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Gemini is twelve. She solves all her problems with magic.
The tomes hidden under her bed, not quite enough spells to hide them but just enough to keep them hidden, and she memorizes everything she can because she knows one day she'll lose them but that day is not today and so she studies.
So much of her time cannot be spent hiding under her bed with covers and a candle and her books, because she is the daughter of a count.
She has lessons in how to behave and embroidery and the customs of the court and the traditions of the Grimlands and how these differ from the Empires around them.
She has a thousand events to attend, standing between Mother and her brother, faking perfection and keeping her brother in line until it is socially acceptable for them to sneak away.
Dinners and celebrations and meetings and she despises every single one and longs eternally for them to be over so that she can escape to her books, and far away from all these people who secretly hate her.
And she listens, even if she never retaliates. The nobles talk and gossip where they think she is not listening and they mock her brother for his blood and for the way he matches her entirely, and for the way that even though he is older, she will inherit the Grimlands because no one of magical blood could ever rule a kingdom right.
Her blood boils but she listens.
The other nobles’ kids are not quite as subtle, and they mock her brother for being small, for being as short as she herself is. And no one mocks her for her height because she is 'cute’ and 'a girl' and this height is hers because he is the mimic.
And she lets him retaliate but she studies too.
And so she grows to a height not her own, and she stumbles over limbs that are too long for her and she runs into things she never would have before, and her brother matches her with every inch. Maybe she has sacrificed her grace and elegance but her brother cannot be mocked for sharing her height when he is as tall as everyone else, and the height is not really her own either. Not anymore.
Gemini is fifteen. She solves all her problems with magic.
The books are long gone, her parents' angry voices echo in her ears and she promises over and over again that she has never practiced, only read and only because she didn't know, not because she was curious or interested.
Gemini is a liar.
She learns quickly that her brother cannot be.
She is old enough, they decide, with exchanged glances, the ashes of her beloved books still warm in the fireplace, bits of leather and metal, the remains of the cover and the spine rest burning in the hearth.
She’ll pick them out later, and mourn for them too.
“Gemini, I need you to listen. This is important.” Father starts, staring firmly at her eyes, practically daring her to look away. She wants to. She doesn’t.
“He’s a changeling.” Mother explains, spitting the word like it’s some kind of curse. “We didn’t realize until he was too old to get rid of quietly. He’s not your brother, let alone human.”
“He’s dangerous, and you need to be careful around him.”
And she is warned of fae and the way they cannot lie but will twist their words so much it does not matter. She learns of their trickery and everything they can do with the simple power of a name. They explain everything that makes her brother monstrous, that if she is ever in danger, his name will give her power, that she can force him to stop.
That Mother and Father have been using it to force his obedience for years goes unsaid, obvious.
She listens and she says nothing, she does not fight or argue or even glare. She listens and waits.
It’s harder than anything she’s ever done, of course. She wants nothing more than to scream at them.
They are wrong, she knows.
Her brother is not a monster, he has never twisted his words. He is, instead, blunt and painfully honest at even the worst of times.
Her twin may be fae by blood, but they will always be family. Nothing could ever change that. She’d do anything to keep that, even becoming fae herself.
But it is better not to fight.
So she waits.
She wonders, as her ears ring and she fixes her eyes firmly between her Father’s, if her brother even knows. If they’ve yelled it at him at some point in time, when she wasn’t around to hear it.
Or if he’s even noticed all the things that separate him from the required humanity of the Grimlands.
Maybe, he doesn’t know of any of this.
Maybe, his permanent honesty has never bothered him, maybe he never noticed that he couldn’t lie.
Maybe he never noticed that his constant need to fight after an offense of some kind was innate, and not just hotheadedness.
Maybe he’s never thought it odd that they match in every single aspect except their gender and whatever changes Mother forces on them.
Maybe, he doesn’t even care.
Regardless, Gemini can fix this. She has the power to fix everything she needs to.
It wouldn’t even be hard.
She makes them forget.
She makes everyone forget, and instead they call him fWhip.
(She can’t quite remember what he was called before. She hopes he still knows. It’s for the best.)
And in the shadows of the night, when no one is awake, she promises not to lie to him.
If he must be honest, it’s only fair that she returns that honesty, even if he never chose this.
She does not tell him, never does, but she thinks he maybe knows.
Regardless, it matters not. They are twins before all else.
Gemini is seventeen. She can fix anything with magic.
A simple spell or hidden potion, it's all at the tip of her fingers, and she can have it as long as she hides it.
She listens for rumors, but all anyone talks about is how she will inherit the Grimlands soon.
Father is dying, the whole land knows it, and Gemini doesn't care in the way she should.
She can barely feel any pain at the loss she will soon suffer, but she can't stand the thought of ruling this place.
She was not meant for a future like this, barren of magic and void of anything that brings her life.
When they are summoned to Father's room, she announces her own declaration before he can.
She will not inherit the Grimlands.
Father is angry and Mother is shocked.
And Gemini wonders how she could be surprised as if Gemini has not always listened, even if she did not speak of what she heard.
Father cannot scream or yell, but Mother can, and she screams that fWhip is unworthy, that he is unfit to rule, and Gemini screams back while fWhip stands behind her that he is her brother, he was raised alongside her and has learned more than enough to rule.
It’s ironic, almost, that they’re playing this game, where Mother tries not to reveal to fWhip his origins.
fWhip is honest.
Sometimes, it’s because he chooses to be, and sometimes because he can’t be anything else.
But Gemini is not honest.
She is a liar.
Maybe it’s in her nature as much as honesty is in his. Maybe, if fae cannot lie, then humans know little else.
Maybe it’s by nurture, because she loves magic more than she loves breathing, and if she wants to keep it, she must lie.
But it’s alright if fWhip cannot lie, because Gemini can. It’s alright if he doesn’t even want to because she’ll do it all for him.
Her blood burns with all of the anger she has held over the years, from all the problems she fixed but never addressed, because she hadn’t fixed the people, just their perception, and still they hate magic viciously and brutally.
And Gemini is a liar, but she is an angry liar, and she is more than willing.
So Mother screams and fWhip hides behind her, and she lifts her chin just a bit, in a way she has never dared before, and casts a quiet spell behind her.
It’s nothing she hasn’t done before.
Mother screams back that Gemini knows all too well how unfit fWhip is for the Grimlands. Still, Mother doesn’t say what she means. They both know what she thinks. To her, fWhip is a changeling, a fae, a monster, inhuman. Irredeemable and completely unsalvageable.
“fWhip’s not the changeling! I am!” And Mother gasps, fearful, but she is angry too, and so she does not step back or run, but instead steps forward and yells back that Gemini should not lie to protect a monster.
Mother is not the only one who can scream in this family.
So Gemini raises her voice and she laughs. It’s the twisted kind of laugh that she had spent weeks learning when she was thirteen and fWhip wanted to prank someone and she’d wanted to help.
It’s a laugh that holds no joy, only mockery and the sharp edge born from years of pain.
“What?” She laughs. “You think I’m lying? Do you know nothing of the fae? We’re not liars! We just twist our words until you can’t tell the truth anymore! You really think that fWhip is the changeling? He’s honest because he wants to be! You just didn’t notice because you didn’t want to! Cause I’m perfect, aren’t I? I’m everything you wanted in a daughter!” She spits, vehemently.
“Gem, what are you talking about?” fWhip whispers. Gemini reaches back with fingers that bear claws that aren’t hers, that are dark and sharp, and holds tight to his, and tries to let him understand that she is a liar, but never to him.
“It’s okay, fWhip.” I can fix this, she doesn’t say, please don’t hate me for this, she doesn’t dare to tell him, but she hopes he can understand her anyway. I’ll explain if you give me the chance.
“Get away from him!” Mother snaps, still unbelieving. Gemini wonders which of them she is trying to protect.
“You know I’m right!” She laughs gleefully. “Why do you think I’m so tall? I’m a mimic! We’re the same height because I made us this way!”
“Gemini!” Mother shouts, but she doesn’t stop.
“You don’t even know his name! You can’t remember it! You know why, don’t you?!”
Her teeth are sharp, just a bit longer than they should be and all of them pointed. Her eyes flash the green of leaves under the afternoon sun, pupils slitted. Her ears poke out from her hair, longer, pointier, like that of an elf’s or a fae. Antlers, which have been steadily growing from her head since she first cast the spell, have finally reached their full length.
She looks every bit the creature she needs to be in this moment, and Mother screams, grabs the water pitcher from the tray by Father’s bed, and throws it.
Gemini doesn’t move, can’t because her brother is behind her and if she moves he will take the blow.
Instead, she stops hiding. It’s the first time she’s dared to perform magic when anyone other than her brother is nearby, but she’s done. She lets the spell form just beyond her fingertips, lets her hand lift in front of her, lets it blast the jug to bits.
The water still spills, it hits the floor more than it does her, splashing up onto the hem of dress and over her boots, leaving a wide dark spot on the boards of the floor.
“Get out.” Father croaks, a burning hatred in his eyes that almost has Gemini flinching away, but she stands her ground.
They believe her.
She has done everything right, she has lied perfectly.
Everything has gone according to her plan, and now it’s time to leave.
Almost, she wants to take fWhip with her.
He is her brother, this place is dangerous.
But ruling the Grimlands has been his dream since they’ve been small. It would not be fair to rip that away from him when he’d finally been so close to having it.
And so, with the final step of her spell in place, her monstrosity cemented in their minds, she lets her feet float just barely off the ground.
With a final squeeze, she lets fWhip’s hand fall from hers. Neither of them are stupid enough to try and hold on longer.
He looks afraid, yes, but Gemini doesn’t think that it’s of her.
I promise not to lie, she had once said. She’d never promised not to leave.
Gemini of the Grimlands leaves through the window and disappears.
They assume she’s gone.
She listens and watches long enough to see Mother wrap shaking arms around fWhip’s shoulders as she apologizes for all of her cruelty and the years of assumptions she had let spoil her image of him.
She stays long enough to watch her brother tense at the touch but not jerk away, long enough to hear him say that he doesn’t understand, and then she leaves.
She hopes he understands.
The letter under his pillow doesn’t explain quite enough.
Sorry I lied. I would have explained earlier if I could.
You’re a changeling, fWhip. You were born a fae, and were left in my crib.
She doesn’t explain that he likely replaced a human boy. It’s undoubted that he either knows it already, and if he does not, then he doesn’t need to.
We are twins regardless of this, and you will always be my sibling, no matter what.
My full name, which our parents never told you, is Lady Gemini Tay of Grimland, though that will likely change soon.
That thing you forgot when we were younger was your name. They were using it against you, so I made them forget, but I used too much magic. I don’t think anyone remembers it. Even me.
Sorry.
If you’d like, we can share mine.
If you ever find it, don’t tell anyone. I don’t doubt they would try to control you again.
Your appearance matches mine because we’re twins, with what I assume is unintentional magic on your part. I don’t know how to stop it if you want it to, but I’ll do my best not to change anything about mine to make it obvious.
She wonders if he can even mimic her when he can’t see her. She wants to think he can, hopes they never change.
I love you. I hope you don’t hate me for this, but I understand if you do.
I’m not leaving forever, just for a long time.
P.S. You might want to burn this after you read it; if not then please hide it somewhere safe.
She hadn’t signed it, knows without a doubt that he’ll know it was from her.
Lady Gemini Tay of the Grimlands is struck from the line of succession by the next morning.
Her name is forbidden, and any who speak it will be punished.
And so, Gem, who has no true name, and nowhere to go, flees with only the promise to her brother that she will return, someday, and that she will not lie to him.
Gem is seventeen. She solves all her problems with magic and lies.
It doesn’t matter that her eyes are stuck bright green, that the antlers, no matter how many times she cuts them, don't stop growing back. Glamour spells are good at hiding these kind of things, and she's had more than enough practice making herself look normal.
The farther she gets from the Grimlands, the more she hears whispers of wizards and their powers.
She travels farther, and those whispers become stories on the tongues of children and bards.
Wizards are easier to find when everyone knows of them and does not hate the power.
“Mother said I was too powerful, and that I needed to find someone to help me.”
Gem is a liar.
She lets magic spark between her fingers and pretends to be afraid, behaves like she has no control.
Everyone believes her.
The wizard who takes her in as an apprentice isn’t anyone, really, but word of Gem’s uncontrolled power spreads, and soon, more powerful wizards come to take her with them, and with the blessing of the first, she follows the second.
This wizard belongs to a powerful coven, and Gem, who knows too much of magic, understands none of their politics.
But their council of seven each have a handful of apprentices, and all of them are strong.
She blends right in.
Wizards are nothing like she expected, different from anything she’s seen or heard of before.
To even apprentice in the coven, she must start with an oath.
It’s a silly thing, the kind of thing she’d find in the Grimlands if magic weren’t completely banned on pain of exile or death.
In all, it means nothing.
Just a simple oath to never touch or perform dark magic, and to do no harm.
She lies.
There isn’t even any magic to force truth to her words, nothing to keep her from doing whatever she pleases.
Because oath magic is considered dark, the promise of steep loss if a wizard were to break their oath, or the control required to take such choices from someone is too dangerous to let anyone touch, apparently.
Gemini has been casting subtle oaths since she learned magic, simple harmless things to keep other kids from using specific insults, to keep them from insulting her brother within earshot, if they were weak enough to be the kind of person who wouldn’t do it anyway.
She makes her own oath.
She’s done it before, far too many times. It’s easy.
It’s a simple promise not to lie to her brother, the second is to do no unnecessary harm, to never hurt an innocent.
She knows her way around words.
She knows how to manipulate them to mean exactly what she wants, but to sound like something completely different.
She can make an oath with no holes, but sometimes she leaves them there too.
She can’t lie to her brother.
Gem had been young, hadn't known quite so well back then that the gray area between lies and honesty was more expansive than she could imagine.
But it still works the same as his nature does for him.
She is not required to be honest, she is not forced to tell information, it doesn’t even stop her from twisting her words.
It does enough.
This oath has fewer holes in it, carefully crafted to keep her from doing any more damage than she has to, and it will probably keep any stray magic from hurting those she doesn’t intend.
It’s not infallible, if she perceives their guilt then it’s already bypassed, if the magic isn’t classified as harm, it won’t do much to save them.
It’s enough to assuage her thoughts.
She is a liar and a wizard.
She will not hurt anyone she does not completely need to.
Hopefully, it will curb any evil tendencies she may develop away from her brother.
Wizards are weird.
It’s a new culture to her, completely foreign, with new customs and manners and words and pleasantries.
But magic is everything she needs and more, and so she will adapt.
Wizards are strange, but Gem can listen.
She hears of strict rules and forbidden spells and magical guidelines and she understands none of it.
But she understands better than any of her fellow apprentices the ways of a court, and so she does not fight against them, and never argues.
She does not mention all of the things she has done that these people might disapprove of, and she listens more than she ever speaks and she lies when she wants to.
Lies are in her nature and they have grown beyond control in her nurture. She doesn't even think she'd survive without them anymore.
She follows and listens and nods along and pretends that she is learning everything for the first time.
The others hate her because she never breaks the coven’s stringent rules, and she wonders why they dare.
She finds them odd, insufferable, wonders what point there was to their oath at the beginning when they whisper of curses and cruel fates that could befall her by their magic, because clearly, it meant as little to them as it had to her but they had none of the history to cement the need for magic to keep everything in balance.
Her mentor is concerned because she never asks questions in the way the others do religiously, asking even the most stupid questions with the simplest answers, and she pretends she doesn’t need to, pretends that she does not bite her tongue to answer them.
Above all, she practices. Spells after spells after spells, over and over until she can do them without thinking. Until she's not failing with spectacular consequences anymore.
Gem is commended for her diligence and her hard work and her aptitude.
The wizards love her, the other apprentices despise her.
Some days it feels just like home.
Mother and Father care too much for her and not quite enough for her brother, while the whole court whispers when they think she cannot hear, and they try to end her life and that of her brother and they whisper of magic and curses, and Gem does nothing but listen.
But unlike home, this is a place of magic.
So she pretends to have all of the power but none of the skill, and she fakes errors she ironed out years ago, and pretends not to know the solutions to all the problems they haven't quite solved yet.
And she is silent and never speaks to them of the time before she came here in the way so many of them are fond of.
She avoids questions and does not fight their assumptions, and when she has learned all from them that she can, she leaves.
She could be a High Wizard, they say, One of the Council, they whisper, maybe even the Eighth Wizard, whose spot no one has quite managed to fill yet.
But Gem was not meant to sit at their council anymore than she was meant to rule the Grimlands.
Gem is nineteen. She solves all her problems with magic except when she doesn’t know how.
She could run just like last time, the features of a monster spread over her skin so that no one will miss her, except they're already there and so she wouldn't need to do anything except drop her glamour. It'd be all she needs to do so that she can never go back, so that she can’t have any regrets.
She could fake a family emergency, leave in a hurry and never return, and hope that no one tries to look, because she could make sure they never find her, but still it would hurt to know they cared enough.
She could fake a death, fall from a tower or fight some illusion of an enemy or monster that would leave once she died and disappear with her body.
A million possibilities at her fingertips, and still, the one she chooses involves neither magic nor lies.
“I can’t be part of the council.” She tells her mentor when the others have all gone away, sending a few glares over their shoulder at her. Suck up, teacher’s pet, she hears them whisper. It means nothing to her. These people mean almost nothing to her.
“What?” Again, they are shocked at her declaration, shocked that she hears them, shocked that she listens and remembers.
She’s quiet. What else would she do?
This time, there’s no anger behind their words, only shock and confusion.
She doesn’t know what she’d do if they were angry with her. She doesn’t know if she could handle it.
Mother had always been strict, severe, and distant, never giving Gemini, let alone her brother, a moment to connect.
Gem’s mentor is kind and sympathetic and helpful and loving. She thinks she’d have nothing left to do but to fall back on old habits, and prove herself the monster no one seems to see until she lets them.
“You and the other wizards want me to be on the council when I finish learning under you.” She can’t force eye contact in this moment, keeps green eyes firmly glued to the stone brick floor, and folds her hands carefully together.
It’s an old position, one she’d learned to keep from a young age because it made her look perfect and it had always been oh so easy to hide a spell between her fingers.
“You weren’t supposed to hear that.” Her mentor chides gently, as if Gem had been eavesdropping on a conversation, like she hadn’t been studying in that room while they had been huddled around another desk in twos or threes.
“I can’t be on the council.” She repeats, determined.
“Do you have a reason for this?” Gem is asked. She thinks briefly of her brother, of old promises and self-taught magic from old rotting tomes that never bother to warn of the danger of their contents.
“It’s not for me. I can’t-” she cuts herself off.
“If it’s fear that’s holding you back, I understand, but you are fully capable of joining the council, even without completing your training.”
“I’m not afraid.” She knows she could do it, knows she would do well, knows that everyone would hate her for her perfection and leave only jealous rumors in their wake, because wizards are not quite as fond of assassination plots as the nobles of the Grimlands.
“Gem-” They start, but she cuts them off.
“I’m not afraid. I know I can, but I don’t want to. I want to learn magic and build a place where people like me could learn.”
Where they could run and find refuge, where they could learn from teachers who are kind and not from books under the covers, the candle that permits them a fire hazard, half-buried in blankets.
Where they start with magic that will not hurt them, where they never have to hide wounds from magical exertion or a spell gone wrong.
She wants to build a place where kids can be children, and they never need to worry about the power they put into a spell because if they add too much, they risk erasing every memory of their brother, and not just his name.
She wants to create a place where children alter their appearance only so it looks the way they want it to, and not so that someone else can look normal.
It will be a haven where no one has to grow a face that doesn’t belong to them to drag anger onto themselves and away from people they care about.
“Gem?”
People like me, but in their eyes, Gem is perfect.
People like me, but for all they know, Gem’s power is completely good.
In their own minimal knowledge of her, they taught her everything she knows.
Gem is nineteen. She has only ever solved problems with lies and dark magic.
It was always going to catch up eventually.
And truth is so difficult to speak, her veil of lies so thick that she might suffocate if she tries to breathe past it, and so she doesn’t.
“I was born in the Grimlands.” She admits reluctantly, a half-truth, because they had so many complications with the birth that Mother had to be brought to Mythland where better doctors saved her and Gem and whatever child fWhip had replaced. It's where Mother insists fWhip showed up, and the reason they have such a strained allyship, which is permanently strong only in name. Because they can't exactly claim he was replaced by a fae in Mythland without also admitting he was fae and that would be a family disgrace.
It’s close enough.
Her mentor gasps, and then there are apologies on their tongue because everyone knows what the Grimlands do to magic users in their walls.
And after that, no one really wants to fight her on this anymore, and there are more whispers than ever and soon everyone knows and their jealousy is mixed with pity.
Gem studies and studies and it’s really all she does anymore because she’s so close to leaving she almost can’t wait.
And then her training is done and it’s time to go.
It’s not a dramatic goodbye, or even a tearful one. Some are sad to see her go, most are secretly elated, and Gem doesn’t care for either, she’s just ready to keep walking.
But she allows a few short embraces with those who seem to care the most and then she is gone, and they all turn to head back inside and Gem is casting simple magic to disappear and rise into the sky.
Gem is nineteen. She is a wizard. Maybe wizards are allowed to solve almost all their problems with magic.