“Oh my … oh no, no, no!” she yells, and she drops the roast immediately. “What did I do?”
I carefully step over his body and grab her to keep her from fainting. “Calm down.”
“I killed him!” she yells. “I killed him, right? I killed him! Oh God …”
“Shh …” She falls apart against me, crying her eyes out. “It’s okay,” I say, petting her back.
“No, I killed my husband!” she yells. “I’m a horrible wife.”
“No, don’t you say that, Emmy.” I lean back and make her look at me. “He deserved it. He hurt you.” I grab her arm and point at the bruise on her hands. “Look. Look what he did to you.”
Tears well up in her eyes. “But this is not what we were taught … I’m so confused.” She jerks free from my grip. “I hate him, but I’m supposed to love him. And now he’s dead because of me.” She starts pacing around the house. “What do I do?”
I quickly close the door and examine the body. “He’s definitely dead.”
She covers her mouth with her hand and shakes her head. “Oh God, what have I done?”
“You did what you had to, to protect yourself,” I say. “You deserve to live without pain, Emmy. And he’s caused you so much pain.”
“But that doesn’t make it right to murder him!”
I grab her and make her stop. “Listen to me. He was an awful man, just like all the others who hurt their wives.”
“A good wife takes care of her husband,” she mutters, in complete shock.
“A good wife is a wife who lives. Who’s happy,” I say. “And you deserve to be happy. There are other men out there who want someone like you. Who would treat you with dignity and respect.”
She pauses and really looks at me for the first time since she killed him. “Really?”
I nod.
“No, wait, we shouldn’t even be talking about this. I’m married.” She closes her eyes and sighs.
“Not anymore. He’s dead now,” I say, placing a hand on her cheek. “He can’t control you anymore.”
She breathes out a sigh of relief, and the warmth of my hand is starting to have an effect on her. “What do we do?”
“Get rid of the evidence,” I say. “And the body.”
She grabs the roast she used and looks at the blood dripping from the bone. The look in her eyes changes. One second she’s crying, clearly upset at her own actions, and then … poof. Gone is the meek, scared little lamb, and out comes the chilling, merciless wife with no remorse.
I knew she hated his guts; it was clear from the very first day.
She was born to do this.
And she marches straight back into the kitchen and stuffs the roast straight back into the fire.
Noah
“What the fuck is going on out there?” the president barks as he stares out the breakfast room’s window.
“Ah … I have no clue, sir,” I reply, trying to calm him down while also playing it cool by munching on an apple. “Maybe there was a celebration of some sort?”
“No, there’s something going on,” he says, and he marches straight for the door.
I quickly get up from my seat, leaving the apple. “Where are you going?”
“Out. Someone has to check,” he replies, heading straight for the exit.
“Hold up, we have guards for that,” I say, running a bit faster so I can catch up and get in front of him. “If you show yourself now, the people might think we don’t have the situation under control.”
“I am in control,” he growls back. “And I have plenty of guards to back me up. Now get out of my way.” He stares me down until I have no choice but to step away before he gets his guards to pin me down.
He storms off, and the guards follow suit. I tag along not too far behind, making sure I don’t get caught in his crosshairs. The scene outside has me stopping to catch my breath for a second.
Women and men are throwing themselves at each other, punching, kicking, biting. There’s fighting going on all around the Holy Land, and I am just amazed.
This is what Marsha and Natalie came up with?
An uprising?
The president continues his path toward the huts, so I follow him while looking around for Natalie. I have to get her out of here before he finds her and discovers she’s the cause.
The president grabs a random passerby who’s running and shakes him. “Where’s Natalie? My wife? Have you seen them?”
The passerby seems befuddled at both the question and the fact that the president himself is touching him. He’s never gone out when he wasn’t supposed to, when it wasn’t for official business, and he’s never been to the huts either, so it’s no wonder the guy is shocked. I am too.
“Where are they?!” he growls.
“I don’t know,” the guy says, raising his trembling hands. “I swear.”
The president shoves him away, and the guy drops onto the muddy ground.
“Keep searching,” the president barks at his guards. “Find them. Now!”
The guards nod and instantly disperse, searching every hut in their vicinity, tearing it all apart. I can’t do anything but watch as the whole community seems to be turned on its head. I’ve never seen something like this, a violence so visceral it brings chills to my bones.
Suddenly, I spot her, digging a hole in the ground next to a hut not too far from here.
My eyes widen when I spot the body.
Fuck.
I glance at the president, and when he isn’t looking, I dash to Natalie. I grab her shoulder and pull her with me. “Come. Now.”
“Noah? What are you doing here? Let go of me!” she squeals. “This has to be done!”
“I don’t care what you’re doing, hide!” I bark, shoving her into the hut right next to where she was digging.
Emmy’s there too, but she’s covered in blood, and the sight catches me off guard.
She’s washing her hands, and the moment she looks up and spots me, the terror makes her tremble.
“It’s okay. I won’t get you in trouble,” I say, holding up my hand. “But we need to go. Now.”
Emmy’s jaw still drops, and tears fill her eyes.
But she’s not looking at me.
“Go where?”
The moment his voice booms behind me, my whole body feels as though it’s turned into ashes. And when Natalie turns around, her face turns bleak too.
He followed me here.
He saw.
“Think you could hide this from me?” the president says. “That I wouldn’t discover all the things you’ve been planning behind my back?”
I close my eyes and let it all sink in.
He knows.
She’s here for only one reason, and he knows exactly why.
She caused the uprising … and now he knows I was involved too.
We’re doomed.
“Take them. Lock them up,” the president barks right before I’m shoved to my knees by two guards, muzzled, and put into chains.
Ready for the slaughter.
Natalie
“Let me out!” I yell, banging on my bedroom door again and again.
It’s no use. No one’s going to let me out.
The guards have a job to do. If they don’t listen, the president will punish them.
The women won’t let me out because if they did, he’d know they were helping … and then he’d punish them too.
The other patriarchs? They want to keep their power so they’d never help me.
And Agatha? She’d lose her head if she tried.
No one can help me.
Not because they don’t want to, but because of their own safety. There is no happiness in this place, only power and those who have it. That’s what it’s all about … my father, the president, has it all.
Someone has to take it from him.
I just wish I knew how.
I’m stuck in my room with nothing I can use as a weapon to tear this door down. It’s the only thing that’s standing between me and the people out there, the people who were ready. Damn, I was so close. Those women were ready to fight.
And then the guards came and dragged them all away, one by one, until no one was left to fight.
I don’t know what happened to all of those women. Did they put them all in suffering huts? Did they make them wash the floors? Clean the grounds? Did they hurt them? Punish them for their insolence?
A chill runs along my spine. God, this is all my fault.
It was my idea to make them stand up to their oppressors.
I thought we could do it, that we could finally beat them. We had them outnumbered.
Yet … it’s still not enough.
They have weapons. What do we have?
Our bodies.
We’re no match. We never were. It was only a matter of time until the guards came to beat down the crowd and the fighting ended.
And then the president himself found me with Emmy … burying the body of her husband in her goddamn yard. The guards dragged me all the way back to my room and locked me inside.
What’s going to happen to Noah? To Emmy? To me?
The president isn’t going to take this lightly. Will he make an example out of me to quell the people’s rage and subdue them once again?
My whole body begins to tremble, and I sink down to the floor in front of the door.
What am I going to do? And does he know my mother is involved too?
I don’t want her to die because of me.
Suddenly, someone pries at the lock, and I immediately crawl away.
A few seconds later, the door opens. Agatha’s head peeks in. “The president requests your presence.”
I get up from the floor and walk down the stairs with her. “Agatha, do you know where Noah is?”
She shakes her head.
I can’t ask her about Emmy because she doesn’t know her.
“What about my mother?” I ask instead. “Do you know where she is?”
She looks at me with concern in her eyes. “The president locked her in her room. I don’t know why, so don’t ask me.”
I get that she doesn’t want to be involved. Who does when you know what’s at stake? But that doesn’t make it any less troubling. Why would the president lock my mother up in her room, unless … he knew what she’s been up to.
My heart begins to palpitate.
We go underneath the staircase toward the auditorium. Sweat drips down my back as the big door opens up.
“In there,” Agatha says, smiling gently. “Good luck.”
“Thank you,” I reply, before stepping inside.
The president sits on his throne in front of a room filled with hundreds of people. And they’re all looking at me.
The air is knocked out of my lungs. A couple of those people were fighting along with me in the dining hut. Did the President bring them all here to witness my demise?
Even Holly’s there, with a panicky look on her face, as though she’s begging me not to reveal that she was helping Emmy deal with her husband. She looks terrified … just as terrified as I feel deep down in my heart.
My courage sinks into my shoes as I step forward to face my father’s wrath.
The look on his face is thunderous as if he could murder all of them and not blink even once.
“Stop,” he barks, and I immediately cease walking.
I’m in the middle of the room, right in front of his throne. Everyone’s glaring at me, including him. “I know you started that riot in the dining hut,” he says.
“I was—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” He raises his hand. “You’ve incited the people. Put them up against each other. And for what? Lies!” His voice is so loud it feels as though it could blow me over. He leans forward in his throne. “You think you could get away with that?”
I’ve never felt this tiny, this humiliated. “No, I—”
“You’re my daughter. My only daughter. I thought you were going to be a good girl. That you and Noah understood what our community was about,” he says.
Noah.
His name being called out is enough to make me look around in search for him, but he’s nowhere in the crowd. Where did they take him?
“But it seems you two are hardheaded and as stubborn as your own fathers.” President Lawrence clears his throat. “And it seems I need to teach you all a lesson about defying the rules.”
Suddenly, the doors in the back open, and everyone turns around in their seat.
The blinding light makes me cover my eyes for a second, but when I remove my hand, my eyes widen.
Outside are two makeshift gallows … and two people standing on top with bags over their heads.
My heart stops beating.
Noah … and Emmy?
