Lenna pov
I followed Amiriah up the stairs, my patience finally exhausted. For weeks we had tiptoed around her, respecting her boundaries, giving her space, accepting her silences. But the look in her eyes when she had fled the dining room—that raw hatred and jealousy masked by fear—had broken something in me. My twin was drowning in her own darkness, and our cautious approach wasn't helping her.
When I reached her door, I knocked firmly.
"Miri, we need to talk," I called, using the childhood nickname no one else dared use anymore.
The door opened just enough for me to see her face, shadows swirling behind her like agitated snakes. I didn't wait for permission—I pushed forward, forcing my way inside before she could close the door.
"What are you doing?" she hissed, panic flaring in her eyes as she looked frantically around the room. "Get out!"
I didn't immediately see anything unusual—just her darkness wolves lounging on the bed, their glowing eyes tracking my movement. But her reaction was telling: she was terrified of me being in this space.
"You can't keep doing this, Miri," I said firmly, turning to face her. "You can't keep shutting us out. Something is going on with you. I saw the hatred in your eyes downstairs."
"Get out," she repeated, her voice low and dangerous. "Get out of my room now, before I kill you."
The threat hung in the air between us, shocking in its directness. But I stood my ground.
"You would really try to kill your own twin? The one person who's trying to actually talk to you instead of walking on eggshells around you?"
Her expression shifted, the anger momentarily replaced by something closer to desperation. Her eyes kept darting to the bed—to the wolves, but also as if looking for something else. Something I couldn't see.
When I didn't move, she did the unexpected—she darted past me and out the door. It was a retreat I hadn't anticipated, but I followed immediately, unwilling to let this confrontation end before we reached some kind of breakthrough.
"Miri, stop!" I called after her as she fled down the hallway. "Running away won't solve anything!"
"You wouldn't understand," she threw over her shoulder, darkness trailing in her wake. "None of you would!"
"How do you know that?" I challenged, keeping pace with her. "You haven't given us a chance to understand! If you'd just tell us—"
"Tell you what?" she spun suddenly to face me, her expression wild. "Tell you how they cut me open? Tell you how they violated me? Tell you how they experimented on me? Would that make you feel better, Lenna? Would that heal your guilt?"
Her words were like physical blows, but I forced myself to stay focused. "I know they hurt you at the hospital. We all know that. But there's something else—something you're hiding."
She turned away again, heading for the stairs, clearly hoping to escape this confrontation by reaching the more public areas of the mansion. But I was done with her evasions.
When we reached the main foyer, the family was already there—likely drawn by our raised voices. They stood in a loose semicircle, expressions ranging from concern to alarm as they watched our conflict unfold.
"What's going on?" Amara asked, stepping forward with hands outstretched, though she stopped short of actually touching either of us.
"Ask her," I said, gesturing to Amiriah. "Ask her what she's been hiding in her room. Ask her why she looks at Tara's baby with hatred instead of joy."
Amiriah's face contorted with a mixture of rage and fear. "You have no right," she whispered. "This is my life. My room. My privacy."
"It's not just about you anymore," I countered. "Not when you're living here, with us. Not when whatever you're hiding affects all of us."
Zuri and Zari stepped forward then, exchanging one of their silent communications before Zuri spoke.
"There's something in your room, Amiriah," she said gently. "Our energy readings have detected it for weeks now. Something with a poison signature, different from your darkness."
"What?" Xavier's voice cut through the tension, sharp with alarm. "You knew about this and didn't say anything?"
Zari shook her head. "We didn't want to violate her trust. It wasn't threatening anyone—it's contained, controlled."
"I saw a shadow," Amara admitted quietly. "When you opened your door the other day. Something small, moving on the wall behind you."
"And I've heard you talking to yourself," Kario added.
I watched as Amiriah's face drained of color, her body tensing like a cornered animal. The darkness around her fingers was spreading, climbing up her arms in agitated swirls.
"What did those wolves bring into this house?" Xavier demanded, his authoritative voice filling the foyer. "Is it dangerous? Could it hurt you or anyone else?"
I hadn't intended for this to become an interrogation, but events were spiraling beyond my control. The family's collective concern was tipping into alarm, and Amiriah's reaction was only fueling their anxiety.
Tears began to slide down her cheeks, her breathing shallow and rapid. "It's nothing dangerous," she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. "It's something important to me."
Something in her expression—the raw vulnerability beneath the defiance—made me regret my approach. I had pushed too hard, too publicly.
"Miri, I'm sorry," I said, stepping toward her. "I didn't want things to go like this. I just... seeing that look of hatred and hurt on your face downstairs, it worried me. I didn't mean to—"
"Something so important that you would put your family in danger?" Hayden interrupted, moving protectively closer to Tara and Harrison. "If there's something in this house that could harm our son—"
"We need to inspect the room," Xavier declared, assuming his role as head of the family. "Now, before this escalates further."
The reaction from Amiriah was instantaneous and shocking. The desperation and fear in her eyes hardened into something deadly—a maternal ferocity I had never seen in her before. Her darkness exploded outward, forming a barrier between the family and the staircase.
"No one is going to touch it or go up there," she said, her voice unnervingly calm despite the tears still streaming down her face. "I would kill any person who dares."
The threat hung in the air, made all the more chilling by the absolute conviction behind it. This wasn't hysteria or panic—it was a promise.
And in that moment, the final piece clicked into place for me. The secret she had been guarding so fiercely, the reason for her jealousy of Tara, why she locked herself away for days at a time, the small shadows and voices.
"You have a child," I whisper softly for only her to hear, the words falling into the stunned silence. "Don't you, Miri?"
Her eyes snapped to mine, wide with shock that I had guessed. But she denied it saying "No I dont now what your talking about."
But the flicker in her eyes told me I was right. As her twin, I could always sense when she was lying, even now, after years of separation. The darkness barrier she had created didn't waver, but her hands trembled slightly.
"Miri," I said gently, taking a careful step toward her."We are your family we can help you" I said
"Family?" she laughed, a brittle, broken sound. "Family doesn't send their daughter to be experimented on. Family doesn't forget about her and move on. Family would have searched for her, would have known she wasn't dead!"
Her words struck us all like physical blows. Mother flinched as if she'd been slapped, and Father's face went ashen. The twins lowered their heads, while Kario looked close to tears.
"We thought you were dead," Amara whispered, her voice breaking. "The hospital confirmed it—they showed us... remains."
"And you believed them," Amiriah shot back. "You didn't question it. You didn't look deeper. You just accepted it and went on with your lives."
I could see we were losing her, that her anger was overwhelming any possibility of breakthrough. If she retreated now, after this confrontation, we might never reach her again.
"Yes," I admitted, drawing her attention back to me. "We failed you. All of us. But if there's a child upstairs—your child—then they're innocent in all of this. They're a Spellman too, whether you want to admit it or not."
A flicker of uncertainty crossed Amiriah's face.
"How old?" I asked quietly, gambling that directness might succeed where caution had failed. "How old is your baby, Miri?"
Her lips parted slightly, as if she might answer, but then she shook her head. "There is no child. Leave me alone."