The Other Brother (Snow and Ash Book 3) (18 page)

It’s too dark, though. There’s a window, but by now dark has fallen. “I can’t.”

She smooths her hands through the thick tangles of my hair. “What happened, Bianca? What did they do to you?”

My chest locks up, my throat closes, and I think if I let out even a sound, I’ll shatter.

“He divorced me.” My voice is pathetic. Weak. Hardly there at all.

“Goddamned bastard! He’s a pig, Bianca. A monster. I told you that. Fucking asshole!”

“I loved him.” Sobs of despair and shame hit me, and I clutch my stomach. I put everything in him. I’m still his. I always will be.

“Bianca? Bianca! Here, sit. I need you to sit, honey.” She guides me down beside her, lets me lay my head in her lap. “I’m so sorry. I told you not to get involved.”

“You were too late.”

She strokes my hair, just like she did that day when those men came to our house. Her voice is soft and comforting, but it doesn’t take away the pain. We huddle through the night. I wish I could sleep, but I can’t. Tish can’t seem to either. Finally light rises through our only window.

“Do you know what they’re going to do to us?” she asks.

“He never said.” I can’t say his name. It hurts too much. He’s not mine anymore.

I hear voices in the hallway, the sound of doors banging open, and voices, both male and female, pleading. It’s quiet for about fifteen minutes, and then keys grind in our locks.

Six soldiers file in, and behind them…

“Patricia!” I scramble to my feet and fly to her. The expression on her face. I wouldn’t call it cold. Her hands twitch, and she looks at me as though she wishes she could punch me or choke me or do something to make me pay. I just stand there, gaping at her. Does no one believe me?

Patricia hauls back and spits in my face, and I have my answer.

I think about how nice she was. I think about that warm welcome I received here in Asheville. It was never for me. It was for Kent’s Hole. The only person that cares about me right now is sitting on the floor behind me.

Soldiers grab both Tish and me, and we’re forced to our knees. Patricia takes a pair of long sheers and begins cutting away at my hair. My hair! I wheeze. Always too curly, always too frizzy, and now it drops in clumps to the floor. When the final length drops, she begins again, clipping close to my scalp.

“Motherfucker, I’ll fucking kill you!” Tish flings at her captors. I admire her spirit. I don’t even remember what that feels like.

Patricia pockets the sheers and brings out a razor, and I squeeze my eyes shut. Girls don’t really shave anymore. If you’re going someplace where your pits are going to be exposed, you shave them. If your legs are going to be visible, you shave those too. But other than that, things just grow. There’s a shortage of everything, including razors.

There’s no soap, no lotion, no anything to lube my skin before Patricia starts.

“Hold still, bitch. Do you want me to cut you?” Whoever it is doesn’t seem to be talking to me.

Tish curses, and I hear her spit. The man swears.

The cold metal scraping against my tender scalp goes on and on, and surprisingly Patricia doesn’t so much as nick me.

“Hold her head up good and still,” she says.
 

I don’t understand, not at all, until she raises the razor to my left eyebrow. After four deft draws, she moves to the other one, and when she’s done, I raise my hands to my face. I shake. I feel like I’m in a vacuum. I try to breathe, but it’s not right. It’s not right. It’s a mistake. A mistake, mistake, mistake.

“Someone shut her up,” says Patricia. I didn’t realize I was saying anything, but one of the men punches me in the jaw. My head cracks back and I taste blood.

Tish alternately threatens and pleads as they cuff first her, then me, and haul us to our feet. I think I know where we’re going, and when we step out into the light, I find myself in what used to be a parking lot. I’ve seen it before. It’s where Kent shot those men.

Already there are twenty-some others there kneeling in a row. They have bags over their heads.

I’m cold. Tish kicks and screams, but silently I walk beside my soldiers—Kent’s soldiers—until we reach the end of the line.

“Kneel.” The soldier’s voice is toneless, void of emotion.

I kneel. The last thing I see before he drops the bag over my head is Kent, standing a little apart from a squadron of soldiers.

I breathe in. Out. In. The cloth moves with my breaths. I shake, and I think I might wet myself. They’re going to kill us.

“You people are murderers! Murderers!” Tish cries. “I heard what you tried to do to Balenchuk’s daughter. I’m glad she escaped from you! Motherfuckers—”

I squeeze my eyes shut as she grunts. They’ve hit her or knifed her, I don’t know. They’ve hurt my sister, and it hurts me.

Gravel digs into my knees. Once again my feet are numb. For some reason I smell ash. That shouldn’t be. The ash stopped falling years ago. My whole body jerks with the first gunshots.

An adrenaline rush sends my heart slamming against my chest. It’s a mistake, a mistake, a mistake!

But it’s not. I should have died when those men came to our house. It would have been kinder, far kinder than drawing my life on like this. Maybe this is God’s way of correcting an oversight. If not, I still deserve it. I ate steak while others are forced to cut their dead into pieces and survive on human flesh. I complained about too many starches when there are none to be had outside the city walls. I am a monster.

I pick out Kent’s voice, even though he has to be a good twenty feet away. I’d recognize his voice a hundred years from now, if I were still alive. He’s speaking too low for me to catch his words. There’s a moment of silence, and then a duo of gunfire. The distinct sound of bodies hitting the ground raises bile in the back of my throat. But they’re free now. No one can hurt them anymore. It doesn’t matter what happens in this world from this point on, because nothing here can touch them.

I stop shaking, and peace comes over me. This is it. Kent taught me many things, and the most important one was to let go. He stripped away everything I used to keep myself together, and he replaced it with false trust. He made me put myself—my life—into his hands, and I did. Last night I couldn’t have said no to a single thing he wanted. I still can’t. He is my glue, and without him I am nothing. Just a puddle of cells and flesh.

“Attempted murder of the commander in chief. Plotting against an allied leader. Entering the territory on false pretenses. Espionage.” Kent’s voice is dead, as though he’s reading from a script. He’s right there, just a few steps to my right. There’s that familiar pause, and the guns fire. Two bodies flop to the ground.

Trust me, Bianca. Trust me. You have to, or this will never work.

Tish lets out a sob. When Tish gives up, that’s huge.

I hear the scrape of boots across asphalt. I hear them stop just behind me. I can smell him. That sweet male scent that used to make my knees weak and my pussy wet. He’s here for me.

You’re not fit to be a Barry. Those were his words.

“Conspiring to kill the commander in chief, entering the territory under false…” He trails off as his voice catches.

I’m not okay. I’ll never be okay. Now that he’s gone from me, I’m an empty hole. Without him I face year after unending year of darkness. I am already dead, but I’m a corpse that can still think. Feel. Cry. He sees this as an execution, but it’s not. It’s mercy. I sway slightly, tilt my head back to the gun I know hovers just behind me. It is permission. It is forgiveness. I close my eyes and wait.

Silence.

“Kent,” Nico prompts.

The bag is ripped from my head. Kent uses the sole of his boot to shove me face-first into the ground. I’m half on my side, though, and I can see him.

“I forgive you,” I say, my voice thin as wind. My eyes close almost to slits.

“Come on, Kent, stop dicking around,” Nico demands.

“I can’t kill you,” he says, his voice low and thick with emotion. He snorts. “You’re good; I’ll give you that. I guess I’ll have to send you back to your father. You and your sister.”

Cursing under his breath, Nico spins around and flings his weapon at another soldier. He runs his hands through his hair, almost as though he’d like to tear it out.

Tish is crying, great big gulping sobs.

I just stare at him. I was so ready for it all to end, and now he’s making me stay? I have to feel this?

“You tell your father to get ready for war. We’re coming. Then you’d better find someplace else to go, because if I see either of you again, you’re dead.”

He gets to his feet. “Nico.”

“What the fuck, Kent. They tried to kill Lawrence.”

“I’m done here. You get her—you get them both out of here. I want them gone by dinner.”

Without a backward glance, he stalks away.

Nico yanks Tish to her feet and pulls off her bag. She spits in his face, and he hauls back and punches her. Tish staggers back with a grunt.

One of the other soldiers puts a hand under my arm and helps me to my feet. My hands are still bound, and my feet burn, making walking difficult. But I follow him numbly. Obediently.

I walk into my cell unassisted. They toss Tish in behind me, and the door slams shut.

Tish latches on to me and lets loose. I’ve never heard her cry like this. “I thought I was going to die! I thought they were going to kill us.” Just like she did for me, I pull her to my chest and pat her hair. I am a corpse.

Tish catches her breath. “I was wrong about him. Kent. He’s not quite the monster I thought he was.”

I say nothing. I have nothing to say. He’s left me empty. I am flesh and muscle and teeth, but I no longer have free will. He’s taken that from me, and it’s gone forever.

Tish is wrong. Kent let me live. He is the perfect monster.

~ ~ ~

We huddle together in the corner of our cell. Tish falls asleep against my shoulder, but I can’t. I thought being raped was the worst thing that could happen to me. I thought nothing could surpass that, but I was wrong.

I shut down. In my mind I make up another day. Instead of accusing me, Kent comes into my room, scoops me up, and tells me he loves me. He makes love to me slowly, tenderly, and we fall asleep in each other’s arms.

How can this be it? He told me to trust him, so I trusted him. He never said it worked the other way; I realize that now. He never said the words I trust you, and I didn’t ask. I just assumed that because he made me feel important, made me feel treasured, he felt the same way. I did everything he told me to do, and when he’d smile, it would make my heart beat faster. A caress across the back of my hand was ecstasy. I didn’t care about the scars on his face. If anything, they made me love him more. He understood what it was to suffer. I lived for his approval; I lived because he made it bearable.

But he never said he loved me, not even once, and my pitiful vision can’t even begin to erase reality.

When the locks turn, I get to my feet. Tish comes awake and brushes back her hair—hair she no longer has—and stands up too.

I’m not surprised when the soldiers cuff us. But when Nico and Ayden saunter into the room, I tense. Why would Ayden be anywhere near me? I eye the bucket of red-hot coals she sets down beside her. Too cold for her? Or is it for something else? Coals. Burning. Kent’s scars. I shiver.

Ayden catches my eye and bares her teeth. “We have a little gift from Kent for you. I hope you don’t mind he’s not here. He doesn’t want his space polluted. But Nico and I, we don’t mind.”

Nico smirks.

“Let go of me, dick!” The soldier ignores Tish as he chains her to a ring bolted high up on the wall.

They chain me too, and as Tish struggles, I think, what’s the point? In the end they’ll win. They’ll always win.

The soldier tightens Tish’s chain.

“You can’t do this!” she snarls. “Kent said we were supposed to leave. He said you were supposed to get us out of the city.”

Ayden grins. “Oh, there’s plenty of time. Don’t worry about that.”

Nico nods at the soldiers, and they take out knives. I eye the serrated edge and go cold. A bullet to the back of the head is nothing. A knife, though… I think I’ll faint. I flick Nico a wide-eyed look. He raises his brows, looks away, and suppresses a smile. But the soldier doesn’t cut me. Instead he begins cutting away my clothes, and another older fear hits me. This can’t be happening. It can’t.

Beside me, Tish kicks and fights, and her soldier grabs her by the neck and slams her against the wall. “I’ll cut you. I promise. Make one more move and I will.”

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Bianca,” says Nico. “They’re not going to rape you. They don’t want your body any more than I do.”

“Pull the chains tighter,” Ayden says. “I want them on their tiptoes.”

My chains go taut, and my shoulders feel like they’re going to pop from their sockets.

“Face to the wall,” Nico says.

Tish swivels around and directs a kick at Nico. “Fuck you, asshole!”

I’m used to orders. Tish is not. The nameless soldier delivers a blow to her midsection and Tish grunts. The soldier places her in position while she tries to get her breath back.

I’m still watching her heave when I hear a high-pitched whistling sound, and something sharp and terrible snaps my skin. It eats into my flesh, tears me open, and I scream. Even Tish screams.

I hear another whistle, and another burning slash tears into my back. They’re using whips. As seemingly endless strikes fall, I grow incapable of thought. I become pain.

When the whistling ceases, I sag, thinking that’s it, but then I hear an object clank against something metal, and then searing, blinding pain cuts into the small of my back. I scream a scream so hard it’s purely animal.

“I’ll fucking kill you, bitch. I’ll fucking kill you!” The pure rage in Tish’s voice just makes it worse. She can see what they’re doing; I can’t.

“Just another gift,” Ayden says against my ear. “Special delivery from your ex.”

The white-hot object moves over my skin. She’s drawing something or writing something into my skin. It goes on forever. It lasts hours. Years. Even after she steps back, the pain continues, and my muscles can no longer support me. My shoulder sockets bear my entire weight as I vomit all down the front of my chest.