Flickering torches light the way from the dungeon’s entrance to the bowels below where the witch has kept my brother caged for the last three years.
I call out his name in the dark.
“Brother?” His voice is shaky and dry. He emerges from theshadows, his blond hair raked back and greasy. Somehow, even dirty and unkempt, he still looks like a handsome little shit.
He got our mother’s soft beauty but none of her brutality.
“Here.” I hand him a mug of ale that the witch permitted me to bring.
Gabriel takes the offering eagerly and drinks it straight down.
He remains there a beat longer, head hung back, savoring the taste.
You’d think it’d be cold and dank down here in the dungeon, but it’s insufferably hot, as if the stone prison is suspended over hell itself.
Gabriel hands the mug back and hangs his arms out through the iron bars, his forehead braced between two. “How about you give me a smidge of your Oil now, huh?” He nods at the canteen strapped across my body.
“You don’t need it.”
“Who said anything about need?”
I’ve never been able to deny him. As our youngest brother, what he asks for, he gets.
I pull the canteen strap off my shoulder, unscrew the lid, and pour some of the dark liquid into the cap. I hand it over and Gabriel takes it, careful not to spill.
Oil is an expensive drug in Oz. Best not to waste it.
He slings it back and then gives the cap a hard tap to drink down every last thick drop.
As someone who barely indulges in the drug, he’ll be floating on ecstasy for several hours once it kicks in.
For me, someone who has to dose up every few hours, I barely feel it anymore. I take it so I don’t lock up.
Gabriel hangs his arms out again. “You seen our brother lately?”
I cap the canteen. “No. Last I heard, he was hiding.”
“Hiding from you, you mean.”
I lean against the stone wall that juts out from Gabriel’s cell on the south end. “He’s not afraid of me.”
“Bullshit.” Gabriel slurs the word. The Oil is kicking in fast, likely on account of his empty stomach. “He’s terrified of you.”
I shake my head. “I think he’s more terrified of what he might have to do if he crosses my path. Fight or run. And our brother is no fan of either.”
Gabriel comes over to the wall and slouches against it. “Doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.”
“Precisely.”
“And what would you do? If you came eye to eye with him?”
I consider his question carefully even though I already know the answer. “I’d kill him.”
“You’d regret it.”
I cut my gaze back to his. His eyes are heavy but he’s looking right at me.
There was a time when all three of us were inseparable. Gabriel got the best of us, then the worst. Of course he wants to return to the good parts. But how can we now? There is no going back.
