Page 73 of The Reckoning
That question—those fucking words—slice through me like barbed wire.
He dares. He fuckingdaresto compare his pampered, guilt-ridden conscience tomyhell?
The nerve of him breathing the wordsufferedlike he earned it.
Rage floods my veins, thick and hot, and I see nothing but red.
He fights back harder than I expected for someone who spent months locked inmycage. We throw jabs at one another, and then his fist lands against my ribs. Something gives with a sickening crack that fills my ears, followed by a jolt of white-hot agony.
I grunt, doubling over but not dropping.
I didn’t make it this far to wave a white flag of defeat.
“You hadeverything!” I roar, surging forward and slamming him against a tree trunk. The crack of impact is vicious, and I hear the air whoosh out of his lungs. I pin him there, forearm grinding into his throat, watching his face begin to turn a mottled shade of purple. “The family. The name. The life that should’ve beenOURS!”
He claws at my arm, gasping, but I don’t let up.
“Youletthem take me,” I snarl, fury boiling over. “Youstood thereand saidnothingwhile they dragged me away like I was already dead!” I drive my knee into his gut, and he folds over with a strangled sound, but I hold him upright, refusing to give him the dignity of falling. “Your silence was the loudest fucking betrayal of all.”
His chest heaves, and something dark and lifeless trickles into his eyes. A look I know all too well. “I was only fourteen!!”
“Me fucking too, or did you forget? Forget that we’re identical in every single way, that your brain is wired the same asmine? I was a child when I was abandoned by my family—by my own fucking brother.”
With unexpected strength, he shoves me off him, his jaw twitching, his entire body vibrating like an animal in a cage. “I didn’t abandon you! They told me you were dangerous. That you’d killed Mom. I didn’t have any other way to try to save you.”
All I can do is shake my head. Disappointment and anger so hot it burns me to ash sears my insides. “That’s the worst part, that you fucking believed them!” I’m on him, tackling him to the ground with such force the air leaves his lungs in a harsh wheeze. My fists find his face—one, two, three brutal blows that snap his head to the side. “Over your own fucking brother!”
He catches my wrist on the fourth swing, twisting until something pops. Pain lances up my arm, but I barely feel it. I’m consumed with rage, with anger, with the need to make him feel as broken and abandoned as I felt in that place.
“I tried to stop them!” he screams, and his voice cracks at the edges while his eyes bleed into mine, willing me to believe him. “I begged our father not to send you away!”
“LIAR!” I slam my forehead into his nose, hearing it crunch beneath the impact. More blood sprays between us. “I might believe that if you had made an attempt to stop them, if you had tried to intervene, but you didn’t. You didn’t even try. Instead, you stood there like a coward and watched them drag me away. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when you didn’t come to visit, not even once in the eight fucking years I was there. You didn’t even try, didn’t make a fucking effort.”
He bucks beneath me with sudden ferocity, flipping us over. Now he’s on top, pinning my shoulders with his knees, raining down blows that make stars explode behind my eyes. The fucked-up part is I’d rather feel pain, rather endure this, than anything else I have in the past.
“You aren’t the only one who suffered. As if I ever had a choice?” Each word is punctuated with another punch. “Richard—beat—the truth—into me!”
I catch his fist mid-swing, using his momentum to throw him sideways. We roll again, grappling in the dirt like animals, all pretense of humanity stripped away. His teeth find my shoulder, savage and primal.
I howl, grabbing a fistful of his hair, smashing his head against the ground.
“He made me forget you!” Aries screams, blood and spittle flying from his lips. “Do you understand? Anytime I asked a question or tried to find out any little bit of information, he would beat me. At some point, he started beating me just to beat me, until I couldn’t remember what happened. Until I started believing what he told me about you, that you were dangerous, that you were the one who killed our mother, that you were the problem, and eventually, that you were dead!”
The rubber band securing all my rage, all my revenge snaps, and they drain out of me like water escaping an overflowing dam. “I didn’t die,” I rasp, driving my elbow into his sternum. “I was living in hell while you played football and fucked cheerleaders!”
He laughs, the sound manic and broken. “Of course that’s what you think I was doing. Living a life of luxury, and I guess from the outside looking in, it appears that way. But my life was anything but a luxury. Richard controlled every second of every day. One toe out of line and it was belts, fists, or whatever he had handy to hit me with. I spent years walking on eggshells, of never being good enough, of jumping at shadows!”
We separate momentarily, circling each other like wolves. Blood drips from a dozen wounds between us—split lips, broken noses, gashes where knuckles have met cheekbones. In themoonlight, we must look like ghosts, identical specters haunting each other’s lives.
“I swear to you, I tried.” His voice breaks on the words, and he lurches forward, his hand fisted in my shirt. “The first week after they took you. I told them the truth. I told them it was my fault.” Something in his tone makes me hesitate, checking the fist pulled back for another strike. “Richard beat me until I couldn’t stand.” The dam in him has broken, the words flowing out of his mouth like a rapid river. “Again and again. For weeks. I had no choice but to believe his version of things. He conditioned me.”
“I don’t fucking believe you,” I whisper, but my voice cracks, giving away my emotions.
“Then don’t, but I was there, Arson. I was fucking there when he said you died.” Aries’s grip on my shirt tightens. “There when they said they’d tried to help you, but you were too far gone. That you’d killed yourself at the facility. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I believed him. I’m sorry that for years I thought you were dead when you were really alive, living in that place, suffering. If I had known, if I’d had any idea, I would’ve done more.”
I roll off him, sprawling on my back in the grass. The night sky spins above me, stars blurring as something hot and unfamiliar burns behind my eyes.
Is it possible? That none of this was really his fault?
