while?”
He ignored her, stabbing at a piece of meat with his knife. The tension was thick enough to suffocate, and neither parent seemed to notice that none of their children dared to start eating. Emira kept glancing at her sister, looking for any reaction, but she was as still as a statue, expression blank and eyes focused somewhere in the distance like they all had been trained to do since they could sit up in their highchairs.
Emira wished she’d unlearned it sooner.
Alador took his time chewing, then swallowed loudly, “We’ll have to postpone next week’s product demonstration.”
Emira could hear the clatter of silverware on ceramic, but she wasn’t looking at her mother.
“What?!” she barked shrilly.
Amity’s shoulders tensed up just the slightest bit at the sudden shout— slight enough that Emira never would’ve noticed it if she wasn’t actively watching her.
“We can’t postpone!” their mother continued, “Especially not after how successful our last one was!”
Emira clenched her fists so hard, she felt her nails nearly pierce the skin of her palm. She called it a success? Like having her youngest daughter walk home, alone, leaving a trail of her own blood was some kind of victory? She was halfway out of her chair before she felt her brother tug her back down to terra firma. She bit her tongue, glaring at her parents who were apparently too busy to notice the commotion on the side of the table.
“We have nothing to show,” Alador said bitterly, spearing another piece of meat, “Unless you want to lose customers with mediocre, last-second weaponry, I suggest we delay. Just for a couple weeks.”
Odalia fumed, and for a second it almost looked like her eyes were going to pop out of her head, but then she took a deep breath and forced the mask back into place. “Fine, but you’d better come up with something exemplary to make up for this whole mess.”
Their father grumbled something to the assent, and that was the end of the matter. They ate the rest of their dinner in the usual tense silence, enduring until at last they were dismissed. Emira watched as Amity slipped up to her room, quiet as a ghost. She caught her brother’s eye and bumped her knuckles against his outstretched fist. They still had a long way to go, but it was a pretty good start.