In the present, we arrived at a building hidden by snowy trees. “Cafeteria” was written above the green door.
John tried to pull away to open the door, and my throat closed with panic. Itchiness exploded across my skin, so I tightened my hold on him and Aran. He stopped reaching as he recognized what was wrong.
I couldn’t stand to part from him.
Not after we’d been separated for so long.
Never again.
I breathed shallowly.
“Of course, my King, let me be clearer.” The oracle giggled and swirled her hands in the air. “I speak through the mouth of the stars as I proclaim this fate.” I shoved John further behind me, heart pounding with fear as I protected him with my scrawny frame.
The three of us sat down together at the table as food was passed out by workers.
I slid my chair closer to John, and he slid his closer to Aran. We sat pressed against one another.
Breathing deeply, I searched for calm.
Voices spoke around me, but I didn’t hear a word they said, because I didn’t care about them.
I didn’t make friends.
I ignored everyone.
I didn’t talk or interact.
No one existed but John—and now Aran. Two people were the center of my world.
They were my world.
The fateful day on the cliff had solidified my attachment to my twin into something that defined my being.
Codependency consumed every moment of my life.
It was me.
We were two halves of a whole, and even though John could put on a mask and socialize, he suffered from the same dependency.
Memories swirled around me.
The past was alive, and it reached for me.
The king had never revealed to the realm that the lost princes had been found, because you couldn’t lead a powerful realm if you refused to acknowledge that anyone else but your brother existed.
You couldn’t play the political game of survival if everyone else was already dead to you. So the lost princes had stayed lost; we’d been nothing more than rescued humans living in a foreign realm.
We’d liked it best that way.
But over time, the king had grown disappointed because he thought I’d grow out of my issues. He’d thought John would help me change into someone different.
My twin loved me the way I was.
As a result, when Lothaire returned years later to take us to Elite Academy, the king made a horrible decision: he blackmailed Lothaire with secret information in exchange for keeping our identity a secret. Worst of all, he convinced Lothaire to let only one of us attend Elite Academy at a time.
The king claimed it was because he needed our abilities to run the realm.
He lied; it was a desperate bid to fix our crippling dependency problem.
The king pulled us aside and promised we could be reunited if we could prove we’d both formed a relationship with someone else.
What proceeded were the worst years of my life training at Elite Academy.
They thought I was John, and I never bothered to correct them because they didn’t exist to me. Not in any way that mattered. I let my twin do the socializing for both of us; it wasn’t for me.
In the beginning of my time at Elite Academy, I was alone in a sea of faces.
Desolate.
Unmoored.
Until a blue-haired boy with haunted eyes and a mouth dripping in sarcasm draped his arm across my shoulders and called me John.
I tried to ignore Aran, but it was impossible.
For some confounding reason, I wanted to help the pretty boy floundering to stay alive in the dark sea. My heart pounded wildly in my chest as a pipe was pressed against my lips and a joke whispered in my ear.
Aran refused to leave my side.
And for the first time in my life, I latched onto someone that wasn’t John.
I saw someone else.
The twin that refused to interact with anyone besides his brother was cured.
Months later, the king wept with relief and rejoiced with his family when we asked for Aran’s hand in marriage. Everything he’d ever wanted had come to fruition.
But when all three of us had been reunited, I’d immediately realized the king’s plan hadn’t worked at all.
I was no longer codependent with one person.
I was codependent with two.
It was like the oracle had prophesied that fateful day in the cave.
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she spread her arms wide, the prophecy exploding from her lips. “The master number surrounds the lost princes. The strongest of them all; two will become three. Multiples of three are golden, you see. The broken soul leads them down a twisted path of darkness, but they will remain the three of three. Eternally.”
I didn’t need to smoke the blessed fumes at Delphi to confirm that Aran was the third from the prophecy.
I knew it in my soul.
Now, beside me in the cafeteria, Aran leaned her head on her hands and stared off into space as I cut up fruit into bite-sized pieces and gave them to my twin.
John didn’t have to ask what they were for, because we were on the same wavelength; the Greek letter lambda was tattooed on my back for a reason.
He hand-fed her bites of food.
Together we took care of her.
Across the table, the devils said something, but I didn’t register their words; my attention was wholly focused on Aran.
My skin crawled with the need to feed her.
For the entirety of my life, when my twin suffered, I suffered.
Now when Aran suffered, I suffered.
It was how I operated.
After the cave, the king was unhappy with the oracle’s prophecy. He raged to the other kings and queens about how unfair it was because we’d already known darkness. The kings and queens shook their heads as they muttered about the poor Princes of Darkness.
We nodded back sullenly.
That night John and I giggled with excitement in our shared bed because we knew what three meant. It wouldn’t just be the two of us for our entire lives. We’d find someone else to love.
John caught my eye as Aran delicately ate the fruit he handed her, and he smirked.
Leaning over the table, I put my arm around his shoulders and tangled my fingers in curly turquoise hair as I made sure they both ate.
My stomach grumbled, but I didn’t care.
I pushed more food onto John’s plate, and he smiled.
His dimples were my home.
We clasped our hands together under the covers, and John’s dimples were stark on his cheeks as he laughed. I rolled onto my back and clutched my stomach as I joined him.
I watched Aran and John eat with rapt attention. The two of them would never be parted from me—if they were, I’d be dead.
The next day at breakfast, the king ranted to the two others about how the oracle was a fraud. He went on and on about how we deserved light in our future. The queen smirked down at us from her silver throne covered in violets as intelligence sparkled in her majestic eyes.
I smirked back.
John winked up at the queen and held up his fingers. She tipped her head back and laughed.
“Three of three. Eternally,” he whispered to the queen as he covered his smile with his small hand.
The queen laughed because she saw what the king couldn’t, and she beamed down and said, “Lucky boys.”