Twice Born

Chapter 1

Belveer feels different tonight. There’s stillness in the air, not just because the streets are empty of the usual filthy-rich nobles and simply-filthy beggars, but it’s as if the whole island holds its breath, quietly condemning me for what I’ve done under the cover of darkness.

Rain has soaked into the unpaved path in the alley, softening the earth. It has come down hard for hours and continues to tap incessantly on my cloaked shoulders. My eyes move from the two men dead at my feet to the blade in my hand. Blood drips from it, mingling with rainwater.

A tremor runs up my arm. A month. We lasted only a month on this island before killing a Tracker—no, Trackers. Two of them.

They came out of nowhere. If I had only anticipated them—if I had evaded them instead of letting them follow me right into this alley, I might’ve avoided them. Prevented their deaths.

They’re my enemy, but I’m not a killer.

My lips move of their own volition. “Foolish distinctions, Bree. Your hands killed these two men. So yes, you are a killer.”

The voice is mine, but that snide tone isn’t. It belongs to Eve. My other half. The reason I’m in this mess. Also the reason I’m still alive. She’s been my only companion for eight years while I’ve survived the streets, my only comfort while I fed off of scraps of food and slept under bridges on nights like this one. My only protection from Trackers.

And unlike me, she has no qualms about killing them.

Don’t speak out loud, I say to her. She can hear my thoughts just fine. She can read my mind whenever she wants to, and nothing I do can stop her. Someone might hear you.

She scoffs. “If you were afraid of being discovered, you wouldn’t waste so much time standing here. Get rid of them quickly and take us back to the shelter. I’ll be happy to do the walking if you’ll let me to take over.”

A spark of fear. I extinguish it and hope she didn’t sense it. When Eve takes over my body, often without my consent, bad things tend to happen.

Like with these two.

“I saved your life, didn’t I?” she says. “They would’ve captured you if you’d been found during the day.”

They wouldn’t have found me during the day, I retort.

It’s true. Eve’s not around during the day, only at night. Trackers sense the flare of power when she emerges at sunset. These men are trained for one purpose alone: capturing Twice Born like us. Without Eve, I’m defenseless. But without her, there’s really no need to defend myself.

I sheath the dagger and slip it into my back pocket, crouching down beside one of the men. A lantern sitting on the window ledge of a house to my right spills light across the alley. No one has looked out onto the street yet. Eve disposed of the two men with lightning speed. Dagger out of pocket. Slash, dodge, block, slash. Splashes of warm blood on my hands.

Both men were down before the quiet was disturbed.

The sun-like tattoo is visible on the inside of the man’s right wrist. It has eight rays shaped like daggers, signifying the eight heads of the Sunblade Trackers, a group of elite fighters bestowed with unnatural physical prowess. But for all of their power, they’ve never been able to defeat Eve.

I place my hand on the leg of the man near me. He wears leather trousers thick enough to endure winter. A lot like mine. I stole a pair off of a dead Tracker in Rakoshan to the north just a month ago, before it became too dangerous to live there anymore.