With great reluctance, Carla had to leave Maya and the academy to return to Berdantia for the vacations. Not only had the trip been unpleasant because neither she nor her sister exchanged a single word or glance, but she knew that returning to Parvana also meant taking up the mask of the perfect Parvanian princess again.
The capital's castle was fairly quiet on the morning of the third day of the vacation week, and even if she wasn't very happy to be there, time was nevertheless flying by.
Today, like yesterday, Carla had studied, practiced and hung out in the courtyard, as she was hardly allowed to leave the royal family's quarters. She had seen very little of her sister, whom she avoided like the plague and who had found it amusing to stare at her with disdain and contempt whenever she saw her practicing. She hadn't lifted a finger and simply continued to concentrate.
Carla had a strange habit: she always ended up putting her hand on her neck at the level of her scar, as if she wanted to check, and it activated correctly when she cast more powerful spells. Beneath her somewhat haughty and pompous airs, Carla was very unsure of herself. She knew she was still behind her sister and that if she wanted to catch up, she would have to work hard. But she believed. She knew she'd get there in the end. She had to make it.
"Carla."
Kara Artheimer made her entrance into the royal court gardens. Her long, snow-like white hair followed her movement gracefully. The queen of Parvana was a sublime woman, just as much as her husband was renowned for his charm.
What was surprising was that neither Kara nor Wendell resembled their daughters. Both with long white hair and light eyes, their daughters had been born with darker hair, and only Carla had inherited her mother's blue eyes.
Kara and Wendell were ice and wind users respectively. Where they didn't physically resemble each other, Elena had inherited her mother's ice and Carla had inherited both powers, awakening an affinity with blizzard.
The youngest was very proud of her power, but it was well known that in Kaelor double elements were rarer and not necessarily stronger. So it was a necessity to never stop training.
The queen looked at her daughter, arms folded in a majestic posture, surrounded by several of her servants watching her every move. Her elegance was matched only by her poise and Carla felt a little shabby: her hair disheveled, traces of wounds and full of sweat.
"It is time for dinner."
"Very well, Mother." Carla replied shamefully, brushing away the strands stuck to her forehead that blocked her vision.
Kara left as quickly as she had arrived.
The relationship between the two parents and their daughters had never been good or bad. Their relationship was merely courteous and unaffected. Carla had learned to live on her own without many friends before she met Maya. That was enough for her, no matter how hard her sister tried to make life for her and put her down.
The teenager headed for her room. Usually, when her mother called, it meant dinner time was even closer than she had imagined. She hurried through the many corridors she had come to know better than anyone else.
She began to run, feeling the wind slap against her cheeks and the slight chill that felt so good after such a long workout. For the first time in a long time, Carla laughed in this dark castle that had known her sweat and tears.
"You look like you're having fun."
Carla stopped dead in her tracks and looked up at the person in front of her. She immediately recognized that long, black-as-night hair and those piercing purple eyes that sent shivers of annoyance throughout her body.
"Since when do you laugh?" Elena stepped forward, swinging her hair to one side in her dark gait. "You." The brunette placed her finger on her sister's forehead, pushing her away violently.
"That's enough." Carla murmured, her sentence almost inaudible.
"You had the nerve to follow me and go back to Parvana." Elena smiled as she enunciated, articulating each word in an even darker voice. "Father and Mother must have taken pity on you to let you in."
"That's enough." Carla murmured again.
"What's that you're saying? I'm not sure I can hear." Elena moved even closer. "Or maybe I should ask your boyfriend?"
A powerful tornado filled with fragments of ice awoke, taking with it everything that was happening in the long corridor outside the royal residence.
Elena was thrown backwards, the fall causing a sharp pain in her back. She looked up from her seat on the floor at her sister, who was staring at her with a hard expression, her powers flying around her in a rage.
Elena got up as quickly as she had fallen. The scar on her forehead began to glow and a shower of snow with knife-sharp flakes added to Carla's blizzard.
"You." The brunette stepped forward quickly, practically throwing herself at her sister. "How dare you?"
She directed a spell at her sister, who was still watching her standing motionless, her power perfectly awake.
Elena was thrown again, even more violently, to the ground.
At that moment, Carla decided to react and finally took her first step. She raised her hand as she moved towards her sister, who this time had not risen to her feet.
She knew she didn't stand a chance in a long battle, but maybe the new spells and techniques she'd learned would come in handy if she combined them with all the magic she had even if it meant she might lose consciousness from her magic being depleted.
Elena was surprised; it was the first time she'd seen her sister stand up to her like that. But above all, Carla was strong and determined. She was no longer the sensitive, shy little girl she had once been.
The brunette didn't get up, but concentrated her powers, sensing that something was about to happen. She quickly cast a protection spell, unable to invoke a retaliation spell in time given the amount of magic Carla had conjured up.
Perhaps it was a little too powerful? What were the risks? Was Carla unconscious? Could her sister withstand such a concentration of magic?
Carla raised her hand to the sky, two snakes of wind dancing around her arm as ice formed a reinforced glove, freezing her skin in the process. A kind of blizzard sword appeared on her arm.
She suddenly lowered her arm, causing the spell to explode into a mass of particles. The seemingly slow spectacle took place in a fraction of a second.
Carla aimed the spell at her sister and released it directly onto her.
A few tears rolled down her cheeks without her really realizing it.
"I'm not the little girl I used to be!"
That'll do, won't it?
A tornado then came to break and reduce to nothing the shower of sharp pieces of ice that Carla had directed at Elena.
In an instant, everything disappeared. All her magic vanished and Carla collapsed to the ground exhausted, drained of every ounce of magic.
"Take them back to their rooms." These were the last words Carla heard as her vision blurred and faded as she watched her father walk away.
When Carla opened her eyes again, she was lying on her bed in her bedroom. Silence reigned in the room. She slowly got to her feet, placing a hand on her head, which was giving her a terrible migraine.
She turned her gaze and found herself face to face with her father sitting in a chair right next to her. He wasn't moving and his eyes were closed, his arms and legs crossed.
Carla lowered her head, horribly embarrassed. Her arms and legs were covered in frostbite and were hurting furiously. She tried to warm herself by rubbing her body with her hands, preferring to avoid starting the discussion with her father herself.
Wendell Artheimer wasn't sleeping.
His closed eyes were synonymous with anger and it was, without a doubt, certain that Carla's attempted assault on his sister had a lot to do with it.
"Carla." The king ended the silence.
"Father."
"You know very well what I expect of you, my daughter."
Carla hadn't taken her eyes off her wounds, not daring to raise her head for fear of meeting her progenitor's gaze.
"You want me to apologize to Elena."
"No, Carla."
The young girl immediately looked up, caught off guard. Her father was staring at her with his deep gray eyes, his hair of the same color pulled back in a ponytail on top of his head, revealing the fine features of his face.
The Artheimer family was known for its beauty genes, and the two sisters had inherited much of their father's finesse and beauty, as well as their mother's grace and elegance.
However; what Carla envied most about her father wasn't his beauty, most of which she'd recovered, she envied his calmness, his posture and the fact that even though it was certain that their relationship wasn't the most fusional. Wendell Artheimer was an upright and fair man.
"Carla look at me." Asked the king as the girl had shyly turned her gaze again.
Carla complied and dangerously held back her tears, realizing with great embarrassment that she had really almost hurt her sister. As horrible as Elena was, Carla shouldn't have gone so far, and here laid the strength of the Parvanian king. He was able to make his children understand where their mistakes were born and where the beginnings of their successes could die. Above all, Wendell Artheimer was determined to turn their past successes into better ones.
"Carla, I'd like you both to make an effort." He pushed back a lock of her hair that fell over her shoulder. "I know your quarrels aren't new and the pressure of Parvana weighs on your shoulders, but I'm not sure that justifies such actions. I'll leave you to think about it."
Carla nodded, looking at her father who left the room.
She stared straight ahead, head held high, like a true princess. The slightly pretentious princess who didn't care about anything around her, the ice princess as she'd been called, wasn't really a princess at all. She was like a light, cold breeze that spun along, plotting her path as fast as she could in the face of several obstacles that prevented her from moving forward.
"I hate that!"
Carla pounded on her bed.
She leaned her head forward, many tears streaming down her cheeks in a silence that was soon cut short by heavier nervous sobs. Soon more tears rolled down her cheeks and her hair stuck to her tear-drenched skin.
She wanted to find her old sister, the one with whom she'd once been so close. The one who braided her hair when they returned from playing in the playground, the one who tended her wounds when she stumbled, the one who read her stories and finally fell asleep before she did. The one she loved like a sister.
Carla Artheimer needed Elena Artheimer.
But Elena Artheimer didn't need Carla Artheimer.
Elena needed her sister's tears and anger.
In the silent corridor of the Parvanian Castle, a young girl with long black hair slid to the floor. She watched her hands as her reflection appeared in the perfectly polished floor beneath her feet. Her violet eyes were filled with tears.
How could she have come to this? How could she have driven her sister to almost kill her? When had their beautiful relationship become such a living hell?
A wall separated them like the reflection of a mirror, and the two sisters cried without speaking to each other. One couldn't understand why her sister was no longer the same, and the other knew that even if acting so cruelly towards her sister would kill her, she had no choice.
Elena had no choice.
It was better this way.