With a clenched jaw, he looked angry that this conversation was continuing when he wished it would die.
“We need to free those girls. Period.” I pitied my brother because of the weight of his grief, the painfulness of his solitude, but it didn’t change what needed to be done. “We can’t do this anymore.”
He stared me down, hostile.
“You need to stop this. Now.”
“Or what?”
My eyes narrowed at the odd response.
“You going to kill me?” He took a step closer to me, rising to my unspoken challenge.
This entire conversation was offensive. I was pissed off that my brother wouldn’t do the right thing because he thought so little of himself already. But I was also pissed off that he had no faith in me. “No. I’m not our father.”
He was still angry, but slightly less.
“But this will happen whether you like it or not. I know there’s still humanity inside you. I know you still have a chance. I just hope you find the strength to join me…instead of resisting me.”
Thirty
Red Snow
When I returned home, Ramon informed me that Raven was in the stables. She spent a lot of her free time there, taking Rose for a ride or brushing her coat or scrubbing her hooves. There was a caretaker on duty to do all those things, but she took it on as a hobby.
When I walked into the stables, I found her standing in Rose’s stall with the door closed. She had a bucket of oats on the shelf, and she fed Rose handfuls. “A lot better than that hat, huh?” She continued to feed her while she rubbed her other hand down the bridge of the horse’s nose. “I’m gonna spoil you like crazy.”
I came close to the door and watched her for a while, looking at her beautiful face while she had no idea I was there. When she felt threatened, she was so savage.
In her defense, most other times, she was gentle and kind, wearing her heart on her sleeve and filling every room she stepped into with light. I loved those things about her, that she fought like a man but loved like a woman.
Rose must’ve smelled me because she lifted her head and looked at me over the stall door. She let out a loud breath, making her nostrils widen.
Raven followed her look until she saw me. “Looks like we aren’t alone.”
I pressed my body against the stall door and rested my arms on the edge. I looked at Rose for a few seconds, seeing her be protective of Raven, even though I was more protective than she would ever be. I turned my gaze to Raven.
“Do you want to feed her?” She held up the bucket of oats.
I shook my head.
“Come on. I want her to like you.”
“She doesn’t like me?” I asked incredulously. “Who’s the one who has been feeding her for months? Who’s the one who got her out of that camp?” I shifted my gaze back to Rose and gave her a look of accusation. “Who’s the one who let her shit in my house?”
Raven laughed loudly at the memory. “Oh my god, I’ll never forget your face when you walked in there.” She looked at Rose and continued to rub her snout, chuckling to herself.
I looked at Raven again, seeing the color in her cheeks, the light in her eyes, the joy in everything around her.
“Rose, he’s right. He’s been good to you.” She turned back to me and beckoned for me to come inside. “You should still feed her. She loves her oats, so she’ll love you.”
I had no interest in feeding a horse or walking into the stable where her shit was in the corners, but I couldn’t resist the woman who made the request. I opened the door and joined her.
Raven held out the bucket. “Get a handful and flatten your fingers.”
Rose released a quiet snort, like she was telling me to hurry up because she was hungry.
I grabbed the oats then opened my hand wide to feed her.
Her teeth dragged across my palm, and her lips slobbered all over my skin. She ate them quickly and lifted her head to look at me, like she was ready for the next handful.
“Rose, you’ve had enough. I’ve already fed you too much as it is.” Raven rubbed her hand down the horse’s backside.
Like Rose could understand, she released a neigh.
Raven said goodbye before she walked out of the stall with me and put the oats away. We both washed our hands before we left and headed to the house together.
At my side, she walked down the pathway in her barn boots, looking cute in her jeans and plaid shirt. “How’d it go?” Her voice didn’t carry her infectious happiness anymore. She was somber, like she already knew what my answer would be.
“I need more time.” I kept my eyes on the lit pathway before us as we made our way back to the house. The conversation was painful for a lot of reasons, but Fender’s resistance was the most painful of all. “I didn’t expect to be successful on my first attempt anyway, but it was still shitty.”
She didn’t try to give me advice or rush me into a resolution. There was no reason to, when she had faith that I would fulfill the task I said I would complete. “Maybe I can talk to Melanie. Maybe I can get her to convince him.”
I shook my head. “Unlikely.”
“He wants to marry her, so he obviously values her opinion.”
“I think Fender has a low opinion of himself, but there’s no incentive to be good. He can’t be redeemed, so what’s the point?”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s redeemed or not. He should still do the right thing…even if he goes to hell anyway.”
I slid my hands into my pockets and looked at the lit-up house. There were lights in the distance around us, but we felt isolated from the world. “He said he wouldn’t stop. Then he asked if I would kill him if he didn’t…”
Raven was quiet for a long time, the pause in her speech profound. “Would you?”
I wanted to do the right thing and amend all the wrongs, but my brother’s blood on my hands would haunt me forever. “No. I would be no different from our father if I did. And I think telling him that…is what’s going to bring him back to the right side.”
“Are you sure about this?” I stood outside in the driveway in front of the pond. My car was there, my bag of essentials in the trunk.
She was in her gray work pants and black tank top, her hair pulled back and her makeup gone. There was less joy in her gaze because she knew she had to return to a life of misery for a month before she could come back here. “Yes.”
“Because I would understand if you didn’t want to come with me.” I wanted her beside me every night, but what I wanted more than anything was for her to be happy. “It’s a long time to be apart, but I know you’ll be waiting for me.” I knew she would be committed and faithful during those long stretches of time, and we would make up for what we lost every time we were reunited.
The resolution in her eyes didn’t change. She was as determined as before, just a little morose. “I don’t want to be at that camp. But I want to be with you, wherever that is.”
The camp was as I remembered. It was a timeless place, where nothing ever changed except the seasons. The only way we knew how long we’d really been working there was by the subtle changes in our appearance as we aged. The girls only knew how much time passed by the weekly Red Snows. When a girl was executed, that marked the passage of time.