SPOILED
R. Phoenix & Morgan Noel
Kieran
Kieran shoved a pillow over his head when he heard his name being called. He didn’t know what time it was, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that he’d gotten entirely too little sleep, and like hell was he getting out of bed.
Not that Wren seemed too impressed with his unintelligible grumbles of protest. She clapped loudly right next to his ear, making him jerk. “Yeah, yeah, you’re cranky. We know. Get up anyway.”
Aware that he’d sound like a five-year-old in the middle of a tantrum if he tried to argue his way out of it, Kieran groaned and flopped over, the pillow still over his face. It took more effort than he’d expected, but then, he hadn’t even been asleep long enough for the blood on his blankets to properly stiffen the fabric yet.
“Why?” he asked, his voice muffled.
She snatched the pillow away, tossing it onto his legs. “Got a patient for you to take care of.”
“For fuck’s sake, Wren.” He opened his eyes, squinting at her. “You look like you got some sleep,” he noted, his voice more than a little sour. “Someone else can sew a few stitches for once.”
“Nope. Only you can do this,” she replied, reaching for the edge of his blanket.
Kieran’s hand shot out, grabbing her wrist. “This is my only comfortable blanket,” he warned her. Blood-stained and all, it was his favorite.
Wren twisted her wrist from his grasp and rolled her eyes. “You can go back to sleep after you check him out. We need to make sure we didn’t sedate him too heavily.”
Sedate him? Him who?
Kieran blinked up at her. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“Finally got a shot at the Butcher’s whore,” Wren replied, taking a step in the direction of the door. “Hook, line, sinker. Bailey nabbed him, but we want to make sure he didn’t get too excited.” She paused. “…and we’re not sure how well the collar’s going to work.”
Bingo.
They didn’t really give a fuck about the effects the sedative might have. Very few members of the Rebellion would condemn killing a witch, in cold blood or otherwise. Kieran sure as fuck didn’t. Any chance he might’ve had at a life had been eradicated when the supes had taken over, and anyone who didn’t immediately submit to their regime was branded a rebel.
Kieran stifled a yawn with his hand. “You got the witch?”
Wren eyed him. She’d never particularly enjoyed repeating herself, but then, he’d never particularly enjoyed being woken up like this, either. He didn’t mind needling her.
“Yes.”
“So you don’t really care about the drugs. You just want to make sure that if the collar doesn’t keep his magic locked away, no one will get hurt,” Kieran said, reluctantly starting to sit up. He stretched, letting out a slow breath. With his paltry medicinal skills and immunity to magic, he was a veritable superhero where the Rebellion was concerned.
If it wasn’t for the fact that he was a shitty liar, had zero capability for combat, and didn’t think well on his feet, he might’ve been front and center during their raids. It was better this way, though — obviously.
She shrugged. “Little bit of both. It’d be a waste for him to die on accident. But yeah. Franklin said they work, but…”
But trust wasn’t exactly something they came by easily these days. Paul Franklin was a notorious asshole and an accomplished, ruthless soldier who was a real hardass when it came to supes. He wouldn’t have much reason to lie when he said he had a device that supposedly nullified magic, and he wasn’t the type to make false claims that might risk his reputation.
He grunted in acknowledgment. “Doubt he’d give us something he hasn’t tested.”
“No sense in getting sloppy now,” Wren replied, tapping her foot impatiently. “C’mon.”
Kieran only put his shoes on, not bothering to grab a shirt. There was no telling what kind of diseases he could get from the filthy floor, and his shirt wouldn’t be comfortable when it was probably starting to stiffen up as the blood dried.
Even getting their hands on a small supply of food wasn’t easy.
He trailed after her with heavy footsteps, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. He cast a longing glance back at his cot, but sleep would have to wait. Again.
At this rate, he’d be personally testing how long someone could go without sleep before they dropped dead.
Wren led him to the stairs leading down into the cellar, and he paused. Great. They’d woken him up to check on a captive on a few hours of sleep, which usually meant it was pretty urgent. How far had Bailey had to go to seduce the witch into letting his guard down? A faint smile twitched onto his lips as he wondered how far their resident straight boy had had to go to set the hook and reel him in. Either way, it had worked, from there, it had been game over for the arms dealer’s favorite boy toy.
The smile didn’t linger long. Kieran wasn’t sure they were equipped to handle a witch. But then, he didn’t make the decisions, and he’d barely paid attention to the briefing. They had a single — relatively — soundproof room to stuff him in. They’d managed to get a collar to block his magic, and they possessively guarded chains that could hold even vampires and werewolves. Kieran had a very limited supply of sedatives as a last resort, but that was dangerous at best.
At first, Kieran only muttered irritably when he saw the collared witch chained in the far corner of the cellar. The heavy manacles that went with the chains could supposedly hold even a shifted werewolf, assuming the fucking walls could handle it. The heavy links forced their captive to sit up against the wall without giving him much room to wiggle around.
The witch lifted his head, and Kieran’s heart stopped. Distantly, he was aware that Wren was talking, but he didn’t hear a word she said. For the first time ever, he knew their prisoner — and he knew their prisoner well, for all that it had been years since they’d last laid eyes on one another.
Romulus.
His eyes locked onto the witch’s, then he was falling, lost in hazel eyes he hadn’t seen in a decade and a half, eyes he’d once dreamed about.
His brother’s eyes, bleary and unfocused as they were.
No. Not brother; he couldn’t afford to think about him as someone that close. They weren’t related by blood, and even though Kieran couldn’t remember life without Romulus and his mother around… He needed that distance to avoid thinking about the witch as his little brother. Romulus was his stepbrother, one he hadn’t even seen in years and a witch.
Nothing more.
She elbowed him, and he jerked his head up. “Don’t fall asleep while I’m briefing you,” she said with a huff.
Kieran closed his eyes tightly, wondering how the fuck he’d missed the very important detail of their captive’s name. He’d stopped listening at “witch whore” because it shouldn’t have mattered which one it was. He’d obviously been wrong. Then again, they were all the same, so they may not have even mentioned the name at all.
It seemed impossible. Romulus had never seemed like the type to be someone’s bitch. Kieran hadn’t thought he was anything like the sluts and whores who appeased the more powerful in exchange for an easy life of protection and privilege — for as long as it would last, anyway.
Then again, he had never known his little stepbrother liked men. Fucking a notorious arms dealer didn’t seem to match up what he knew about Romulus. Maybe, just maybe, all of that was because he hadn’t seen him since they were teenagers.
“Did you hear a word I said?” Wren asked him, and he opened his eyes to see her glare leveled on him.
Romulus kept looking at him, staring even, and Kieran grew increasingly on edge. Had his brother recognized him, or did he look very different now?
Romulus didn’t. Older, stronger, a lot taller, but—
Still reeling, he didn’t even bother to lie. “No,” he admitted freely. “I’m… I’m not fully awake yet.” He blinked dramatically at Wren, like that was going to prove his words. It wasn’t, of course, but it helped him avoid meeting his brother’s gaze.
“Neither is he, so listen,” she insisted, grabbing him by the chin. She turned his face, forcing him to look at her properly. “He doesn’t know what’s happening with Franklin’s gift, so…”
Kieran nodded mutely. She didn’t have to remind him of how wary she was of the collar’s potency or how aware they both were of just how handy being a magical black hole was.
Go, go, gadget guinea pig.
“Right.” Kieran nodded more emphatically as he struggled to get his thoughts in order.
Fuck, he needed sleep.
“Okay. Go, before he wakes up and has the chance to hurt someone,” he added, not sure if being alone with his stepsibling would be better or worse. He wouldn’t have as much desperately needed distraction without Wren there, but his secret would be safe. It was a double-edged sword, and he was poised on a razor-sharp edge.
Romulus continued to squint at him with the glazed look of someone drug-addled as Wren retreated up the stairs and left them alone.
Making sure he wasn’t dying was as good of a start as any. Kieran reached for his chest pocket for his laser light, only to realize his critical error in not putting on his shirt.
“It is you, innit…” Romulus slurred into the silence that followed his realization.
Kieran cast a quick look over his shoulder at the door to make sure Wren had shut it and reminding himself that the room was practically soundproof. “Who?” he asked. Maybe, through some miracle, Romulus believed he was someone else entirely.
“Kier, don’ fuck wi-with me.” His stepsibling tried to yank at the bonds, but they weren’t going to give way to anything as feeble as a witch. “Wha’s goin’ on? Why’m I…?” Romulus continued to mutter and slur. If he could even wonder about any of it, the sedation was starting to wear off.
Damn it. He still hadn’t figured out what to do.
Kieran had dealt with prisoners before, and he hadn’t always been the good guy. But none of them had been someone he’d known, let alone someone he’d grown up with. “Shut up,” he mumbled lamely, his chest aching with the sheer weight of his conflicting emotions.
Right. He was supposed to make the witch try to use his magic — not someone he’d cared about, not someone he’d grown up with, not someone he knew. Definitely not his brother. Just… the witch.
He didn’t want to test it yet, though; if he tried now and it worked, he wouldn’t know if it was the collar or drugs holding his magic back.
“You shuddup…” Romulus snapped back, or tried to. There wasn’t much conviction to the words yet, but it sure didn’t sound like fifteen years had passed at all.
“You’re not in any position to tell me what to do.” Kieran felt like he was in the middle of some terrible movie. He fought the urge to… what? Giggle?
Hysteria. It had to be hysteria, right along with lack of sleep, malnutrition, and probably some of the diseases that were rampant in the human neighborhoods. He was only a failure from a witch family in tatters, one that had produced too many children without magic, too many humans, to advance. He was nothing more than a makeshift nurse in a useless Rebellion, someone who had only joined up for strength in numbers.
In stark contrast, Romulus would’ve looked well-fed and healthy if it hadn’t been for the way the drugs made his face slack. A few hours, though, and he’d be good as new. He had the chance to go back to some cushy lifestyle and live in luxury while Kieran languished in squalor.
Jealousy surged through him. Here he was, struggling to survive each day and his brother was offering his ass up to someone who would’ve been a criminal before the Takeover. Now, though, nothing was sacred and very few things were forbidden — as long as it only hurt humans and traitors.
Romulus let out an ugly laugh that was made all the worse by the sedation that was slowly wearing thinner and thinner. “Wha’re you gonna do…? Tell Mom?” he challenged with a snort. He started to pull himself up by the restraints, only to find there was barely any room to go in any direction. “Let me out, Kier,” Romulus whined.
The repetition of his nickname from his brother’s lips was like a sucker punch. “Stop talking to me like you know me!” The vehemence in his own voice caught him off guard, and Kieran turned, unable to even look in Romulus’s direction. “I’m not letting you out. I don’t know you. All right?”
The cellar was quiet for several long moments. Kieran hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t thought his sibling even knew how to shut up when he wasn’t sleeping.
Not his sibling, he had to remind himself yet again. Not even his stepsibling. Just a witch.
Somehow, the silence was worse than the talking. He finally glanced back over at the corner Romulus was in, where he was hanging against the restraints with his face burrowing against his own bicep.
Maybe they had given him too many drugs. Kieran should’ve asked what they’d given him, but he’d been too flustered. And now…
He stalked closer to the witch. “Look up at me,” he ordered. He held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Two,” Romulus answered without looking up.
Kieran gritted his teeth. He needed to get his equipment and check the witch out thoroughly, but that would mean leaving the room. That part he was on board with, but then he’d have to come back, knowing exactly what he was walking into. He wasn’t sure he could do it.
“Can you loosen your left cuff?”
Shackle. It was a shackle, but suddenly, he didn’t want to call it that.
Romulus looked up at him then. The glazed look was beginning to fade, and he could see more of his spoiled little brother in there already. Very pointedly, his sibling braced against the restraints, which didn’t so much as rattle as they scuffed his wrists in the process. “Can’t. Why d’you think I asked you t’do it…?”
“Figured it’d be easy, what with your magic and all.” Again, Kieran’s voice betrayed him, the sheer bitterness in it making him cringe. At least it meant the collar was working.
Probably.
“Yeah… ‘cause magic’s always easy ‘n effortless. Takes no skill or… or trainin’ or nothing,” Romulus murmured.
Sulking, like the brat he was. Training and even fucking conviction hadn’t helped Kieran, only because he hadn’t been born with the skill.
“Can’t pick a fuckin’ lock with my magic, ‘kay?”
Which meant that wasn’t a reliable metric for whether the collar was working. Damn it.
“D’you not have a key?” Romulus asked, glancing up at him with that same kind of sullen look he always used to have when he caught the shit end of the stick in a game back when they’d been kids.
“No,” Kieran replied, crossing his arms across his bare chest. “You’re going to be staying here for a while. May as well get used to it.”
Something seemed to dawn on his drugged and probably drunk brother then, and his eyes got a little bigger. “Wh-wha?” he asked, a sense of urgency in his voice for the first time. “Stay here? What’s here? Why…?” he asked in quick succession.
Kieran could see something like panic begin to rise in Romulus when he tried the manacles again. This time, it was with more conviction as he yanked hard on his own wrists, as if he might squeeze his hands through with sheer willpower.
“Just have to answer some questions,” Kieran replied. “You’re good at talking. Answer them, then you can go back to your cushy little life.”
The jealousy hadn’t stopped building when he’d run away, and years and years of it threatened to boil over. The difference between them was stark, even with Romulus on the floor and Kieran in the role of… What? Aggressor? Jailer? He sure as hell wasn’t his doctor.
“What questions, Kieran?” Romulus asked with a final, frustrated yank on the restraints. His wrists already looked suspiciously raw.
Kieran decided to look at something else. He wouldn’t need medical help… not if he cooperated anyway. “I’m not the one who’s going to be asking them,” he said evenly.
“If this is some sort of fucked-up joke, Abel’s idea of fun, you can tell him I’m done playin’!” Romulus snapped. His faculties were apparently restored, as there was barely a slurred word in there.
He was about to respond when he saw the way his brother focused, forming the spell. He’d been taught how, so many times, but he had never been able to make anything happen. The only remarkable thing about him was that magic couldn’t touch him.
After his brother spoke the words of the nasty spell, the room went deadly quiet.
Nothing happened.
Nothing shifted or moved, and he felt nothing either. Romulus stared at him for a split second, before he repeated the spell once more — again with no effect.
The collar was working at least.
“What the fuck—” Romulus choked on the words, renewing his efforts to break free of the restraints that had been designed for vampires and werewolves, not pitiful magicless witches. “What did you do to me?” he snapped.
“What?” Kieran taunted, his voice turning vicious in a way that wasn’t familiar even to him. “Don’t like not being able to use magic?”
Fifteen years. Fifteen years of pent-up anger and frustration and envy, and here it was.
His eyes darted back to Romulus’s wrists, and he ignored the urge to look more closely at them. He wasn’t going to use some of their precious, too-limited medical supplies on a supe. Unlike werewolves and vampires, witches didn’t heal any faster than humans, especially without any magic at their disposal. But Romulus was healthier than most of the people in the Rebellion, and that alone gave him an advantage.
There was actual fear in his brother’s eyes now, which wasn’t something he’d seen often in his younger, more entitled sibling. It made looking at him harder, though, but there wasn’t much else to look at but the frantic twisting and yanking on his wrists.
And that spark of fear as it grew. He took a step back. He knew he needed to go, and he wanted out. Romulus couldn’t use magic, and he wasn’t an interrogator. He only made sure no one … died, during them.
Obviously, the witch wasn’t going to die, and he was more than ready to flee back up the stairs.
“Why are you doing this?” Romulus asked, his voice not nearly as snarky now, but tremulous instead. “Why are you being— What did I ever do to you that you’d—” None of those question got finished.
Kieran didn’t have the answers to any of them anyway. He shuddered, averting his eyes again. There, within the mess of his emotions, was an unwelcome stab of guilt. It wasn’t technically Romulus’s fault that he’d had magic or that his father and Kieran’s mother had wanted to turn him into the golden child after Kieran’s… failure.
But Romulus had never spoken up for him, either. He wouldn’t have lifted a goddamn finger while their parents took the steps toward erasing the embarrassment of their older child’s existence.
“It’s nothing personal,” Kieran said. “The only way out is to cooperate.” He paused, then added hastily, “And for fuck’s sake, don’t try to tell them you knew me.”
Let alone that they were brothers — stepbrothers, maybe, but brothers all the same.
“Kieran, please!” Romulus pleaded. It would’ve been pathetic if it wasn’t for the fact that he was still stubbornly trying to somehow break free of those restraints. Futile as it was, he wasn’t giving up easily. “I won’t tell anyone anything you don’t want me to. Please, please just tell me what the fuck,” a breathless gasp interrupted his frantic words, “what the fuck’s happening! I don’t understand. Why can’t I—” Romulus’ hands balled into fists.
For a moment, Kieran thought he might burst into tears. It was like they were young again, and Romulus was still just his overly tired little sibling who had lost at Mario Kart. It didn’t last long, though, and it soon faded for a calmer, but still frantic, look.
“Why can’t I cast? Please, Kieran…”
Despite himself, Kieran crossed the room, stopping himself just shy of reaching down to touch Romulus’s hair. He berated himself for even the start of a show of sympathy, but Romulus’s desperation…
If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have given a fuck. There was a part of him that might’ve given a damn about that once, that might’ve been alarmed by what it meant to be so distant, but he wasn’t going to face that.
“The collar around your neck,” Kieran said tonelessly, staring down at the floor in front of his brother instead of at him. “It nullifies your magic. I don’t have the key, and I don’t know who does.”
“But you could find out,” Romulus said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kieran could see the witch’s eyes welling up with tears. There was something pitifully hopeful about those words, and if he’d been younger, it might’ve moved him. He shrugged. “I’m not going to. I—”
The door opened, and he fell silent.
“Everything okay?” a female voice cut in.
Kieran glanced up to see Wren at the top of the stairs. “Yeah, you’re fine,” he told her. He realized how close he was to Romulus, how close he’d gotten to touching him, but it was too late to move away abruptly without looking guilty.
“Good. I’ll let the others know.”
The door quietly closed again, and Kieran’s shoulders sagged.
“Kieran…” Romulus said softly, pleadingly. “Please, Kier… What’s happening? What others? What’ll you do to me…? Why?”
Each question battered Kieran with every emotion he’d been trying to smother over the years. He had to swallow hard, once and then again, and he still didn’t feel like he could speak. He wouldn’t have much time before they came down to start the interrogation, and he hated the way his anger and jealousy kept melting into discomfort and guilt. It made him distinctly uncomfortable, and it was hard to ignore.
He was at war with himself, and he wanted nothing more than to leave, to get out from the glow of the LED lights stuck to the walls and shut the door, and he had to fight his cowardice every step of the way.
“We just need to know a few things about the Butcher,” Kieran said, his voice quieting. “As long as you answer honestly, no one will hurt you. I…” He hesitated, almost choking on words that should’ve been reassuring from big brother to little brother but felt like a threat instead, “I’ll be here. All right?”
“The Butcher,” Romulus repeated, his eyes a little too wide. “What if I don’t have the answers?” He visibly swallowed.
The question wasn’t a stupid one, but then, Romulus had never been stupid. Spoiled, sure, and entitled as fuck, but not dumb. Kieran knew the rebels didn’t like the words I don’t know, and they believed them even less.
Kieran was crouching beside his brother before he could even draw in another breath, close enough to touch but still not actually reaching out. If anyone came in…
“Try,” he urged. “Just try.”
“Please don’t let them hurt me,” Romulus begged him.
Kieran choked on his reply, not knowing what to say. He couldn’t promise. He knew better. The supes were hard on anyone who sympathized with humans, but the rebels weren’t much kinder to humans who sympathized with supes.
Tentatively, he touched Romulus’s hair, fingers brushing against his forehead. He didn’t speak — couldn’t speak — and the more his brother pleaded, the harder it became. “How the fuck did you end up with someone like him?” he finally managed, which wasn’t at all what he’d meant to ask.
Unless his brother was a better actor than he’d given him credit for, Romulus wasn’t hardened enough to be around someone like Abel Boucher. Then again, it didn’t really take being a hard-ass to turn the other way and pretend to be blind.
You would know.
“How did you end up with people who drug other people and tie them up to pump them for information?” Romulus retorted with another pointless shake of his wrists before he dropped his head back against the wall.
Kieran stared, not even sure how to respond to that. Wordlessly, he drew back. It should’ve been obvious that a magicless witch would end up with the Rebellion, but a shockingly pitiful witch shouldn’t have been with someone like the Butcher.
“I needed help. I was in a bad place, and I needed… someone with money and power, and Abel was just there,” his younger sibling conceded with a sigh. “He’ll miss me if I’m gone.” The lie was slow, too slow, and unconvincing. “He’ll come looking.” Romulus added, but even he didn’t sound convinced of that. Hopeful, maybe, but unconvinced.
“You won’t be gone long if you cooperate,” Kieran replied. His desperation to flee the room was on the verge of becoming unbearable. He didn’t want to hear the helplessness in his brother’s voice, didn’t want to know that there was a very real chance he’d hear pain and true misery by the time the sun fully rose.
He was abruptly aware of the fact that he didn’t know much of the plan — including the part that included what would happen to Romulus when they’d gotten their answers. Fuck. Now he had to try to find out without seeming too interested.
“I don’t know anything, Kieran!” Romulus pressed on him.
“Don’t fuck with me,” Kieran warned. “I know he’s not someone you want to cross, but neither are we. Don’t screw around with this, Romi.”
Romi, like they were kids again. He pretended he hadn’t said it.
The witch just stared at him, that same mixture of uncertainty and fear still in his eyes. Kieran wasn’t altogether sure if he would listen and heed his warning. He wasn’t even altogether sure if Ram was a more terrifying man to cross than the one his brother was sleeping with. He didn’t want to think about the off chance that his little brother would fear the Butcher more than he did the threat of pain or worse…
Before he could think of what to say to convince Romulus to speak anyway, the door opened again. His eyes flicked to the top of the stairs, and he hissed, “Don’t. Lie.” He straightened slowly, putting distance between them and retreating — finally — without another word.