Olivia Sparks

"Oh," Olivia uttered under her breath. She was totally taken aback by her mother-in-law's news. It felt as if Queen Isla dropped a bomb from the sky and it landed at the exact seat that Olivia was sitting on. 

She wondered if she had been too complacent lately that she failed to smell what was brewing under her nose.

Queen Isla was a member of Pyxis?

Rona Co was Queen Isla's twin sister?

She blinked, and blinked again but couldn't see any resemblance between Queen Isla and Rona Co. If there's a person in the world that knew the Headmistress inside and out, it would be Olivia. 

The lady practically raised Olivia like her own although she felt something superficial with the way Rona Co took extra care with things revolving Olivia's activities.

Across the desk, Queen Isla sat with her hands resting on top of her l.a.p. She patiently waited for the details to sink into Olivia's head. 

Of course, it shocked her. Who wouldn't when every morning it was also a shock for Queen Isla to wake up knowing she had an abomination disguised as a human for a twin sister? 

Who wanted to be a twin to someone as psychotic as Rona Co? Not Queen Isla for sure.

"I think…I should run a check on all my family members," Olivia concluded and scrunched her nose when the lightbulb moment hit her. Queen Isla mirrored her nuance and nodded her head in agreement.

"Start with your husband. You'll be shocked by the things you'll find out," Queen Isla suggested, a smirk curved her ruby-stained lips. Olivia saw how amus.e.m.e.nt flickered in the queen's eyes, and it scared her.

She decided that doing another background check on Maxen would yield a different result or perhaps would incite a different reaction from her. Either way, it won't be good for Maxen nor their marriage so Olivia completely shut down her mother-in-law's suggestion.

"I don't think that's a good idea. If Maxen has something important to tell me or knew something that would benefit us both, then I believe he wouldn't think twice to inform me about it," Olivia chattered, speaking without pause until the end of her speech. She was surprised at how much air she had been holding inside the entire time.

Queen Isla was smiling at Olivia and it creeped the latter out. Olivia wanted to ask the queen what was making her happy but it was obvious that it was Olivia herself who was uplifting the queen's mood. "Mom is really happy to see your relationship with Maxen growing every day."

"We've veered off the topic, Mom," Olivia reminded Queen Isla, grinning at the queen who was now laughing with her hand covering her mouth.

"What are we talking about again? Oh, yeah, Pyxis and Rona. Which one do you want to talk about first?"

"The most important one," Olivia urged, her voice laced with excitement.

"Okay, so I was a member of the—"

"No, I was thinking about your relationship with the Headmistress."

Queen Isla snorted. "Heol. I think you're starting to turn into a gossiping auntie like me, Livi darling," Queen Isla commented and reached for Olivia's hand. "It's fun that you're learning the ropes from me. I know Maxen is like his dad; they don't like talking about other people, that's why it gets lonely sometimes when I'm alone here at The Highlands. But now that I have you, I have someone to tell all the tidbits that I picked up."

Forcing a smile on her lips, Olivia let her mother-in-law babble. Ever since Maxen and her moved into The Highlands, Queen Isla would always find Olivia and chitchat with her. Sometimes, Olivia felt like her mother-in-law's 'eloquence' was rubbing off on her or it had opened up a side of Olivia that she was not aware existed in her system—and that was enjoying the art of gossiping.

"That Rona. I was born first, by the way. We are fraternal twins and I got the Asian gene pool from our mom while she leaned more on our dad's European side of the genes." 

The queen squared her shoulders and straightened her back, bracing herself for a long and winding story about twin sisters who never got along. "To make the story short, Rona's a witch and not just any type of witch, but the vilest of them all kind of witch that you wanted to put on a stake and watch her burn into ashes. I might have gone a little overboard but that's what I feel, and I don't regret saying it at all.

"I tried and so did everyone, tried to understand her but she's wired differently. Rona's always competing with me even though I don't give a freak about it. She wanted it all; the recognition, our parents' attention, our colleagues' approval. At one point I stopped being bothered by it and you know, lived my own life as if she never existed.

"So Alistair and I, we never got along really, but then something brought us two together and after that we were inseparable. It was a whirlwind romance, we got married within the year of going out which sounds awfully familiar, right?"

Olivia pursed her lips and stifled a smile but failed. "It does sound familiar, but what I'm interested to know was what brought you and Dad together?"

"Heol. This girl. Let's save that story for later. So where are we? Oh, right, the wedding part. My engagement announcement to Alistair took a toll on Rona. She hated to see me get the attention that she felt should belong to her." Queen Isla made circles around her ears and rolled her eyes—a perfect description of her twin. "So she left, or so we thought until we got word that she was secretly visiting Henry's office."

"Okay," Oliva leaned back on her seat, tipping it at a safe angle when Queen Isla's story took a sudden turn. "They've been having an affair for that long? That's… I don't know."

"That's what I thought at first too, but I know Henry. He was head over heels over Beshy," Queen Isla cited. She folded her arms over her c.h.e.s.t and shook her head upon remembering how the facts made no sense to her back then.

"Is the Headmistress the one behind my mother's accident?"

Queen Isla froze in her seat and gulped. She couldn't ignore this discussion anyway, and nobody would dare tell Olivia the truth. Everyone buried the incident as if it never happened at all, but Olivia was a part of that incident too. 

She thought Olivia was a victim of one woman's jealousy, that was why Queen Isla felt it was Olivia's right to know the accounts of what happened the night she was born.

"We had speculation she was, but we traced it back to the Huks. However, the trail was so clean. If it was up to me, I would think she had a hand in it too."

Olivia nodded her head. They could not just base their decisions on mere speculations, especially when whatever they do would be enough to start a war, which was something they were preventing from happening.

"What happened that night was unexpected. Nobody prepared us for that to happen. I remember Sebastian and the Pyxis were having a dinner meeting when Henry called, yelling over the phone. It was embarrassing because we could hear his voice from a distance. That's how mad he was. It forced your mom to rush home. And Sebastian, who always worried about your mom's well-being, accompanied her just because. Then," Queen Isla paused and gulped, "the accident happened."

"After the accident, I tried to piece the puzzle together. I was thinking if it was Henry's doing because I don't know. It was as if his brain inhaled a poison or it electrocuted itself while he's asleep when one day, your mom revealed she was pregnant with you, and Henry went ballistic. He kept saying you're not his child, so Beshy took a test to prove that you were his, but it still wasn't enough.

"Your mom is… was… used to be an amazing person. It's the reason Henry fell hard for her in the first place. I wanted to know what Rona showed him, or had given Henry just so I could change his mind but it was all a dead-end for me, even with the Suis' system backing me up. I knew it was Rona behind your dad's unfounded cheating accusation because she liked him for a long time but she's a cuckoo so he just ignored her, Henry-style."

Olivia scoffed in derision, "Tell me about it." She then clutched the skeleton key that was dangling on her neck—Maxen's birthday present to her. Had she known how much information was stored inside Maxen's study, she would have moved in at Notios Estate the moment she accepted his gift.

"Rona is my twin. We shared the same w.o.m.b for months, and I'm thankful she didn't eat me alive while we're still baking in our mom's oven, that's why you shouldn't underestimate someone as silent as her. That woman's a viper, you'll never know when she'll strike."