feel, more and more often these days, like there is another me outside of this dying vessel I am trapped in.

This other me is made of glass, its walls three pearls thick, and wraps all the way around my body of flesh and bone and blood like snakeskin made to suffocate.

I, the real one, am pounding on the glass—let me out, let me out, let me out—yet no one hears. Because everyone—Pilate, Miriam, our mother, Hagar Corradh Ruth Delilah Yael Miriam the Dead One, Miriam the Younger—is outside, looking in; some gasp, some smile, and some shake their heads, sadly, like they are looking at me (the glass one) and seeing a tragedy.

And none of them is doing anything.

Sometimes I wonder if I am going mad. If the poison Pilate fed me has nibbled away little pieces of my brain, none of them important, but when everything is put together there are holes too small to see, and water drips out like blood, and every time I wake up I am a little bit less.

Less there. Less Ieshan. Less holy.

Less Adonai.

Pilate leans forwards, so slightly I only know the difference because the hissing of his snakes grows infinitely louder in my head. I have the sudden urge to snap out my teeth and bite down on one of them. Fill my mouth with snake's blood, the same swirling crimson as wine. Will it taste the same too?

I know it will not kill him, but I do not want to kill him. I only want to make him hurt.

I smile once more as my brother's eyes, beautiful as petrified amber, appraise my face like he is choosing a jewel to go with his robes; yet there is nothing for him to see. I never did guard my emotions as cleverly as he had, but I am learning, and the reason for that is always Pilate. He has made me worse, and yet. And yet.

Though I would rather bite out my tongue than admit it, he is also making me better.

There is a twist of satisfaction, warm as milk in my gut, when I see how he flinches at my words. And there is another twist, harsher this time, like something is trying to worm its way out, when I smash the wineglass against the table and red flecks splatter over his chest, and face, and robe. It also flecks mine but I do nothing but sit and take it. Before, I would have minded. How I hated to be dirtied then, even a little.

Now, I think I almost relish it.

“Oh, Adonai,” Pilate says, and I feel the glass version of me shiver with hairline cracks. “You shouldn’t exert yourself so. Holding a glass is too difficult; there is no need to conceal that from me, your own brother. You must let me do it for you.”

There has always been a righteous anger in me. I hid it well from the others, I think, and though I cannot say with certainty I ever fooled any of them, I know that at the very least they had all collectively agreed to crown me with Mosts: the Most Reserved; the Most Pious; the Most—Understanding. 

As the eldest, I had to be. Mother had made me that way. I am the least like her, because she had wanted a king. Not just a little prince.

And so Katurah offered herself to Solis and when she came out of it, bathed in holy supplication, knew to give me nothing but a body wreathed in gold and ivory. For years, I thanked her twice daily for it. For years, I tried to tell myself that I was not any less than my siblings. That no, I did not wish for, nor was I jealous of, the magic each of them held inside them like chalices filled with holy grail. Even Miriam—even she, my twin, the one I had loved a little bit more than the rest—had shone so bright with her magic.

My siblings did not need for their anger to be righteous, when they were each blessed with so much power.

A servant rushes over with a new glass. Pilate fills it back up to the top, the wine running smooth and slow, and when I look into his eyes this time I see not amber, but pools of black.

When I rise from my seat I do it so quickly I begin to shake.

"Oh, Pilate," I echo, my eyes as deep blue as inkwells. I sweep them callously towards the servants and they bow their heads quickly. What care is it of mine to mind? Let them look all they want. Let them talk to their heart's desire. "What more do you need to do for me? You are so considerate, these days—" my eyes slit closed as I cough out another laugh. Bitter, cruel, tragic. "—that it almost disgusts me." 

I touch my nose affectionately to his bare shoulder, my eyes alight with fury, and fall my way out of the room.