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Felix is born (before) (after)
...before anyone realizes she can't do magic. She’d never admit it, but she’s a little excited to have a sibling, even if all he does is sleep and he’s the ugliest thing she’s ever seen. She doesn't see him much. Most of her time is spent with her tutors, trying to bring out the magic she’ll need to take over the Anguis household when she’s older.
Her first teacher is young, inexperienced but enthusiastic; her father’s patience runs out long before their optimism does. Her next teacher is much stricter- a withered old mage with a long list of accomplishments and a longer list of successful students. They’re the first person to suggest she might not be able to learn magic at all; their departure from Blackthorn Hall is, to put it mildly, quite abrupt.
Teacher after teacher, the parade of pedagogues continues with no results. It would be frustrating if it weren’t mind-numbingly boring- so much so that she’s starting to prefer hanging out with a literal baby. She can complain to him without getting a lecture in return, and he’s a good listener- or at least a captive audience. Sometimes when he cries she’ll lean over his crib and wiggle her fingers above him the way she’s seen their papa do. There are no brilliant lights sparkling around her hands when she does it, but it makes her brother laugh all the same.
Felix nearly burns down his nursery, and their father decides it’s time to take his children’s education into his own hands. They take their lessons with him side by side. Is it supposed to motivate her, seeing her younger brother breeze through drills she should have mastered already? If it is it isn’t working. Watching him just makes her chest twist. She can feel their father’s focus sliding off her. Eventually he stops summoning her for lessons, and she stops looking for Felix in her free time.
Felix continues his private lessons with their father.
...after everyone realizes she can't do magic. She's only five years old, her papa says. It's too early to know. But they know. She stares sullenly into her brother's crib, wrinkling her nose at this baby that's going to replace her, and silently hopes he never casts a spell in his life. He turns his stupid too-big head to look at her like he can hear what she's thinking; when she sticks her tongue out at him he gurgles back at her delightedly. Something in her chest twists, aches. She reaches down and pinches one of his cherubic little cheeks until he starts to cry instead.
Felix is a prodigy, because of course he is. If he hadn't been she might have worried for him, might have spent her time looking for words of encouragement to give him when his magic didn't come in right away. It would be fine, she would have told him. It would happen eventually, and if it didn't at least they could be disappointments together. But Felix is not a disappointment- not yet- and when he nearly burns down his nursery it's the first time she's seen their father look proud.
Felix is a nuisance. As soon as he can toddle after her he's always on her heels, tugging on her skirts and asking her questions. She pulls his hair and calls him names and feeds him mud pies and he still won't leave her alone. She tells him he's a spell-slinging little weirdo; one of her friends does the same and suddenly finds themself face-down in the dirt. (She doesn’t know how it happened- maybe they tripped on something?) They’re not friends after that.
Felix has started lessons with their father.
She tells herself she's not jealous; having Escell's undivided attention is a double-edged sword, after all. She should be grateful he's given up on her. It would be nice if she could get Felix to stop bothering her, too- no such luck. If anything he's been even clingier, on the rare occasion he manages to dodge their father's lectures. Always eager to show her his newest trick, looking at her starry-eyed like he cares what she thinks. She sniffs and tells him she's seen better. When she's alone she'll repeat whatever gesture he was doing over and over until her hands start to cramp. It never works. She wants to resent him. She can't seem to do that either.
Felix is dead. He was running through the halls and then lying at the bottom of the stairs and now he is dead, growing colder by the minute behind a locked door no one will let her through. She can still see his eyes when she closes her own. Glazed over, empty, lifeless. Her chest twists again. She doesn't have magic and she doesn't need it. She will claw her way to the hells and back with her bare hands, if that's what it takes to-
Felix is fine. Well, not fine- he's pale, and freezing, and shaken, and she strongly suspects he may never be fine again. But her brother is alive, and when Escell emerges alone from that locked room with dark circles under haunted eyes she doesn't ask him how it happened. She wonders sometimes if- whatever it was Escell did- he would have done the same for her. She decides she doesn't want to know.
Felix is… she's not sure what he is, now. Moody, withdrawn. Jumping at things she can't see, at first, until he settles uncomfortably into this new version of himself. She doesn't know what to do with him. Escell and Florian barely speak to them, barely speak to each other anymore unless it's to argue. So she argues too, poking and needling her brother until he finally snaps back at her. It's better than nothing, she thinks, and after a while she starts to believe it. This is the way they'll talk from now on.
Felix is off at school learning how to conjure bats or turn people into slime or whatever it is that little wizard brats do. He writes to her sometimes- mostly scathing letters about that Varela boy he says he doesn't like. She tells him she doesn't care and she's bored to death of hearing about it, so he should ask the kid out or set him on fire or something. It doesn't matter to her what he does, as long as it stops him from whining so much.
Felix is at war. Technically the whole city is at war, but he's gone and put himself right in the thick of it where he doesn't belong because he's always had more heart than sense, hasn't he. Her terrible baby brother. She writes Escell for the first time in years to see if there's a way to make him come home; he never gives her an answer.
Felix is home and she is eleven years old again, standing at the bottom of the stairs as he looks through her, dead-eyed and silent. She doesn't know what to say to him. He's gone before she can think of something.
Felix is…somewhere. If anyone asks she doesn't know where. His coffers mysteriously refill themselves sometimes. She doesn't know about that either. She's busy with other things. Escell may not have passed any magic on to her, but she’s gotten more than her fair share of his less savory talents; she takes to bribery and blackmail like a duck to water, and it turns out a little bit of light criminal activity is a great way to pass the time- and she has plenty of time to spare, now that she isn't the heir to their house. She takes up wine-making, gets engaged, breaks it off, buys a bar, gets engaged again, never bothers to write her brother about any of it because she knows he won't read her letters anyway. Her vineyard, which is completely legitimate and not at all front, is doing exceptionally well (not that anyone asked). It seems she's also inherited their family's talent for bottling things up.
Felix is in trouble (again) and when she bails him out (again) he is exactly as grateful as he always is (not grateful at all). He has at least two friends now, which is more than double the number of friends he had the last time she saw him. She'd pop a bottle to celebrate if she hadn't just burned down her bar.
Felix is dead and then alive again (again) before she even knows what happened. She thinks she's used to this kind of stunt by now. The ache in her chest says otherwise.
Felix is like her, now. The way he’s sulking about it you'd think that was a fate worse than death, which is a little insulting, but maybe it hurts more to lose something than to never have it; she wouldn’t know. She wants to say something comforting. She says something biting instead. Maybe she'll start teaching him to pick locks.
Felix runs off to save their family. She goes to board up some windows.
Felix is dead again.