by Z Brewer
Gage sighed, equally as disturbed. He shook his head slowly, eyes locked on the destroyed artwork. "A troubled one, I suspect, Kaya. A deeply troubled man."
We left the bed chamber, and had made it all the way back into the mines before anyone noticed us. I marveled at how easy it seemed to be. I’d really thought that someone was going to have our heads by the end of the day. As we moved toward the exit, a large, squat man barked at us, “Shift’s not over! Grab your gear and get back to work!”
For a moment, Gage looked at me, bemused, but when the large man grunted something else, we each hurried to some tools near the walls. I picked up a chisel and Gage grabbed what looked like a hammer of some sort. Our efforts apparently eased the man’s temper some, because he wandered off and started barking orders at other miners. Once he was gone, Gage grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out the door in disbelief. It had been easy to get inside and then out again in one piece.
Too easy.
Chapter 20
Stuffing Trayton’s cloak inside my satchel, I wore my own, but kept his scarf to keep my neck and face warm, when the weather called for it. I was just slipping the satchel onto my back when Gage said, "Where will she go now?"
I thought about it for a moment before answering. If King Darrek didn't even know how to stop his Graplars from acting the way that they were acting, then someone had to be willing to at least try to actively stop them from harming innocent Unskilled villagers. And there was only one man that I knew would want to help me with my cause. Not that I thought that Darius would be any more pleased to see me than Trayton was to see me go. "I'll travel to Darkmoon Academy to find…another Barron that I know. I need someone on my side, someone to help me stop the Graplars from descending into the lowlands, and that means I need someone who’s capable of getting the Zettai Council to listen. I think he can."
"Would you..." He looked at me, his cheeks slightly flushed. Maybe it was from the cold. Maybe it wasn’t. "Would you like some company?"
A grateful smile found my lips. "I'd love that, Gage. In fact, I can't imagine making this trek without you."
"Nor I without you." He reached out with hesitant fingers and carefully, slowly brushed a stray lock of hair from my eyes, sweeping it behind my ear. His hand lingered there, ever so lightly brushing my cheek, my ear. The action was so casual, so small, but carried with it the feeling of such significance. His movements were tender, and though uninvited, it was something that I wanted to linger a bit longer. His eyes lowered from mine to my lips and back up again. I wanted him to kiss me then, to throw caution to the wind, to pull me close and wrap me in his embrace.
He moved in closer, his movements just as slow, just as hesitant, but just as welcomed. The possibilities that his kiss contained swept over me just as our lips were about to touch. I craved that tenderness. I thirsted for a stolen moment with someone who had no part in being Bound to me in any way.
But before our lips could meet, movement caught my eye over Gage's shoulder. The flash of silver hair. A man running over the crest of the next hill.
No. It couldn't be.
Without apology or explanation to Gage, I took off at a sprint, making my way to the next hill, where I thought I'd saw the man. As I ran, the sounds of battle filled my ears, and I wondered why I hadn't heard it before. Maybe, I surmised, because I was too involved into the notion of kissing Gage.
When I reached the apex of that hill, I was greeted with a small battle between a group of Barrons and some of Darrek's guards. For the most part, it was an equal fight, and very few from either side lay on the forest floor, too wounded to carry on or dead. Several Healers stood on the hill opposite the one I was on as the battle waged in the valley below. In a strange way, it pained me to see them there, knowing that I could never be like them, could never accept a place of subservience and simply wait to be rescued, if needed. I wondered what it felt like for Trayton not to see his Healer on the sidelines, just waiting to heal his every injury, or what it had felt like for Darius to never have that--not since Katelyn had perished. But my thoughts were interrupted by another flash of silver hair in the corner of my eye. I scanned the battlefield, but couldn't locate him with a glance. And then, there, jumping up and pushing off of a large tree trunk with his foot, katana raised high in the air, a look of absolute satisfaction on his face, was Darius.
My heart beat faster at the sight of him.
But it seized inside my chest when I saw Maddox being chased through the woods by a large Graplar.
Maddox. With her hair flying behind her, her eyes wide with terror. Maddox. With a katana gripped in both hands, held there simply by fear. Maddox. Who should never have been on the battlefield in the first place.
Without any thought at all, I ran down the hill. Throwing my cloak off mid-run, I unsheathed my katana and ran after the beast, my blade raising high as my feet moved over the ground more quickly, more lightly than they ever had before. But I could barely focus on my feet, or on the battle that raged all around me. All I could see was the enormous hungry Graplar chasing my best friend through the woods. I blinked, and Maddox was gone, replaced by Avery. The image caused my steps to quicken. Then I blinked again.
Maddox was tiring, her footfalls slowing against her will. To her credit, she didn’t cry, just kept running, and kept trying to escape the monster’s advances. The beast leapt through the air and so did I. It came down on top of her, knocking her to the ground. My feet hit its back, near the tailbone, and I ran up its spine and plunged my katana into its massive neck. The Graplar gurgled, staggered to the side a bit, and fell hard on the ground, dead.
Maddox scrambled to her feet, and whipped around. When she saw me, she did what I had deemed to be something so out of the realm of her reality that I froze. Maddox hugged me.
“Kaya! What are you doing here? Did you see that faking Graplar? It almost ate me!”
Grinning, I simply laughed and retrieved my katana. “Yeah, Maddox. I saw it. I guess you could say I’m looking for some answers out here. The real question is, what are you doing out here?”
Maddox looked only a little disappointed to see that I had been the cause of the Graplar’s death, and not the fact that she’d exhausted it into a heart attack, but she recovered quickly enough. “Right after my binding ceremony, Quill handed me orders to join Darius’s group. It’s kind of a secret what we’re doing. I would have told you, but—“
“Maddox, I am so sorry I wasn’t there for your binding. How is he? Your Healer, I mean?” I felt like such an insensitive dek. I’d been so focused on finding my answers that I hadn’t given much thought at all to what Maddox must have been going through in my absence.
Maddox waved her hand through the air and wrinkled her nose. “He’s…nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
In the not-too-far distance, another Graplar screeched, attracting our collective attention. I watched as Darius ran by merely yards away, his katana coated in rich, red blood. My breath caught in my throat.
“Go after him, Kaya.”
I looked at Maddox, and she smiled, despite the fact that so much death was surrounding us. Then, to my surprise, she hugged me again and said something that I never thought would ever come out of her mouth. “He needs you.”
I flung my katana forward and snapped sharply at the wrist, cleaning its blade of the Graplar’s blood. Then, with a nod at Maddox, I took off at a sprint.
I didn’t know if Darius needed me or not. But he was going to have me at his side, no matter what.
Chapter 21
With katana in hand, I hurried through the battlefield, my feet moving over the cold ground and even colder bodies. My eyes were on Darius as I ran, as I dodged trees, as I slashed my weapon to defend against various elite guards. He was a machine, cutting through Graplars, pausing only to kill a guard or two, and as his student, I was an extension of that machine. Pride filled me. Every action that he took was to defend his team. Every life that he took was absolutely necessary. Ever
y movement he made was perfectly fluid and exuded the utmost of confidence. He was a machine. A beautiful machine.
Stretching my arm out, I reached to grab his shoulder. As my fingers made contact, he whipped around to face me, katana raised. A small cut on his cheek healed closed before my eyes, and I was reminded that we were absolutely Soulbound. When he realized who it was that had touched him, he lowered his weapon, but only slightly. "I should have known you'd show up eventually."
My jaw twitched in irritation. He sounded so annoyed that I was standing right in front of him. What had I been expecting? That he might appreciate and recognize everything that I must have gone through simply to be standing here in front of him? Had I thought that time and distance might make him appreciate me? Might make him miss me or something? That was insane. He was still Darius. He was still impossible, no matter whether we were Soulbound or not. "I want answers, Darius. What's more, I deserve them. Why didn't you tell me we're Soulbound?"
His hand, warm and firm and familiar, closed over my arm and pulled, spinning me from one of King Darrek's guards. He slashed at the guard with his katana and the man screamed, falling to the ground. Then Darius's eyes were on me. I could feel their intensity, and cursed myself for welcoming it. "Because you shouldn't have ever known about us. Because this was my secret and mine alone."
I promised myself that I was going to tell him he could fak off once I’d heard him out, but I knew I was lying to myself. And hated that I wanted to be there with him, standing together on that hillside, so close that I swore I could hear his heart beating. "But it's not, is it, Darius? It's our secret. Yours and mine. Only it's so secret that I don't even understand it all."
Darius searched my eyes for a moment, his hand still on my arm, his fingers still pressing into my skin. The strength, the determination, the unrelenting stubbornness that was always present in his features had lessened some, replaced by embarrassment and something else. Something I couldn’t quite identify. I almost gasped at the utter beauty of him, so fragile. Fragile in ways that I never knew Darius could be.
But then I remembered where I was, and swept my gaze around the battlefield, looking for any sign of attacking guards.
There was none.
Darius squeezed my arm lightly, bringing my attention back to him. His voice was gruff, as if he were deeply troubled. Something about his tone caused my stomach to flip-flop, and my chest to ache. I was nervous and completely uncertain why I felt that way. “I have some things that I need to say, Kaya. You might not want to hear it, but I’m going to say it, and you’re going to listen.”
Even though he was being Darius—being forceful and superior and insistent in a way that made the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end—I couldn’t bring myself to combat what he was saying with sarcasm or disdain. Not with that haunted look in his eyes. All I could do was nod, and listen. Even though I suspected he was right about me not wanting to hear whatever it was he was about to say.
He wet his lips, dropping his attention from my eyes for the briefest of moments. “No one was more surprised than I was to learn that I was born Soulbound to two Healers, Kaya. My mother lost my twin brother at birth, and so the Healer my brother had been Soulbound to became Soulbound to me. I had two Healers. Not just one, but two. I was five years old when I was told, and sworn to secrecy, for fear that such an anomaly would cause an uproar in Skilled society. Can you imagine what kind of burden something like that was for a small child? Of course you can’t. No one can. Because it doesn’t happen. One Barron to one Healer. That’s how being Soulbound works.”
Something dark flashed in his eyes, something that said that somehow, this was all my fault. Or his other Healer’s fault. Anyone but his own. Maybe I should have felt offended at that, but I didn’t. I could only muster up sympathy for the boy he’d been, the man he was now. It must have been hard to learn that your soul had been split. It must have been impossible to live with.
A large guard jumped from behind a nearby tree, and Darius released my arm long enough to cut him down. The battlefield was littered with bodies from both sides, but it was clear that Darius's team had the upper hand. I watched as Maddox took out one of the smaller guards with a hunk of wood and wondered where her katana had ended up. Then Darius gently grabbed my arm again, and he was all that I could see.
“My parents chose for me. They chose the Healer whose parents weren’t renegades. They chose the Healer who came from an honorable family, and the Elder Barrons agreed, probably relieved that they wouldn’t have to deal with the task of bringing your parents to justice. It was easier to let them go, let them hide, than to hunt them down and try them. So my parents chose Katelyn, and my life’s path was set in stone.” He ran a hand through his hair then, as if the subject was unbearable to face. As he did, I noticed the slightest tremor in his fingers. “But I always wondered about you."
I slight breeze ruffled the hair on the back of my head and I knew that it was a breeze caused by movement. I whipped around, my katana raised, to face a broad shouldered guard with a large scar on his forehead. He growled at me and swung his katana forward. But I was ready. Despite my distracted thoughts about Darius and curiosity as to the rest of his explanation, I was ready for a fight. Being outside the walls of Shadow Academy had given me at least that much of a gift. I blocked his advances with my blade and then kicked him in the stomach, pushing him back from me. Distance meant advantage, and height meant further advantage. I backed up the hill, aware that Darius was engaging another guard to my left, and readied my blade. I didn't want to kill him, but knowing that if I didn't, he'd kill me certainly gave me the drive necessary to do so. Recovering from my kick, he advanced up the hill and I slashed my katana forward, hard and fast. Blood poured from his chest, but he kept coming, and I was stunned for a moment--just long enough for him to grip me by the front of my shirt and growl hotly through the blood that was bubbling up from his lungs. "You fight...like a girl."
Clenching my jaw, I shoved him back and aimed for his neck this time. Then I brought my blade across hard and finished the job.
I felt no remorse.
Yes, I fought like a girl. Like a girl who had trained hard to know how to wield a katana. A girl that had brought herself all the way across the continent of Kokoro in one piece. A girl that had faced Graplars, Barrons, sickness, and the shadowed corners of King Darrek's palace.
I fought like a girl. And I was proud of that.
Out of breath and jumpy from the encounter, I gasped when Darius grabbed my shoulder and turned me to him. Without speaking aloud, he questioned with his eyes whether or not I was okay, whether or not I wanted to know more about he and I being Soulbound. Taking a deep breath and releasing it into the air, I nodded, and he continued. Quieter this time than he had spoken before. "I wondered how and where you were, but I knew better than to ask. I didn’t even know your name, but you were there, in my thoughts. More than I could even admit to myself."
He paused, as if expecting me to respond in some way, but I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was watch the expression on his face, and feel the pain coming off of him in waves. It was like watching someone drowning, but being unable to save them, to rescue them from their torment. “Then Katelyn was killed.”
Behind his voice, I heard a small screech. It might have been anything. Metal clanging against metal. The wounded crying out in pain. But I knew better. I gripped my katana tightly and shoved Darius away from the tree that we were standing by. "Darius, watch out!"
A moment later, the Graplar descended. Its immense form hit the ground so hard that vibrations shook the soles of my feet. Its mouth was open, drool dripping from its rows and rows of enormous, sharp teeth. It growled at Darius, the prey that it had marked, and Darius growled back.
The beast leapt forward and I bent at the knee, slashing its heels with my blade. It howled, whipping around, as if just noticing me for the first time.
There are moments when we cannot deny regrett
ing the things that we have done. And as I stood there, my heart fluttering with fear, my head clouded with doubt, the Graplar's drool steadily oozing from its enormous mouth to the top of my shoe, I could not deny that I regretted cutting the beast. I could not deny that I was afraid of the thing standing in front of me. But I also could not deny that what Darius had taught me about using fear as motivation was absolutely wise.
I stepped forward, attacking the beast head-on with a slash so forceful that the blade stuck in the creature's jaw, ripping my katana from its hand. Rather than anger it, my bumbled action seemed to frighten the monster. The Graplar jumped back, shaking its head until the blade was freed and tumbled into the grass below. Then, with a whimper, the huge creature ran off into the woods.
Shaking his head, Darius plucked up my sword and returned it to me without comment. When the Graplar was gone, he relaxed some, but kept a more watchful eye on the battlefield as he spoke. Doing so also seemed to ease his tension a bit. “It was my fault. I should have been protecting her. We were on the battlefield at the second battle of Wood’s Cross. I was facing down King Darrek himself. I had my chance, my shot to kill him and end this seemingly unending war. So I took it. I chose killing him over saving her. If she would have been able to defend herself—“
He cut off his words then, as if they were too painful to speak. I opened my mouth to say something, say anything to ease his pain, but he stopped me with a shake of his head. “To top it off, I failed, and the king lives. So I made the wrong choice for absolutely nothing.”