The truth unraveled one afternoon while Kael had stepped out to buy something. Kaia, with a smile that didn’t quite reach her sightless eyes, approached me.
“Skylar, aren’t you curious about my relationship with Kael?” she asked casually, her voice laced with something unspoken.
Before I could respond, she answered her own question. “I’m his first love,” she said, her smile widening.
Her words hit me like a blow, but she wasn’t finished. “I heard that after we broke up, he dated several girls who looked like me. Tell me, Skylar, even though I can’t see, we must look quite similar, don’t we?”
Her words froze me in place. She wasn’t wrong. Our features bore an uncanny resemblance, like shadows of the same face.
That day, I took her for a walk in the courtyard. A passerby paused to ask if we were sisters.
At that moment, the realization struck me, like a sharp, unwelcome truth. After six years of being by his side, I was nothing more than a stand-in.
The questions I had buried deep within suddenly unraveled, one by one. Why did Kael pour so much of himself into Kaia? Why, when I had been bedridden with a high fever, my voice trembling as I called him, he hesitated.