Book One – Chapter 15

Yu squinted. His patience, already frayed, strained further. He looked at the two figures again — identical trousers, identical wings, identical everything. Then back at Tirran, his expression deliberately blank. “It’s too late for jokes. Just tell me.”

Tirran’s ears twitched. “Look at the wings.” His left ear flicked toward the one brother exiting the kitchen. “There.”

Yu’s temper cracked. “Cut the shit. Don’t mock me.”

He had just spent fifteen minutes sitting next to them. Fifteen minutes staring, picking apart every detail, searching for any way to tell them apart. There was nothing. No difference then, and none now. He had only been able to address and distinguish them by name after they had introduced themselves. Now that they walked around, there was no way to tell them apart. They were indistinguishable.

Tirran frowned though still not fixating on Yu. “How do you mean?”

 “How do — What?” Yu echoed, thrown off by the omira’s genuine confusion.

He had expected smugness. A flicker of amusement. Maybe even outright mockery — or some other self-indulging version of I got you there, new guy. Heck, he would have preferred outright hostility. Instead, there was only blank incomprehension.

What followed was five agonising minutes of disjointed explanations, exasperated clarifications, and increasingly unhelpful commentary from those still lingering in the common room. As it turned out, Deltington and Estingar were identical to Yu, but not to everyone else. Obviously not. Estingar, they insisted, bore streaks of silver along his wings. Deltington did not. He had silver streaks on his chest. Yu saw only blue. On both. Everywhere. Where others saw distinct markings, he saw nothing but an unbroken expanse of dark blue.

“You really cannot see it?” One of them – Estingar? Or was it Deltington? – leaned in, pushing his wing unsettlingly close to Yu’s face, grinning wide enough to bare the double-layered rows of needles that were his teeth. “Not at all?”