SPAR!

POV: Sable Voss

“Once this door opened, there was no closing it again.”

I told myself that, not anyone else. There was no one else. Just me, the vault, and the low hum of climate control keeping my father’s money at a comfortable sixty-eight degrees.

My fingers hovered over the biometric pad. I’d watched him do this a hundred times, always from the doorway, always pretending I wasn’t paying attention. Thumb here. Palm flat. Hold for three seconds. He never noticed me learning his life like a second language.

The pad blinked green. The door swung open, slow and heavy, like it knew what it was about to let happen.

I didn’t hesitate. Hesitation was a girl’s mistake, and tonight I wasn’t being a girl. I pulled the stacks fast, counting under my breath, my hands steadier than they had any right to be. Ten thousand, twenty. I didn’t stop to think about what this made me. Fifty. Seventy. I didn’t let myself picture my father’s face if he walked in right then.

One hundred thousand. Exactly. Not a dollar more. I zipped the bag and closed the vault like I was never there.

~~~

Silas was sitting on the edge of the tub when I walked into our bathroom, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing. He looked like he’d already left, like his body was just waiting for permission to follow his mind out the door.

“You don’t have to do this.” The third time he was saying it tonight..

“You don’t have to keep saying that.” I grabbed the scissors off the sink and began doing my thing..

He watched me gather my hair in one fist. It was long enough to sit on if I let it. Mom used to braid it on Sunday mornings, back when Mom still did things like that.

The first cut sounded louder than it should have. Black hair fell into the white sink like feathers off something dying.

“Sable…”

“Silas.” I met his eyes in the mirror. “You want the military. I want the ring, I want to box, that has always been my dream, you want to be a soldier bruh.. This isn’t a sacrifice. This is the only thing that makes sense.”

I kept cutting my hair, longer pieces first, then shaping it close to the way he wore his — the way our father liked his heir to look. Clean and sharp. Obedient on the surface.

When I finished, I didn’t look like Sable anymore. I looked like someone who could be him.

The binding came next. I wrapped the fabric tight around my breast, tighter, until my breath went shallow and my body stopped arguing with the mirror. I practiced my voice low in my throat — Silas. Sable. Silas — until the wrong name stopped feeling wrong.

I stared at my reflection so long the bathroom light started to hum in my ears. The girl was gone.

Something feral and hungry stared back at me instead, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t look away from it. I liked what I saw. God help me, I liked it.

~~~

“You’ll get caught,” Silas said. He was standing now, arms crossed, jaw tight in that way that meant he was scared and wouldn’t say it.

“I won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know I’ve spent my whole life watching you get handed something you never wanted while I stood outside the ring begging for scraps.” My voice cracked on the last word and I hated it. I cleared my throat, dropped it lower, found Silas’s register again. “I’m done watching.”

He went quiet. That was the thing about twins, we didn’t need every word said out loud. He already knew I’d made up my mind. He’d known before I did.

I pressed the duffel bag of cash into his hands.

“Train leaves at midnight,” I said. “You get on it. You don’t call. You don’t come back for anything, not even to check on me. You disappear, Silas, completely, or none of this means anything.”

His fingers closed around the bag like it weighed more than money.

“Promise me,” I said.

“I promise.” His voice broke worse than mine had.

We stood there a second, foreheads pressed together, breathing the same air we’d breathed since before either of us had words for anything. Twenty seconds. Maybe less. The last time we’d ever stand in this house as equals, as two kids from the same womb who used to have the same face. Then I stepped back, and he was just my brother, and I was already someone else.

~~~

I took his acceptance packet from his desk drawer. His phone off the charger. A shirt from his closet that still smelled like his cologne. I left my life folded on my bed like something I’d shed instead of something I’d killed.

The estate was silent walking out. Marble floors, high ceilings, portraits of Voss men who never had to become anyone else to matter. My footsteps didn’t echo the way they used to, it is more heavy now. Different weight distribution. Different person.

No one woke up. No one ever did, in that house. We were all so good at pretending not to hear each other.

~~~

The platform was nearly empty that late, just a few tired strangers and a vending machine buzzing under fluorescent light. I slung the duffel, Silas’s duffel now, my life stuffed inside it over one shoulder and pulled the acceptance letter from my jacket.

Iron Crown Academy stared back at me, embossed gold on heavy cream paper, the crest sharp enough to cut. Two crossed gloves under a crown. My whole life, reduced to a piece of paper I’d had to steal to earn.

The train groaned onto the platform, brakes hissing.

I folded the letter against my chest like it might disappear if I let go, and I stepped through the doors before I could think twice about any of it.

The doors sealed shut behind me with a sound like a decision being made. That was when the phone buzzed.

I looked down. My father’s private number lit up the screen, a name that meant obey in every language I’d ever learned to speak. The train lurched forward.

I stared at the screen until it stopped ringing on its own, until the light faded to black in my palm, until there was nothing left of him but darkness. I didn’t answer. I was already gone...