Page 12 of Decimation

The words hang in the air of our dining room, sharp and jagged, their edges bleeding a sickly grey-green that makes my stomach churn. She’s dead.

I sit perfectly still in my chair, the ornate mahogany pressing into my spine as though it’s some form of torture while my hands are folded in my lap like I’ve been taught, like a good daughter behaves. The chandelier above us, all crystal and old money, casts fractured light across the long table, across the remains of our dinner. The light dances in prismatic hues but tonight it feels oppressive, like a mockery of the rainbow it usually paints.

For a moment, no one says anything. No one reacts.

But then my mother makes a sound, something between a sob and a gasp. Her colours, usually a soft, comforting lavender flare into a deep, bruised purple streaked with jagged lines of red.

Heartbreak tinged with rage.

I know this not because of the colour alone. The colours never work like that. They shift with tone, cadence, heartbeat, tension. I’ve spent my entire life learning the language of them, trying to understand what this extra ability I have is, and how it can help me. How I can read rooms, read people, guess their motives before they even speak.

My mother has it too, she calls it our little secret. Something dangerous, something that could get me burnt as a witch if it got out.

The doctor calls it associative synaesthesia.

My father calls it an abomination. A sign of my sin.

“How?” My mother’s voice cracks.

She’s gripping her wine glass so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter. Her knuckles are pale against her brown skin, her whole body trembling with the effort of remaining seated, remaining composed.

But she knows better than to make a scene. We all do.

Ezekiel shifts in his seat at the head of the table, because of course he’s at the head, even though this is my father’s house. He commands space the way wealthy white men always do, as if the world exists to accommodate them. His aura is unlike anyone else’s I’ve seen - erratic, swirling, a kaleidoscope of colours that shift too quickly to name. Gold, crimson, deep indigo, all bleeding into one another in a hypnotic, almost divine pattern.

It’s mesmerizing, impossible to look away from and it makes me believe, truly believe that he is what they say he is; a prophet. A messenger from God himself.

“Does it matter?” He asks, reaching for his own wine.

The glass looks delicate in his hand. Everything in this house is delicate, ornate, dripping with old money and older secrets. The wallpaper is silk damask, the floors are polished parquet, the paintings on the walls are original Rembrandts. My father’s family has been wealthy since the dark ages, their fortune built on things we don’t discuss - slavery, exploitation, the systematic destruction of people who looked exactly like my mother, like me.

“What matters is that we now have a problem.” Isaac states.

A problem.

My sister is a problem. No, was a problem. She’s nothing anymore. Not even a footnote. She’s dead. Gone.

I want to scream. I want to overturn this table, to send all this precious china crashing to the floor, shatter every carefully maintained illusion. But I don’t. I sit perfectly still, my face carefully neutral because I learned a long time ago that showing emotion in this house is not simply dangerous, it’s positively deadly.

Across from me, my older brother Hector shifts. He’s twenty, two years older than me, and he’s mastered the art of becoming invisible as well as I have. His aura is muted, just like always, a dull grey-green that speaks of fear and resignation. He stares at his plate, his jaw tight, and says nothing. He’s good at saying nothing.

“We will need a replacement.” Isaac says matter-of-factly, as if we’re discussing a broken appliance.

“Leandra.”

My name in Ezekiel’s mouth makes my skin react in a way I can’t quite figure out. Is it fear or adoration, or both? I force myself to meet his eyes, those dark, assessing eyes that seem to see through everything. His aura pulses, a burst of gold and crimson that feels almost like a caress. He’s looking at me the way someone might appraise a piece of furniture, considering its worth, its potential utility.

No.

Noooo.

The thought slams through me with crystalline clarity, sharp as broken glass, but I don’t say it. I don’t say anything. My throat has closed up, my tongue feels thick and useless.

“She is the logical choice.” Astrid says, smirking at me slightly from across the table where she’s sat beside her monster of a husband.

God, I hate her. Of all my siblings, Astrid is the one I hate the most. She has synaesthesia too and she knows exactly how to use it, how to twist it, how to hurt people with it.

“She’s perfect,” Isaac states, still looking at me. His aura is murky, a muddy brown that shifts uneasily. “The right age, the right bloodline…”