Page 6 of Beyond Those Gilded Walls

“If you are willing to risk your life, Rhyon’s life, so you can go out and drink, you can surely risk it to go work so we can feed and clothe him.” I took a deep breath. It scraped against my throat and burned my lungs. “That money will only last you two three months at best. What will you do after?”

“Get a better job, Odyssa, and do not worry about what Rhyon and I do with our money,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “I have better things to spend that money on than giving you charity. Be glad I am letting you stay in the house at all.”

My anger was building in my chest, spreading like fire through my veins. The Death marks along my neck throbbed in time with my heartbeat. “I was born in this house, Emyl. Long before you. I have as much a claim to the house itself as you. Even if you wanted to, you could not evict me from it.”

He stared at me, and the venom in his eyes communicated plenty what he thought of my words.

“You would truly let your family suffer and starve, just to avoid putting in an honest day’s work? What were you expecting to do for the rest of your life?” The tendrils of fury were escaping the cage of my body, and I feared it would erupt if this continued a moment longer. My Death marks throbbed against my skin to the beat of my thundering heart.

“I guess we’ll never know now, will we?” He made his way back to the front door, pulling on his coat once more. “Either find a better job or be looking for a second one, Odyssa. It really is the least you could do after letting our mother die. Don’t bother waiting up—I don’t know when I’ll return.”

It was a small mercy that he did not slam the door this time either.

I stood, fingers wrapping around the vase that sat in the middle of the kitchen table, and flung it across the room with a shout, letting all my anger fly with the ceramic that then shattered against the wall and fell to the floor.

Both of them believed I’d killed our mother. And perhaps I had. Perhaps she had caught the blood plague from delivering food to the last family, and it did spread by touch. Perhaps I had been the one to send my mother to her deathbed by asking her to take it instead of me, for begging off the work due to another bout of fever-induced vertigo. We would never know for sure, but just like every other family in Veressia, we had no choice but to move on, to keep living for those left behind.

But I knew, without a shadow of doubt in my soul, that if my mother were still alive, that if she had been the one to ask Emyl to help us with money and told him to get a job, that he would not have refused her.

But I also knew she would never have asked him in the first place. She would have looked to me to help her make ends meet, whatever the cost to our own souls.

Was I weaker than my mother, that I could not make ends meet without asking my siblings to assist?

My mother had loved us all dearly, in her own way, but perhaps she’d done us all a disservice by shielding them from the world. And perhaps I’d continued it by shielding my brothers alongside her.

Breathing hard, I pushed my hands through my hair. My brother would truly rather drink himself stupid than help us survive, and there was nothing I could do to convince him otherwise. Not now. We’d failed him, failed to impose any sense of responsibility in him, any sense of family. He’d always been able to do what he wished, and I feared there was nothing I could do now to fix that. I could only hope Rhyon would not fall victim to Emyl’s selfishness.

My hands balled into fists, blood singing with bottled fury. I itched to hit something, to feel something else break, to destroy. But instead, I fell to the ground and buried my face in my hands. And I cried for the first time in years.

Not even a full day had passed since I’d wrapped my mother’s corpse, and I was already failing her. My chest felt tight, like a vise had wrapped around my ribs and squeezed. Tears dripped down my cheeks, running over my lips and filling my mouth with salt.

There was nothing I could do now except hope that Emyl would somehow come around on his own.

I let myself cry a moment longer, and then I dried my own tears and picked myself up.

Alone in a world that was quickly dying and alone in a home that felt like a tomb, I knew no one would help me any longer—I needed to do it myself.

ChapterFour

Rhyon still would not deign to even look in my direction, let alone utter a word to me the next morning. At last, though, as dawn broke over the city and the morning haze lifted to reveal only the shroud of red mist, his hunger had driven him from his room and now he sat at the table while I cooked, adamantly keeping his gaze on the wood in front of him.

At least he would not starve to prove his anger. Another similarity between us. I’d tried, as a child, to win arguments with my mother by refusing to eat, but she had far more experience at being stubborn than I had, and I always broke first.

The click and drag of the front door opening caught both our attention. Our eyes met briefly before Rhyon turned his gaze towards the doorway with a flush in his cheeks, as if gazing upon his own sister was a petty crime, worthy of punishment.

I watched him for a heartbeat longer, aching to go and smooth out the sleep-wild hair at his forehead. I watched as the furrow in his forehead smoothed out and he jolted from his chair, the legs screeching against the wood as he flung himself through the doorway and into Emyl’s arms.

I turned back around to finish making breakfast.

“Hi, Rhy.” He grunted at the end of the word, groaning as he picked up Rhyon, who giggled. The sound of their affection cut through me, my hand tightening around the wooden spoon pushing the meat around the pan. Footsteps scuffled across the floors. “Odyssa, I did not expect you to be up.”

“Yes. Someone needed to make Rhyon breakfast.” I didn’t turn around. Couldn’t. “Would you like any?”

“No, I ate already.” His voice was flat, cold. I was glad I could not see his face, at least.

I bit down on my tongue to hold back the retort, swallowing down the words I desperately wanted to say. More sounds of chairs scraping and bodies falling into chairs filled the kitchen. Hushed words passed between my brothers, soft enough that I could not make them out, not that I wanted to hear what they had to say.

Even though all three of us believed me responsible for our mother’s death, I would do as she’d asked me with her last breaths. I would care for my brothers, protect them. Even if they hated me for it.

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