Starlight

“No, not at all. I think he’s hurting and he needs help. I just wish he’d let me help him.”

“It’s a toss-up between Enjolras and I playing in woods when we were children. We used to spend all day there and our parents would have to come find us for dinner. And kissing Roan for the first time. I’d kissed people before but with him, it was like… It felt like lightning striking.”

Enjolras could feel the strings of his heart pulling and stretching to the point of frustration. As if at any moment one wrong thing that had been said or done would fill his eyes with tears and cause him to not have the control that he prided himself on. It wasn’t a perfect method of control, really. One that came with reckless decision making that seemed senseless but was actually refined. If he went through his whole life pretending and believing he was fine, then was that not his truth? But Ester… She had always been the better half, and he thought he proved it again and again with each decision he made for them.

He knew that he should’ve told Ester the truth, about why he was here. But that would mean betraying Alexander, and that meant more to him than sparing his sister’s feelings. So he would lie, and she would none be the wiser. Could that possibly end up hurting him in the long run? Yes, but it was a risk he was willing to take. Being a pirate meant that he had spent many years learning to lie and do it well. While it was considering something that would be looked down upon as a fae, he was merely a commoner. The weight of his lie was nothing compared to one of a noble. And his morals of a fae were burned down when he left that part of him in the past. He was a pirate now, and he only abided by the code.

“I was whisked away to sea,” he started to say, drawing her attention back to him and offering nothing but a soft shrug. “You know… This place never felt like home to me. You had to have known that about me. If you were really my sister, my twin, you would have known.” Of course she should have suspected that this was inevitable. “You thrive, I burn. That’s how it’s been since we were kids. It’s how it’s always going to be.”

She wanted to scream and shout and stomp around. Something she hadn’t done since she was a child. Ester was the reasonable one. The one with both feet on the ground. Even when they were young, Ester had been level headed, rational. Now all she wanted to do was beg him to come home, scream, and cry for all the nights she’s lost sleep over her brother’s safety.