I’d passed out. When I’d awoken, I was being dragged back to this building.
I struggled to see in front of me; my matted hair and beard covered most of my face. A flash of white caught my attention just as the door behind me slammed shut. I knew the guards had left me, but I wasn’t alone. I could feel someone else was with me.
I pushed my hair aside. I flinched at the bright light above me, but tried to focus on that flash of white. After four blinks, the shape of a person came into view . . . a person I knew as well as I knew myself.
Or at least that was what I used to believe.
Judah sat on some high steps at the end of the room, a smirk on his face. His arms were draped casually over his bent knees. His long, brown hair was groomed, and his beard was now the length that I always wore mine. My stomach fell. I had been holding on to the vain hope that our people would see through his disguise. But he looked exactly like me. Sitting before me now, a small proud glint in his eyes, he knew I was seeing it too.
Judah’s plan had worked.
Judah was Prophet Cain.
Spurred on, unwilling to forfeit the will to fight, I made my weak arms lift me until I was sitting up straight. I breathed heavily, my energy depleted, but my eyes never left my brother.
His hard, unyielding eyes never left mine.
A confusing mix of emotions swelled inside my chest. Judah was my brother, born into this life as I was. We were made to be the leaders of The Order. We were taken from our parents when we were young, too young to remember them. All we’d ever had was each other. He was my lifeblood, my best friend . . . he was my twin. But as I looked at him now, he felt worlds apart from the brother I kept in my heart. The twin to whom I was once so close was drifting away from me. I knew how to stop it, but I just . . . couldn’t.
“Judah,” he said, his voice echoing off the thick stone walls. Despite my tiredness, my head snapped up.
Judah.
He’d called me Judah. His delusion was worse than I’d feared.
My body vibrated with anger at the sound of his own name coming from his mouth. I licked along my dry cracked lips. I swallowed, just to allow some liquid into my throat, and rasped, “Cain.” Judah’s dark eyes flashed with fury. It only urged me further on. “Cain,” I repeated. “My name is . . . Cain.”
Judah’s smirk dropped and his entire body tensed. I slowly placed my hand over my chest. “I am the prophet . . . not you . . . not . . . you . . . ”
Judah’s cheeks flooded with redness. I dropped my hand, unable to keep it lifted. Judah watched my limb fall limply to my side. His flush faded and he leaned forward. The tension thickened as he stared me down, the air feeling too hot to breathe.
He didn’t say anything for several seconds, simply keeping our gazes locked. Finally, a wide, cruel smile set upon his lips. “You know, brother, when we were children, I was convinced you were the greatest person in the world. Even above Uncle David.”
In my quick exhale I could hear a faint husky whistle, evidence of the toll my beatings were taking on my body. My throat was raw and sore, but what hurt most was the pain in my heart as I heard the nostalgia in Judah’s voice. Because I remembered it. I remembered how, when we were children, he would look at me as we lay on The Pasture’s perfectly manicured lawn under the summer sun. We would talk about how I would one day ascend, with my brother by my side. Always by my side, as God had designed it. I squeezed my eyes shut. We were innocent children then, looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses. We had no idea of the path that lay before us, the treacherous roads that we would travel.
It was strange. I could still feel the excitement we both felt back then surging within me. I remembered my fear of my personal path: becoming the prophet.
But I’d always known I could do it, because I had him.
Our unbreakable bond had been shattered mere months after my ascension. Shattered by his greed. Obliterated by his pride . . . destroyed by his need for revenge.
Jaw tightening, muscles growing rigid with hate, Judah continued, “But as we got older, all you did was frustrate me. We both studied the scriptures, yet I grasped the lessons more easily than you. We were brought up in the same way, yet only you were ever punished. You made mistake after mistake, stumbling through sermons and fumbling over our sacred passages like a blind fool.” Judah’s head tipped to the side, and his narrowed eyes ran over my inked sleeves. My Hangmen ink. I knew he hated that I had them. I knew he hated that I had been picked to carry out the task our uncle had deemed so important.
He hated that he wasn’t me.
A strange expression came over his face. For once, I couldn’t guess what he was thinking.
“Then Uncle sent you to infiltrate the devil’s men.” Judah sighed. He ran his hand down his face, just the way I did. He shook his head . . . just like I did. He must have studied my habits and mannerisms.
A question circled in my head: how long had he been planning this takeover? Enough time to have studied my every move. Long before I gave him cause. My blood chilled. My brother, my twin . . . seemingly he had doubted me all along.