The Sweetbriar Slayer

Chapter Eight: A Familiar Face

He lets out a sharp, humorless bark of laughter in response. He shakes his head, runs a hand in a sharp, jerking movement over his close-cropped hair, so unlike how he'd worn it as a child.

"Goddess, I never want to hear those words again," he mutters with a dark chuckle.

"You've never been my sister, Ari. Not when we met, not after your Pabu died and my parents took you in. Stop lying to yourself. Marcus isn't here to hear you," he spits out. He paces in a tight circle, casting a glare at her over his shoulder as he moves.

What he said touches a nerve, and the words that spew from Aurelia's lips do so with no conscious thought.

"Well, obviously, I meant absolutely nothing to you, then. Always, you said. You promised. And then you took off to the Mercenary's guild and disowned all of us. You're the one who left. Not me," she hisses.

"I was a fucking kid," he retorts, and she glowers at him.

"So was I. But I still tried to keep my promise," she replies, and he barks that humorless laugh again.

"Sure you did. By running off with that gilt, abandoning my parents, pretending that I'd meant nothing to you when Helborus hired me..."

"You did mean nothing to me, by then!"

"Bullshite!" He shouts, his hands clenched tightly into fists at his side.

She pushes forwards, ignoring his interruption. "Besides, you know what he would have done, if he'd realized there was more to us than being foster siblings. You'd have been fired, and I... he would have..." she begins, trails off, can't voice the rest.

"Yeah. He would've. And that's the life you chose for yourself. You picked him. You stayed with him. Everything that happened, you brought on yourself," he spits, and she recoils, stung.    

He looks stricken as soon as the words leave his mouth, but he cannot take them back. Aurelia wants to scream at him, wants to spit out obscenities, wants to remind him of everything he himself had done, how he'd betrayed her when he was supposed to be her protector. The way he'd handed her to Marcus on a sacrificial altar to further his career. She'd chosen her prison, but Kaol had held the key.

She pointedly avoids thinking of everything that she'd brought on herself. It's easier to be angry with him than it is to confront her own shortcomings.

"I hate you," she whispers, softly, and in this moment, she means it.

He takes a deep breath, lets it go, runs his hand over his scalp again. "Yeah. Well. I hate you too," he replies. Aurelia doesn't doubt it.

They have danced around this conversation for years. For years, he's stood by her side as her bodyguard. Has sat beside her on her bed as she stared unmoving out the plasti-glass window into the deep. Has counted her bruises, cataloged her scars, and read her ancient stories of love gone right. And yet, in all that time, never once had they sat down and spoken to each other honestly. The walls had ears and they could not risk Marcus' wrath.

With every blow he did not protect her from, with every tear he wiped away, with every conversation he'd repeated to his master, every rationalization and excuse she made for the man she'd loved, the bitter coal of anger and resentment that burned between them had grown hotter. When he'd betrayed her, when he had whispered her plan to escape into his master's ear, it had nearly scalded them. Now, it has reached its boiling point.

She wonders if it will burn them both alive.

"What is this?" he demands again, jerking his arm so that the low light flashes against the portion of the blade not smeared with dried blood.