“He . . . he is my . . . brother,” he confessed, pain racking his face. This time I knew it was not physical pain. It was emotional. I remembered what the sister had said earlier. The prophet ordered them to truly make him pay . . . “He is . . . my twin. The . . . prophet is my twin brother . . . and he has renounced me . . . He has thrown . . . me to the dogs.”
Sister Ruth froze behind me. I heard her breath catch in her throat. I glanced up and saw her eyes grow huge at Rider’s revelation. Before I could ask if she was alright, she dashed out of the room.
“Where are the guards?” he suddenly asked, a panicked edge to his raspy, low voice. I could not look his way. It hurt too much to look him in the face.
“They are away right now. The prophet called a meeting.”
When I made myself face Rider again, his eyes were steadfastly on me. “Harmony,” he whispered brokenly. He lifted his hand and held it out for me to take.
This time the tears did fall. Because although I was looking into the exact eyes and face of the prophet I despised, Rider’s trembling hand helplessly reaching for mine was the single most devastating moment of my life. Fear was written on his face, fear that I may reject him . . . the man with the face of the man I hated most.
My fingers twitched as I stared at his hand. I wanted to take it, but as I looked back to his face, I asked, “I . . . I do not understand. Why are you in here?”
Rider’s face fell into an expression of utter rejection and despair. I watched his hand fall to land on his leg. His shoulders sagged in defeat. His eyes drifted downward and his skin paled. If there was ever an image of a man destroyed it was this. My heart tore into tiny fragments as I watched the hope leave his broken form.
The cells quieted, but I could hear Sister Ruth and Brother Stephen near the door. I knew they would be listening in. They would want to hear whatever Rider would say. “Rider?” I pressed, my voice a soft whisper. I waited for him to speak, my head pounding. I had to force myself to stay back near the door of the cell. But it was hard. Rider looked so lonely, slumped on the hard floor, that I wanted nothing more than to take him in my arms. Even more when he looked up, and with tears tumbling down his cheeks, rasped, “You are so beautiful, Harmony. I know it isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s true.” I swallowed back the momentary happiness those words made me feel. Because those words, from Rider’s lips, did not pain my heart the way they usually did.
Rider sighed and looked down at our gap in the wall. “I thought it when we would talk through that gap.” He lifted his hand and looked at his palm, rolling his fingers closed as if he was imagining my hand was still in his.
“Rider,” I said again, inching just that little bit closer. His hurt was like a magnet to me, and only I held the power to comfort him.
But I needed answers first.Rider’s head dropped, but after a long breath, he said, “I am Cain. I am the destined prophet of The Order. Prophet David’s true heir.”
The air froze around me. “What?” My hand went to my mouth in shock.
In the same monotone, lifeless drawl, Rider continued. “I ascended a while ago, and came to New Zion with my twin to take the mantle of leader of our people.” His face contorted into an anguished expression. “I was never very good at it,” he said more softly, gently. He shook his head and a small huff escaped from his lips. “But Judah, my brother, was. He guided me. He was the puppet master, pulling my strings.” Rider paused, lost in his thoughts. “I did not realize that until today.”
I edged closer still, my body gravitating toward his as he shared what had led him to this hell. “I kept disappointing him, my people. I couldn’t get anything right. I . . . ” He trailed off, muscles tensing. “I didn’t like some of the practices that Prophet David had taught us. I didn’t share all of the beliefs that the prophet was meant to endorse. Ones vital to many in our faith.” His eyebrows dragged downward. “I . . . I couldn’t let them keep hurting people. I couldn’t keep hurting people. I had to stop them.”
“The Lord’s Sharing?” I asked, hoping that that was one of the beliefs he found so repulsive.
Rider nodded and squeezed his eyes tightly shut as if ridding an unwanted image from his mind. “I didn’t know,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t know, I refused to believe this of our people . . . until I saw it with my own two eyes and had no choice but to see its ugly truth.” He sucked in a sharp exhale, and a guttural sound slipped from his chest. “I saw them hurting children, Harmony. Young girls being forced upon by grown men, their arms tied behind their backs with contraptions prizing their legs open.” Nausea clawed up my throat as I recalled what that trap felt like, pushing my thighs apart, the sting from the sharp teeth sinking into my tender flesh. I closed my eyes, just trying to rid myself of the memory of feeling a guard pushing inside me . . . of trying to hold in my screams because it would only give my chosen guard the satisfaction of hearing me cry.
“I couldn’t take it,” Rider said, pulling me from the past I tried hard to keep from my heart. I opened my eyes to see his fingers digging into the flesh on his legs. “I managed to stop one. I stopped a Lord’s Sharing . . . the first and only one I ever witnessed.”
“You did?” I asked, a sense of hope building within me.
“Then my brother, my only family, my only friend in this entire fucking world, cast me out. Put me in this cell and ordered daily beatings to make me see the error of my ways.” Rider’s eyes lifted until his gaze met mine, and his face broke down in tears. “He took it all away, Harmony . . . left me alone, and I . . . ” His voice got caught in his throat, and my heart burst apart, no longer able to see or hear this man breaking apart so completely.
I rushed forward, crawling to sit by his side. My eyes drank him in again, the sight of his face, hair and beard tricking my mind to run. My eyes tried to tell me this was the wicked Prophet Cain that had touched me and hit me so violently. But my heart . . . my heart told me this was a confused and battered soul that needed comfort.
Needed something and someone to be real . . . to be there for him.
I lifted a shaking hand and found Rider’s. He flinched as I touched him. By the way he blinked his tears away and looked at me in shock, I knew he had not seen or heard me approach. Without breaking his gaze, I turned his hand over and threaded my fingers through his. I watched as Rider’s scared and timid face was masked in confusion. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed in trepidation. His gaze fell from my face to land on our joined hands. I felt him squeeze them, as though testing I was truly there.