The smoke blew into my eyes,
obscuring Alexa from view for a moment, as she knelt and wretched into the
bushes beside our burning home. Time was running short, any minute the army
would arrive and take her away from me. I couldn’t stand to lose her, too. Not
now, not like this. There was no one left to protect her—except me.
When the smoke cleared once more,
the sight of her kneeling there, her shoulders shaking as her long, dark hair
blew in the wind struck me as though I’d been hit by an enemy’s sword. I knelt
down beside her, gently pulling her hair back, out of her face as she
straightened and wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
“The army’s coming, Alexa. We have
to do it now,” I said. “If they see me cutting your hair, they’ll take you . .
. they’ll force you into the breeding house.”
She looked at me, her hazel
eyes—identical to my own—clouded with grief and stark fear. Then she glanced
past me toward the trail that wound into the jungle. The army was getting
close—too close.
“Maybe if I show them how well I
fight, they’ll let me join the army instead?” Her voice was panicked now.
I shook my head, urgency pounding
through my blood. I hadn’t realized my hand had tightened around her hair,
until I saw the whites of my knuckles.
“Fine,” she finally bit out. “Let’s
do it. Hurry,” she added, as if I needed any reminder of how short the time
was—how much danger she was in.
She stood up as I grabbed the shears
I’d managed to save before our entire house turned into an inferno. She was
still pale and her hands trembled, but she clenched them into fists to hide the
shaking from me. Always trying to be brave. Always trying to prove how strong
she was.
When the shears bit through the
first strands of Alexa’s hair and they fell to the ground, she choked back a
sob, trying to conceal her emotions with a big intake of breath that turned
into a strangled cough. I wanted to stop, to console her, but there was no
time. Instead, I rushed to finish the job. Cut, cut, cut. Until her one vanity,
her long, thick hair, lay on the ground around us. She turned to face me,
lifting one hand as though she wanted to see if it really was gone, but then
letting it drop again without touching the short, choppy hair that remained. It
was shocking how much she looked like me. We’d always looked similar,
especially since she was so tall and thin. But her long hair had set her apart
as a girl. Now, if I hadn’t known better, I might have guessed she was my twin
brother, not sister.
“How do I look?” she asked me,
trying to hide the tears that glistened in her eyes.
“Like me.” I managed to make my
voice steady, to conceal the grief from all we’d lost today. Would it be
enough? Could we really pull this deception off?
Our gazes met for a brief second,
and then I turned away to pick up the strands of hair and toss them onto the
flames. She hurried and joined me, hiding the evidence of what we’d done.
The last bit of her hair turned to
ash just as the first few soldiers of the Antionese army marched into our yard.
