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“You shuddup…” Romulus snapped back, or tried to. There wasn’t much conviction to the words yet, but it sure didn’t sound like fifteen years had passed at all. “You’re not in any position to tell me what to do.” Kieran felt like he was in the middle of some terrible movie. He fought the urge to… what? Giggle?
Hysteria. It had to be hysteria, right along with lack of sleep, malnutrition, and probably some of the diseases that were rampant in the human neighborhoods. He was only a failure from a witch family in tatters, one that had produced too many children without magic, too many humans, to advance. He was nothing more than a makeshift nurse in a useless Rebellion, someone who had only joined up for strength in numbers.
In stark contrast, Romulus would’ve looked well-fed and healthy if it hadn’t been for the way the drugs made his face slack. A few hours, though, and he’d be good as new. He had the chance to go back to some cushy lifestyle and live in luxury while Kieran languished in squalor.
Jealousy surged through him. Here he was, struggling to survive each day and his brother was offering his ass up to someone who would’ve been a criminal before the Takeover. Now, though, nothing was sacred and very few things were forbidden — as long as it only hurt humans and traitors.
Romulus let out an ugly laugh that was made all the worse by the sedation that was slowly wearing thinner and thinner. “Wha’re you gonna do…? Tell Mom?” he challenged with a snort. He started to pull himself up by the restraints, only to find there was barely any room to go in any direction. “Let me out, Kier,” Romulus whined.
The repetition of his nickname from his brother’s lips was like a sucker punch. “Stop talking to me like you know me!” The vehemence in his own voice caught him off guard, and Kieran turned, unable to even look in Romulus’s direction. “I’m not letting you out. I don’t know you. All right?”
The cellar was quiet for several long moments. Kieran hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t thought his sibling even knew how to shut up when he wasn’t sleeping. Not his sibling, he had to remind himself yet again. Not even his stepsibling. Just a witch.
Somehow, the silence was worse than the talking. He finally glanced back over at the corner Romulus was in, where he was hanging against the restraints with his face burrowing against his own bicep.
Maybe they had given him too many drugs. Kieran should’ve asked what they’d given him, but he’d been too flustered. And now…
He stalked closer to the witch. “Look up at me,” he ordered. He held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Two,” Romulus answered without looking up.
Kieran gritted his teeth. He needed to get his equipment and check the witch out thoroughly, but that would mean leaving the room. That part he was on board with, but then he’d have to come back, knowing exactly what he was walking into. He wasn’t sure he could do it.
“Can you loosen your left cuff?”
Shackle. It was a shackle, but suddenly, he didn’t want to call it that.
Romulus looked up at him then. The glazed look was beginning to fade, and he could see more of his spoiled little brother in there already. Very pointedly, his sibling braced against the restraints, which didn’t so much as rattle as they scuffed his wrists in the process. “Can’t. Why d’you think I asked you t’do it…?”
“Figured it’d be easy, what with your magic and all.” Again, Kieran’s voice betrayed him, the sheer bitterness in it making him cringe. At least it meant the collar was working.
Probably.
“Yeah… ‘cause magic’s always easy ‘n effortless. Takes no skill or… or trainin’ or nothing,” Romulus murmured.
Sulking, like the brat he was. Training and even fucking conviction hadn’t helped Kieran, only because he hadn’t been born with the skill.
“Can’t pick a fuckin’ lock with my magic, ‘kay?”
Which meant that wasn’t a reliable metric for whether the collar was working. Damn it.
“D’you not have a key?” Romulus asked, glancing up at him with that same kind of sullen look he always used to have when he caught the shit end of the stick in a game back when they’d been kids.
“No,” Kieran replied, crossing his arms across his bare chest. “You’re going to be staying here for a while. May as well get used to it.”
Something seemed to dawn on his drugged and probably drunk brother then, and his eyes got a little bigger. “Wh-wha?” he asked, a sense of urgency in his voice for the first time. “Stay here? What’s here? Why…?” he asked in quick succession.
Kieran could see something like panic begin to rise in Romulus when he tried the manacles again. This time, it was with more conviction as he yanked hard on his own wrists, as if he might squeeze his hands through with sheer willpower.
“Just have to answer some questions,” Kieran replied. “You’re good at talking. Answer them, then you can go back to your cushy little life.”
The jealousy hadn’t stopped building when he’d run away, and years and years of it threatened to boil over. The difference between them was stark, even with Romulus on the floor and Kieran in the role of… What? Aggressor? Jailer? He sure as hell wasn’t his doctor.
“What questions, Kieran?” Romulus asked with a final, frustrated yank on the restraints. His wrists already looked suspiciously raw.
Kieran decided to look at something else. He wouldn’t need medical help… not if he cooperated anyway. “I’m not the one who’s going to be asking them,” he said evenly.
“If this is some sort of fucked-up joke, Abel’s idea of fun, you can tell him I’m done playin’!” Romulus snapped. His faculties were apparently restored, as there was barely a slurred word in there.
