Collaterals

A Brighter Red

My palms were sweating enough that my lips had sent a mindless prayer: steady, let my hands be steady around the pommel of my broadsword. A silent prayer, as all things coming out of my mouth had been since I'd awakened from that dreadful slumber. Two days I'd been shackled to the depths of my mind, eyelids held firmly shut so that I was shrouded in a consuming darkness with nothing, nothing but that memory. His blood, the way it'd felt as it soaked through my corset and wet my abdomen, how it'd matted into his hair and found its way beneath my nails. I wish I'd been awake when they'd bathed me. Maybe then I'd feel clean. They told me, after, that my eyes were open when they'd taken the sponge to my skin. I know only that I'd been still, hands still clutching his phantom as I'd seen my brother die, again and again in my arms, before the world had finally gone dark.

When I did wake, my eyes had refused to flutter open. 

I'd tried to claw my way out my skin, fingers flexed uselessly by my side. I'd tried, oh how I'd tried to bring nail to flesh, pull at tendons tied to bone. And when I found I could do nothing but sink into the bed, limbs held down by some intangible force, I'd screamed. At least, I think I screamed. My throat hurt, my neck pulled taught, and my mouth stretched open so wide it'd hurt for days after. But no sound came out.

And no sound has since.

And so it was only right that my prayers stayed silent.

A breath forced its way through my lungs as I scanned the courtyard ahead. Behind me, I knew, Haitham sat. I was unsure where the throne he sat on came from. It was large. Larger than the one father would sit on, and certainly too large for Haitham's build. Servants fanned him, stands built to shield him from a sun that had not yet fully risen.

Dawn had come and gone, and not a single man has come to claim my brother's throne. Not a single man, but the one they now dragged by his feet, his blood seeping lines into the hard ground.

Ali's blood had been a brighter red. Or maybe that was because it hadn't found dirt to seep into.