Kol shifted against the cold stone, pulling a book from his pocket and cracking it open on his lap. He ran a finger over its worn pages while the familiar ache in his back reminded him that this circular window frame was never meant to be a seat. But here, curled up beside the hallway’s sand-obscured glass, was the closest he’d ever come to escaping.
“What are you doing?”
He straightened in his seat at his sister’s voice and looked down. “You know.” He looked at the book in his hand, The Prince of Fire. “Reading. Or, trying to.”
“You’re distracted,” Mia said. Sometimes he hated that she knew him so well. “Nightmares again?”
“Yeah.” They were always the same. He looked out at the wastes once more and the nightmare returned, half dream, half memory. One moment, the outline of his mother and brother stood dark against the crimson wastes, then they turned to face him. Where there should have been features, there were only shadows. The next moment, the vision vanished and there was only darkness and his mother’s voice.
Find me.
Kol felt for the cool metal pendant around his neck.
“What were they about?” Mia asked.
He couldn’t tell her. Their father wouldn’t like it if Kol mentioned his mother again. Her name was a curse in this house.
“Nothing important.” Kol smiled at his sister. “Just the dust bunnies under my bed. I swear, they’re getting big enough to eat me.” The twins, Alana and Nalan, passed him in the hall, casting Kol a disapproving look.
Mia stood on her toes. “Astor’s coming. He wants you at the meeting.”
“Hasn’t he given up on me by now?” Kol asked. The hall was nearly silent, the rest of the family already at the emergency meeting his father called.
“Shhhh, there he is.” Mia turned to her right, starting down the hall. “I’ll see you there.”
“I’d rather stick my dick in a meat grinder,” Kol said once she was out of earshot. Moments later, heavy footsteps echoed through the space.
“Hey.” Astor’s voice echoed down the hall. As always, he was impossibly composed, with a tight-fitting white and tan jacket over a slim white shirt. Now that Kol was an adult, they were both muscular and tall, with strong frames, but otherwise they couldn’t have looked more different for siblings—half-siblings, anyway—with Astor’s golden hair and hazel eyes. Kol’s hair was a straight black mess slicked against his tan skin, and his eyes were just as dark, like his mother’s. Astor, on the other hand, was almost a mirror image of their father. His broad shoulders were tense, but that was to be expected. Usually, Kol would be happy to see Astor, but there was so much he wanted to tell him but couldn’t, and that silence was a wall filling the space between them.
Kol met his brother’s eyes for only a moment before turning back to the book. “Hey.”
Astor tapped his foot as if searching for words. They had been so close once. Astor had raised him after his mother left, but now it was like they were a million miles apart, ever since—
“What do you think of the book?” Astor asked.
“Haven't read much.” Kol flipped through the pages. He hadn’t gotten far, which was a little embarrassing, but Mia was right. It was difficult to focus that day. “Only read maybe the first fifty pages before I stopped.”
“Daydreaming again, huh?” Astor raised a concerned eyebrow and peered down at the book in Kol’s lap. Despite being only seven years older than Kol, there were several shining gray hairs in the beard that graced his chiseled jaw. It suited him, giving him a wise look. “I’m surprised you can still climb up there.”
“Desperation breeds ingenuity.” Kol tapped his head. “Only good seat in the house.”
“It’s barely a seat. And it’s odd you picked that book today, of all days. You know I’m going to ask where you found it,” Astor said. There was a slight irritation in his voice.
Kol’s face reddened. “I took it from your things. I figured you wouldn’t notice.”
“I did notice, and I’ll need that back by tonight or we’re in trouble.” Astor ran a hand through his golden hair, cut short so it stuck out in a hundred different directions. “Besides, the book’s incomplete. The last few pages are missing.”
“You need it tonight?” Kol’s heart raced. Tonight, their father would make the announcement he had dreaded all month.
“For the meeting,” Astor explained.
“Why?” Kol asked. The reality he was trying to escape came creeping back in. It was a fate he hated, and yet he was helpless to fight against it. For himself, or for his brother.
“How about you show up for once and find out?” Astor asked.
A deep, uncomfortable silence hung in the air, lasting for several seconds before Kol sighed. He twisted his body to face his brother, whose eyes were still fixated on the leather-bound book. “Do the others know?”
“Not yet. A lot has changed. Now, will you come?” Astor’s eyes were stern. “Something important is happening tonight, and you need to be there for it.”
“I can’t.” Kol steeled himself for what would come next.
“You know you have to. It’s part of living in the compound. Father will expect it.”
“Father’s a bastard and an idiot.” Kol’s eyes met Astor’s, burning with intensity.
“Maybe he is,” Astor said after a moment, “but it’s not our place to question him. There is order here, and everything will fall apart if we lose that order.”
Kol clenched his jaw. There was the biggest difference between him and his brother. Astor fit the system. He was the perfect son—caring, obedient, and faithful, even when their father was a belligerent oaf. Astor believed in the system, the order of the compound in which they survived. Kol, on the other hand, was a perpetual outsider despite being born in the cramped space. He never fit, no matter how hard he tried.
“Fuck father. I don’t like what he does, and I’m not just going to sit there and condone it.”
Astor took a breath, running his hand through his rough hair. “I have to leave, whether you’re there tonight or not.”
Anger rose in Kol’s chest. “There’s no reason for it. You know that.”
“There is a reason,” Astor said. “Naomi is due any day, and we’re at capacity. Even just one more mouth to feed, and our agricultural efforts won’t be able to sustain us longer than a few years. I’m a surplus male. It’s an honor to make space for the next generation.”
“Don’t call yourself surplus.” Kol sniffed, hoping his brother wouldn’t see the tears working their way around the edges of his eyes. “And it’s not honor, it’s murder.” Leaving meant death, and if Astor left, the wastes would have swallowed up everyone Kol ever cared about.
The vision plagued his mind again—his mother’s figure outlined against the dunes as he watched years ago from a not-as-filthy window, palm pressed against it so hard it hurt, breath fogging up the glass. She should be dead, too, and yet he could still hear her.
Find me.
“You can’t give up so easily. What if there’s some way to survive out there?” Kol pressed his back against the metal again, his eyes turned toward the window. Faint light filtered through a layer of sand. “We could leave this place.”
Astor scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“People didn’t always live like this. They could go anywhere they liked.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Books. We could find a way if you could just stay a few more—”
“You’d need magic to live out there, and we don’t have any.” Astor crossed his arms and let out a heavy breath. “I taught you to read so you’d use your head, not lose your mind. Be careful, or you’ll go mad just like…”
His mother.
He knew what Astor would say next, but it was a complicated thing, being compared to his mother. Some of his siblings whispered that he had already gone mad, but it didn’t have the same sting now that he was a man—there was power in madness, and he had a feeling that someday it would put an end to his father’s reign.
“I’d rather be mad than follow father’s orders,” Kol said. “At least my mother was sane enough to deny him.”
“I shouldn’t mention her,” Astor said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright.” Kol glanced at the window again, his eyes tracing patterns in the silt. “You have a lot on your mind. So do I.”
Astor took a breath, sorrow hidden beneath a forced smile. “I know how you feel about Father, but what if I want you there?”
It was difficult to deny Astor’s pleading gaze. “Maybe.”
“Please,” Astor said in that way of his, the thin layer of obedient son peeling back for a second to show the man beneath. A scared man. A sad man. He was always the responsible one, the one their other siblings aspired to be, and now he would be rewarded with death. Kol's head throbbed. If he couldn’t stop his brother from being sacrificed, he couldn’t bring himself to sit there complacently, watching his father’s smug face as he murdered another member of his family.
But if the brother who raised him didn’t want to be alone that night, Kol would be there. Even if it broke him, and he knew it would. This was all their father’s fault, overpopulating the compound and wasting resources. Kol took a sharp breath.
“I need a moment.” Kol’s fingers trembled against the book’s warm cover. “But I’ll go.”
“Bring the book.” Astor’s footsteps echoed down the long hallway as he left.
Once Astor was out of sight, Kol sank down the wall and drew his knees to his chest, enjoying his last few minutes of solitude. With ten stepmothers and twenty-eight siblings, he was never alone. He was one of the only ones who didn’t attend the meetings—even the younger siblings did—and the only member of the family who ever dared to question his father’s rule. His mother had. That’s why his father hated her. That’s why she had to die.
Find me.
He cursed the fact he was too young to recall much of what happened. His eyes darted to a rare sliver in the window’s filth, scraped clean by rain or debris, and looked to the twisting dunes beyond.
The wastes.
Many had left the compound, but none ever returned, victims of the poisoned air and acid rain.
Astor wouldn’t come back, either. He would never see his brother again, just like he’d never see his mother.
A bitterness ached in the center of Kol’s chest as he stared into the broken nothingness. He hated this dark place, this stone prison they were born in. He would do anything for Astor, if it meant his brother didn’t have to leave—didn’t have to die. Maybe he could find another way for him to live, but beyond the window’s filthy layer was a world of burning air, of monsters and shifting sands. No human could survive out there.
A dark figure moved across his narrow field of view.
Kol’s breath quickened, a wet film forming on the window where he pressed his cheek against the curved glass. The shape stumbled over the burned horizon, vermillion against the raging winds.
Sweat beaded on his brow. Nothing survived out there. Nothing lived, nothing died, except… he heard his mother’s voice in his mind, faint words from a fading memory.
And from the Darkness came beasts with the faces of men. Monsters.
He could make out what appeared to be a creature on two legs, with tall ears and a wide tail. A pair of silver pinpricks glowed from the dark outline of its head. And it wasn’t just coming towards him, it was running. At this rate, it would be at the compound in a matter of minutes.
He shoved the small book into his pocket before peeling himself away from the window. He leaped to the floor.
“Astor!” he called out in case his brother was still within earshot. There was no reply. As much as he hated the man, he had to tell his father.
Monsters with the faces of men. As he ran towards the meeting room, Kol passed dozens of the rounded windows, each filthier than the last. One of his father’s oldest wives, Margaret, stood just ahead. She smiled at him, dimples marking her tan skin.
“Where are you rushing off to?” she called out as he brushed past her.
His chest heaved as he pushed his way down the hall. “There’s something outside!”
“What do you—"
He missed the rest of her words as he threw open the meeting hall’s thick double doors. His sisters’ and stepmothers’ voices echoed off the wide walls and tall ceiling, the chaos hitting Kol’s ears the moment he was inside.
His family shot him disapproving glances as he swam through the crowd before stopping at his father’s chair. The old man, with his gray beard cut harsh and angular around his jawline, exchanged hushed tones with Naomi, his youngest wife, her hand over her full and pregnant stomach. Astor sat on their father’s other side.
Kol lowered his eyes, as was custom. “Lord Mendona.” He tried to hide the fact he was panting, but the sweat on his brow likely gave him away.
His father looked away from Naomi, and his face twisted into a scowl. “Kol.”
There was no point in drawing things out. “I saw something outside,” Kol said. His chattering sisters grew silent and their eyes burned into his back. “A monster. It’ll be here any moment.” He put his fist down on the table.
Lord Mendona laughed, leaving Kol dumbfounded.
“What?” Kol asked.
“It’s not that kind of monster,” his father said. Naomi’s eyes widened, and she leaned away from her husband.
“It’s a monster. What else matters?” Kol’s voice was harsh.
“That,” his father said, “is our honored guest.”
