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When they are children, and Baldwin’s disease still unknown and unseen, they are known throughout their father’s cities as the twins, even though Sibylla is a year older, and they look nothing alike. But they are always together, no matter what, and the serving women whisper that they share a single shadow.
As they age, they are each other’s foils. Baldwin is golden-skinned and fair-haired, his eyes the same bright blue as the Mediterranean, as if this land of sand and sun-warm sea birthed him itself. He is a boy born to be a king.
Sibylla is dark and hollow, but don’t let Baldwin catch her— or anyone else— saying that. Once, when he was eight, he knocked a boy unconscious with the back of his hand for calling her scary. Sibylla didn’t talk to him for a week, angry he would fight her battles for her, but after that day she walked a little taller than she had before.
Her brother’s faith has always been stronger than hers, too. It is unshakeable, unfailing, even as she screams at him in her fear and frustration, even as he fits a mask to his skull, withholding his face from the sun for the rest of his life.
He tells her it is an easy sacrifice, if it means she looks at him just as she does now, for forever. Instead, she tells him she will never look at him again.
Sibylla’s faith has always been like sand. It shifts under the feet of her brother, slides down mountains, stirs in storms, scratches at the skin. But it follows him, seeps into his shoes, needles under his bandages, until they cannot be separated. She hopes her faith softens the ache of his skin, or his bones beneath it, or his soul beneath that, and she fears it will erode him, but it is too late to change her mind.
“Will you be by my side when I die?” Baldwin asks her over breakfast when they are fifteen, as though this were the kind of thing that should be discussed over breakfast, and Sibylla doesn’t bat an eye.
“If you die,” Sibylla tells him, “I will not watch.”
“I do not want to die without you, sister,” he says, and his voice is a murmur, meant only for her to hear. To have a king’s ear is a powerful thing; it is even more powerful for a king to want to whisper in yours.
“Then do not die,” she answers. Baldwin only smiles.
They are the first to know his fate, and they do not tell anyone.
He will no longer kiss her, or touch her with his bare skin, no matter how many times she insists she does not care if she catches his contagion.
“Let us crumble together,” she hisses at him one night, tugging at his sleeves, the gloves that have appeared to hide his festering flesh. “Do not make me watch,” she pleads. His bloodshot eyes shine with tears, making them seem like red glass marbles. He murmurs consolations, but she will not listen any longer. He asks if words can be enough for a love, and she tells him words are useless against actions.
He proves her wrong, months later, as he is oft to do, when he asks for terms and saves a city, and the city falls in love with him.
He is no longer hers alone.
She plays chess with him only once, before she understands what he is doing, and she upends the board for its pieces to clatter across the tile. His king, sacrificed at the feet of her queen, disappears into the shadows.
“I will not play your games,” she declares. “This will not end this way.”
“My dear sister,” he says, and he is sad again, and her heart breaks anew, “that is the only way it can end. We cannot be afraid.”
He is sixteen and victorious at war, and he is beautiful, a star shining in the battlefield, and she watches him from far away, safe in her tower, out of his reach. Or he is out of hers. But she has never known Heaven to be anything but untouchable.
After the palace has finally fallen asleep, she comes to his rooms to find the candles still lit, and she lifts the drapes aside to find him in his bed, a book askew on his chest, rising and falling with the easy rhythm of sleep, unlabored by his pains of the day. She watches him for a long moment, unwilling to break his peace, before she leans down to kiss the cold, unforgiving lips of the mask.
When she pulls away, his eyes are open and watching her. As she makes to leave, his hand reaches out to snag her wrist. His bandaged fingers are thin as bone.
“I find you in every dream,” he tells her softly. “I will always find you, no matter where we are.”
God help her, she believes him.