The Beautiful Lie
1270 Words
Laura POV
Power is a delicious thing.
Especially when it’s taken from someone who never deserved it in the first place.
I sipped my tea—jasmine, infused with a hint of nightshade—and looked out over the cliffside balcony, watching the morning sun rise over Blackridge.
The same ridge my darling sister nearly fell from a month ago.
I didn’t push her hard.
Just enough.
Just enough to give fate a little nudge.
I had to be careful. Subtle. Too much too fast and the bond might have cracked wide open—or worse, broken entirely. And I couldn’t have that. Not when things were going so well.
Lina still doesn’t know, of course.
She suspects, I’m sure—she’s not as stupid as she looks, though she tries so very hard to act like she’s just a sweet little thing. So earnest. So pure. As if purity matters when you’re being consumed from the inside out.
I didn’t expect the life-drain to be so… invigorating.
She’s bonded, technically. That gives me a thread to pull. And she’s weak enough now that the magic barely resists me. Every day, her glow gets dimmer. Every time Dylan touches me, she gets smaller.
And gods, how that warms my blood.
I’ve been feeding off her pain, her heartbreak, her confusion. All that shattered hope? It’s energy. It’s fuel. She’s breaking, and I’m growing stronger by the hour.
Funny, isn’t it?
She spent years trying to be what this clan needed.
And now she’s becoming exactly what I want her to be.
Irrelevant.
Replaceable.
Ash.
⸻
Dylan has been easier than I imagined.
So predictable.
So eager to be worshipped again.
He’s still furious that the bond chose Lina and not me. Still bitter over being “abandoned,” as he calls it. He doesn’t see the truth—that I left to become strong enough to claim what should’ve always been mine.
And now I’ve returned, and he’s mine all over again.
Well… most of him.
The rest?
Belongs to the enchantment.
He wears it around his neck. A silver pendant shaped like a dragon’s eye—his father gave it to him years ago. I simply added to it. Enchanted it. Bound it.
He never takes it off.
Which is convenient for me.
It bends his thoughts just enough—just slightly. He thinks the anger is his. Thinks the lust is natural. Thinks I’m the one who never stopped loving him.
And maybe… in some twisted way, I haven’t.
But love is power.
And I’ve always been so very good at wielding both.
⸻
She’s starting to resist, though.
Lina.
Even now, I can feel her training. That little spark flaring up again, like she thinks she can claw her way out of this.
She can’t.
The bond between her and Dylan is barely holding. My illusions are replacing it thread by thread, heartbeat by heartbeat. Once it snaps completely, she’ll be nothing but a footnote. A broken shell. A mistake corrected.
And then?
Then I’ll have the Alpha.
The title.
The throne.
And the magic I’ve taken from her will be mine forever.
All I have to do is keep smiling.
And wait for the fire to go out.
No one remembers the truth.
No one but me.
They see two girls—twins, born under the same moon, raised in the same house. They see matching cheekbones, matching smiles, matching stories.
But it’s all a lie.
Lina is not my sister.
Not by blood.
Not by fate.
Not by anything that matters.
I remember Europe. Not clearly—just flashes. Shadows in sun-drenched cities. Whispered words behind velvet curtains. I was born there, in a rented villa carved into the hillside of southern Spain. My parents were traveling, hiding, preparing.
And when they returned to Blackridge…
Lina came with them.
No birth records.
No dragon scent.
No bond to the bloodline.
Just a foundling. Wrapped in silk. Wide-eyed and soft. A baby who didn’t belong, tucked into our story like a misplaced paragraph.
They told the clan she was mine—my twin, born minutes apart.
But I remember the whispers.
The late-night rituals.
The smell of incense and iron.
I remember our mother saying, “She’s perfect. No one will ever question it.”
And no one has.
Until now.
⸻
They’ve always played the part well—our parents. Gentle. Wise. The perfect elder couple. Devoted to the clan. Beloved by the council. But it’s all theater. They’ve been bending reality since long before I was born.
Arcane magic runs through their veins like oil through a machine—slow, corrosive, and deadly.
They taught me early: if you want the world to love you, show it what it wants to see.
And then take what you came for.
Lina doesn’t know any of this.
Of course she doesn’t.
She walks through life thinking she’s just… unloved. Unwanted. A mistake that keeps failing to measure up.
But I know the truth.
She was stolen.
And one day, I’m going to return her to the ashes she came from.
⸻
The soft knock on my door was deceptively polite.
I didn’t flinch.
“Come in,” I said, already knowing who it was.
My mother entered first, wrapped in her usual dove-gray robes, her silver hair pinned precisely. My father followed, quieter, eyes sharp behind his glasses.
They both wore that look—pleasant and mildly disappointed. Like I’d tracked mud into the house and they couldn’t decide whether to scold me or clean it up themselves.
“You’ve been using too much,” my mother said without preamble.
“Too visibly,” my father added.
I set my book down—one of the old grimoires they’d hidden in the false panel beneath the floorboards when I was twelve.
“I’m fixing your mistake,” I said calmly.
My mother’s nostrils flared. “We didn’t bring her here for this.”
“No,” I said, rising to meet her eyes. “You brought her here because you wanted to test your theory. To see if the blood of the forgotten could be contained. You thought she’d burn out by adolescence. But she didn’t.”
“She’s dangerous,” my father murmured.
“She’s weak,” I spat. “And the bond with Dylan should’ve never been hers. It fractured everything.”
My mother stepped closer. “And that’s exactly why you need to be subtle. This clan is ours. We’ve spent decades building trust, control, legacy. You do not burn it all to the ground just to prove a point.”
I smiled faintly. “That depends on the point.”
My mother’s eyes sharpened. “If you keep siphoning her strength so carelessly, someone will notice. The court already whispers about instability. And your scent has changed.”
I stiffened.
She sniffed once, then leaned in like a predator. “You’re not as cloaked as you think, darling.”
I looked between them—my parents, my creators, the architects of this illusion—and I realized something simple and terrifying:
They were afraid.
Not of being caught.
But of her.
Of what Lina would become if I stopped.
⸻
“Then I’ll go slower,” I said smoothly. “But I won’t stop.”
They exchanged a long, silent glance.
“Just make sure,” my father said finally, “when the fire comes, it doesn’t burn you too.”
I held their gaze, spine straight.
Let it burn.
I’ve never been afraid of fire.
Not when I control the match.
- Writer
