☽♟☽
SERENYA
The silence that ensued made the pounding in my head much obvious.
Corin, first place, forty-seven kills.
Perhaps I hadn't explained how horrible my older brother—Corin Vale—was at this disgusting thing this town called a sport. Corin hadn't made more than ten kills in the last five months. In total. In the exact same months Zarian Dravan had been the champion of consecutively.
The suprise was short-lived when my mother left her decorum in the dirt beneath her flimsy slippers and got on her feet to holler.
My pristine, perfect, always composed mother was hollering.
Gods. I'd had a feeling since I'd woken this morning that today would be different, I just hadn't expected this sort of difference.
"Bring the winnings my way, boys!" My mother yelled aboved the crowd as the men begrudgingly passed three peices of copper coins with the town's insignia engraved in the metal to the gentleman collecting.
She was too excited. I could understand why.
But the disbelief I'd experienced when my mother had started, began to fade slowly into a creeping discomfort—as I began to think.
Corin had expressed his hate for the sport. He'd told me how he couldn't bear to take the lives of those innocent creatures just for some sport.
He'd told me he would intentionally fail everyone until he was either kicked out from the Games by the sixth one lost or until Mother finally relented to find something else for him to do to earn money.
Yet, there on the live projections that was beginning to fade as the Hunters came from the forest, was the proof that he'd lied. Like every other damn time.
It didn't take long for Corin to come out of the forest after Kaylin and Kaylith—twin brothers that were from the higher-borns—and made his way over to where mother and I were seated.
"Ma!" He beamed the moment he got close enough. "We won!"
"My Corin!" My mother returned his smile with a grin of her own. "I knew you had it in you, dear."
She hugged him lightly despite the specks of blood I could see on his untucked blue shirt. It irked me how Mother could find joy or pride in death. Then again, Mother and I had never seen eye-to-eye on many things.
Like that night those crooks came for their boon.
"Serenya." My mother's voice brought me back from my thoughts, and I looked to see she and her son were staring at me—straight-backed, hands still folded over my lap, face stoic—under my umbrella. They were ready to go home.
It was a struggle, but I managed a strained smile to my mother. She tried her best, I knew she did. So, I stood, my head high, shoulders back and disgust off my face as I faced my brother's that resembled the woman beside him, with that same forced smile.
"Let's go home."
And we walked together to the house that held more terrors than memories.
It was some way through the busy market as Mother took the liberty to buy a few things for the house, and I was lost in my thoughts, that I felt a hand hold onto my right forearm.
It was Corin.
"We should speak." He breathed, his brows narrowed.
I fought the urge to rip my arm from his hold, knowing it was those hands that ended forty-seven innocent lives. "About?"
"Attitude, Sister." He scowled.
I smiled, albeit there was nothing tender or warm about it. "What is it you would like to talk with me about, Big Brother Corin Vale?"
His dark brown eyes narrowed and he took his hand off mine like he'd been burned. "Watch your fucking self, Serenya."
Then he was gone to wherever Mother had wandered off to.
I stood where he'd left me for a moment, his curly red-orange hair being lost in the crowded market. His height was not much of an advantaged of finding him as his hair was.
As I stood in the middle of the street of the market, I couldn't help but think. And it wasn't like I had much of an issue regarding that. It was just that Corin had become even more… odd over the last five months he'd been joining the Hunting Games. Though I would love to pin the reasons on the morbid sport itself, I knew it was something else.
Something Corin had believed withdrawing was much better than talking with me about it like he always did. And despite my desprate plead to the deaf gods, Corin had become much worse.
Not long after Corin had left me, I found them on my lonley walk back home. Mother took a look at me and scoffed while trying to negotiate a fairer price with the old farmer that sold the best vegetables in town.
From there we found our way home, after Mother had been satisfied with her purchases for the day—with the little she could spare from the earnings of the Game today.
The moment the doors shut and the outside world had become muffled, Mother sighed that pitiful sigh that let me know she was exhausted, but her voice was more preppy than usual when she spoke, already moving towards the empty kitchen in our small house. The only thing left to us after the debt collectors had taken what they'd come for and more.
"I'll go see what I can make for dinner."
I stood at the bottom of the old stairs for a moment, counting to three to see if Corin would speak. Instead, he walked past me up the narrow stairs, his footsteps loud against the old floorboards, then the slam of a door just as old.
You could just talk to me, Corin.
I sighed and stared at the lilac skirt of my suffocating dress as I made my way up the same stairs my brother had just stormed up.
I wish I could go back to seven months ago. When Papa was still alive and our family had been complete—however dysfunctional it had been—we'd made it work. But now he was gone and there was no way we could have that again.
When I reached the last door on the second level of our modest home, I couldn't help but pause. Would Liora and Cerys be in? Would I have to fake another smile?
But when I opened the door, both of my sisters' presence was replaced by the discomfort that came with being in the same vicinity as my older brother these past few months.
I stood at the threshold of mine and my sisters' room for a long moment before Corin turned from where he was sitting. He was at the tiny single desk in the room that we'd shoved up a wall by the only window we could open to let air in once in a while.
"Come in and shut the door behind you." He huffed before he stood. His eyes did a slow sweep of the tiny room that seemed to be able to contain three females as I did what he said.
"You won." I said the moment the door clicked behind me as I watched my brother warily.
He didn't respond, just stared at a bed shoved closest to the window by the desk. The bigger one in the room—it had faded purple sheets and a black threadbare blanket that had been in existence since I was born. My bed.
"I made a bargain." He finally said, his voice was low like he was just coming to terms with what he's just confessed.
My brows creased as I tried to make sense of his stance, the staring competition he was having with my bed and the way his jaw tightened like he was preparing to say something troubling.
"In the forest," He exhaled, his eyes moving to the scribble on the wall over the head of my bed that Liora and Cerys had done. 'Big sis' was what was written there.
"I made a bargain with a Fae." I stilled when his eyes finally met mine. "And he'd promised to spare my life as well as help me finally win the Game today."
The Fae were horrible creatures, that was impossible.
I blinked. I was waiting for him to pull out his signature 'snap of his fingers and wink' move and say he was joking. But his confessions only got worse from there when I asked;
"What was the deal?" My voice barely left my throat from how tight it had become but Corin heard me in the silence of the room.
He stood a little straighter. "I had promised to give you in exchange."