Chapter 3 3:

My mother's eyes hadn't left my face. "I see you've found a running mouth to go with your running legs." Her voice was silk over gravel. "Let's see how far both take you when you're locked in a room and only brought out when it's time to walk down that aisle."

"Kayla."

Mirah's voice called out my name. Soft and careful, wrapped in that particular quality she had always known how to deploy, the little-sister voice, the one that had worked on me since she was four years old and had learned exactly how to use her size against my heart.

I turned and looked at her.

She was standing now, her expression arranged into something that resembled genuine distress, her eyes wide and imploring. She was beautiful when she looked like that. She had always been beautiful when she looked like that.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked. "For the last time, just this once can't you do this for me? I'm your little sister, Kayla. You always said you'd do anything for me." Her voice softened further. "Can't you do just this one thing?"

I looked at her for a long moment.

I thought about all the times I had believed that voice. All the years I had arranged myself smaller and quieter to make room for her. All the homework I had done in her name, the blame I had absorbed that belonged to her, the exam I had sat in her place during our college because she hadn't studied and couldn't afford to fail and had appeared at my door the night before with those same wide eyes and that same soft voice and the absolute certainty that I would say yes.

I had always said yes.

"Mirah." My voice came out tired in a way that went deeper than today. "The only time you remember I'm your sister is when you need something from me. When you need me to step in, step back, take the fall, carry the weight, then I am your sister. The rest of the time I am furniture." I looked at her steadily. "I have been a replacement for you my entire life. I am not going to be one for this."

Something moved across her face, quick and complicated, there and then gone.

Then she stepped back, and her expression settled into something smooth and unreadable, as she looked at our parents with a small, deliberate movement of her chin.

"I suppose Mom and Dad will have to decide what to do with her, then," she said quietly.

There it was.

The little sister who needed me, wrapped so efficiently back up into the daughter who didn't.

My father didn't hesitate.

"Guards."

They reappeared in the doorway with the speed of men who had been waiting just outside it.

"Take her to the basement. Lock the door. You bring her out in two hours when it is time for the wedding."

"No...."

They were already moving toward me. I pulled back, stumbled, and caught myself against the arm of a chair.

"Dad." My voice came out cracked and open in a way I hadn't intended. "Dad, you cannot.... I am your daughter. I am also your daughter. You cannot lock me in a basement like I am... like I am...."

He did not look at me. He was already turning away, straightening his cufflinks, the conversation concluded as far as he was concerned.

"Dad."

Nobody answered.

The guards were gentle about it, which was its own particular cruelty they took my arms without roughness, and they walked me down the corridor and down the stairs through the door at the bottom, and one of them said, quietly with what sounded like genuine regret, "I'm sorry, Miss Kayla," before the door closed.

The lock turned.

I heard their footsteps receding.

And then there was silence, the specific, total silence of a room underground, a silence with weight and texture, a silence that pressed against my eardrums and my chest at the back of my throat all at once.

I stood in the middle of it for a long moment.

Then my legs made a decision my pride had nothing to do with, and I sank onto the floor, I pulled my knees up to my chest, and I pressed my forehead against them, letting the tears fall.

Two hours. I'll be here for the next two hours all alone.

My father's voice moved through me like ice water.

Everything I have built. This family's business. It all depends on you today. Which I still can't believe.

You owe us this.

This is what you are for.

I pressed my face harder against my knees and I let myself cry in the dark basement, while the memories came the way they always came when I finally stopped running from them carrying me backwards to three days ago when everything had happened.