Chapter 8 #2
My stomach growls. I ignore it, but Fabia peels my arms off her and reaches over to grab a frog leg and vegetable kebab. Dipping it in the dark sauce provided, she holds it out to me.
“I don’t feel like eating,” I say.
She gestures for me to take it. “You need your fuel. Come on. Eat this one. Then I’ll eat the rest.”
Exhaling softly, I take the kebab and bring it to my lips. The meat is juicy, perfectly cooked, and the hunger sleeping in my belly awakens with a grumble.
Fabia’s eyes light up when I start on my second one. Smiling back at her, I take a hearty bite.
I really want to like it here. I want to belong and be the queen Raza and Richard need me to be. But there’s just so much violence and pain. Lief was stabbed right in front of me. The market went from a vibrant, peaceful gathering to bloody chaos and panic within seconds.
And yet, I think as I pull off a piece of garlic with my teeth, Richard saw all the same things I did, but he is out there doing his duties. While I’m here, being useless.
Just like I was in the Throne Room this morning.
Placing the clean skewer down, I wrap my arms around my waist. “Richard said something that I didn’t understand,” I say slowly, thinking hard as I talk.
Finishing her kebab, Fabia picks up another one but nods at me to continue.
“He asked a man if a woman tried to force him to have sex.”
Stilling, she swallows hard. She places the kebab on the tray.
“Don’t you want to finish that?” I ask. She only took one bite.
“No.”
I twist my fingers in front of me, something in her mien making me nervous.
My best friend’s voice is soft and quiet; it’s so not like her. “Go on, Arienna. Ask me what you want to.”
Wetting my lips, I want to keep the words down.
But how can I have any chance of belonging here if I don’t even understand the culture?
How can I rule fairly if I don’t know what’s being discussed?
“How can someone be forced to have sex?” I blurt.
“Sex is a good thing, right? A good brownie always says yes. It makes everyone happy?”
She picks up an empty skewer and twirls it around her fingers, a restless energy pouring off her. “You remember when we were kids and your grandpa wanted you to join him upstairs, but you didn’t want to go?”
I shift uncomfortably, my eyes dropping to focus on the stick swirling in her hand. Although everyone told me that a good brownie would go with him, I wasn’t able to shake the horrible feeling that request had settled in my stomach.
“On our way upstairs, you accidentally bumped into him with a pot of boiling soup and spilled nearly the entire thing on him,” I say, lifting my gaze. “He got fined for screaming.”
“Yeah. But if you’d gone up with him that day, Arienna, when you really didn’t want to go” –she looks into my eyes, hers brimming with emotion– “he would’ve forced you to have sex.”
“No…” I say, my brow furrowing. “I wouldn’t have told him no.” I would’ve listened just like a good brownie does.
Fabia closes her eyes briefly as she shakes her head. She pulls me against her again, the skewer dropping somewhere between us. “But you wouldn’t have wanted to.”
“But to decline would’ve been rude.”
“No,” she says sharply. Breathing deep, she holds me at arm’s length. Her silver eyes bore into mine, frustration and pain flashing through. “You were too young. He was in the wrong for asking.”
“But I was the same age as everyone else?” I’m trying so hard to understand what she’s saying, but her words aren’t making sense. How could I have been forced if I agreed to go with him? And how could I have been too young when I was old enough to know the rules?
“It doesn’t matter if it happened to everyone else,” she says. “It’s wrong. Just because something happens a lot does not mean it isn’t a bad thing.”
“But if it was bad, brownies wouldn’t do it. We’re good people. There’s a rule about that and everything.”
Her nails bite into my arms, and I wince.
“It’s a cult. Cults don’t know right and wrong.”
“But –”
“You know I’m right, Arienna. Deep down, you know it. You didn’t want to go up with your grandpa that day, did you?”
I swallow hard, trying to trap the guilt inside me. It was my birthday party and that was going to be his present to me. A good brownie always accepts the present they are given. Mum thanked him for it. I tried to too, but I couldn’t get the words out.
“Because it felt wrong – bad, didn’t it?” Fabia pushes.
My eyes plead with her. My head shakes. Sex is good. It’s fun. The rules all say so. But the mere thought of him and me together feels awful. Even all these years later.
I rub at my skin, wanting the slime of my sins off me. I’m a good brownie. I am. “That’s not true.”
Fabia’s eyes soften as she grabs my hands. “You’re not the one who should feel ashamed.”
My arms trembling, I grasp her fingers in mine. “I would not have denied him. He would’ve made me feel nice, gone all slowly like he had with Mum.”
Tears burn in my eyes, but I don’t know why they’re there.
“Gentle or not, whether you…” She winces. “Enjoyed it or not, he would have raped you, Arienna.”
I flinch at that word. Raped. I’ve never heard it before, but Fabia said it with such emotion in her voice and eyes that I know it’s bad.
Pulling away from her, I jump to my feet.
I shake my head, a sickness clawing at my stomach.
“No. Brownston might be a cult, if that’s what you want to call it, but it’s a good place.
It’s a utopia where everyone is happy and safe.
There’s peace there, no violence or hate.
Not like here. Not like…” I look her in the eye, my chest heaving.
“Richard stabbed Lief for no reason! No one would’ve done that in Brownston! ”
“He didn’t stab him for no reason,” Fabia says slowly.
“Yes, he did!” I wave my arms, not knowing what to do with them. The pressure inside me is building too fast, too hard. I giggle, then laugh, then full on cackle. “Richard isn’t into slug dicks. I asked. So you see, he stabbed him for no…” More giggles escape, dragging their way to freedom.
“Arienna –”
“No! You weren’t there! You don’t know.”
“I know –”
“Lief was just standing there, and Richard –”
“Lief raped me!” she shouts, shoving me into silence.
“What?”
She closes her eyes, pain twisting her face. When she opens them, her gaze is angry and sad and full of torment. “Lief is not a good person, Arienna. That’s why Richard stabbed him. He was looking out for me.”
My mouth opens and closes multiple times. I stare at her, not understanding what she’s saying. But I hear the pain in her voice, and that’s enough for me. “Lief hurt you?”
“Yes.”
My chin wobbles as I struggle to hold in the laughter.
It isn’t manic or uncontrollable this time.
It boils inside me, slashing like the knife Richard used to rip through Lief’s belly.
I thought he was a friend. I called him a friend.
I was so happy to see him enter the Throne Room, and he smiled at me.
He smiled at me after he hurt my friend.
My nostrils flare. The laughter inside turns wicked and cruel and precise. “Is that why you burned his house down?”
She hesitates a second before nodding.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I told him hello. I would have offered him a place to stay when he was homeless had I not had the wasps at the time. I laughed with him. I fed him. And all that time… “Why didn’t you tell me he hurt you?” The words come out raw and strained.
My best friend sighs, rubbing a hand over her eyes. “Because it didn’t matter. I was the town fuck-up. Saying no is wrong there, and no one would have believed me anyway because a good brownie never lies, and he’s a good brownie and I’m not.”
I drop down in front of her. My knees pressing into the wooden floor, I grab her hands and squeeze. “I would have believed you,” I say.
A choked noise escapes her as a single tear rolls down her cheek. “You don’t even know what rape is.”
My lips part wordlessly. I want to tell her that I do, but I’d just be parroting back what she told me. The pain she is feeling – I don’t understand it, and she deserves genuine love and understanding. “But Richard does,” I say softly.
She nods. “Everyone here does.”
Everyone… Pain lances through my entire body like a bolt of electricity, making my shoulders bow in. Everyone here is a better friend to her than I am. No wonder she’s looked so much more relaxed and at ease since we came to Raza. Everyone here understands her pain and knows how to comfort her.
“I’m sorry I don’t understand,” I say, hating that I don’t.
“It’s okay. You grew up in a cult.”
“No, it’s not. You grew up right there with me, but you know.”
“Yes, but I didn’t have a family shoving crap down my throat every moment of every day.”
“You had me,” I breathe, praying to the gods she still counts me as family.
“Exactly.” She pulls a hand free and cups my face, wiping away my tears. “I had you. You kept away all the crazy.”
Threading my fingers through her hand on my cheek, I smile slyly.
“I am the crazy.” She told me that so many times, laughing and rolling her eyes as she punched me in the shoulder.
I want to see her like that again. I don’t like the pain seeping off her.
I don’t like the guilt in my heart for having stopped Richard from killing Lief this morning.
I don’t care if stabbing someone is wrong or if it leads to me being married to someone with a slug dick fetish. No one hurts my friend.
Smirking, Fabia rolls her eyes as she shoves me away. “Yes, you are. But I like your crazy.”
Catching myself before I hit the floor, I let myself grin. But I keep the laughter locked down deep.
I might not understand what Lief actually did to her.
I might not understand why the deaths here are so sad.
I might never become the queen Raza needs, but I will become the friend Fabia deserves. Because I’m never going to let her suffer alone again.