Burning Bridges

by Nadege Richards

  I tossed the coat over my shoulders, making sure to cover my hair and face. I looked up at him and whispered, “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.” He slipped his hands into mine and led me through the trees in the opposite direction of the voices. I was oddly aware of his calloused hands holding me, the way they made my own hands seem so small and childish. His coat smelled of leather and clover, lilacs and sun. It was a weird mixture, but it was definitely Ayden. The smell of him was intoxicating and I hoped it would never leave me.

  “Don’t look up until I tell you,” he whispered. We slowed as we reached what I assumed was the border. Ayden gripped my hand more intimately and I tried not to think anything of it, despite the way it made my heart jump.

  “Names,” said a deep voice. He seemed to pause. “Ayden. Who is this you have with you?”

  I froze.

  “Feven. She’s not feeling so well, the Servant Keeper believes her to have the flu.”

  Silence, and then the sound of gates opening rattled the ground beneath me. “You’re free to go.”

  Ayden put his other arm around me and led us through. I gripped his hand tighter as we walked and prayed they wouldn’t call us back. Feven—he’d said I was Feven, but I wondered if a Feven even existed. Ayden had lied for me, and just like that, he had somehow gained my trust.

  “You can look now.” He released my hand and took a step back. The air was the first thing I took notice of as I removed the coat from around me. It was dry and passé, stiff and unmoving. I could hear that Old Haven had Nightingales too, but their songs were somewhat sadder, lonely.

  We stood alone on a dirt path with the border and the guards nowhere in sight. Old buildings, rundown shops, and beat up carriages were all this place was. Trees willowed and flowers sulked. It seemed as if the sun didn’t touch this part of Alwaenia. I wondered how anyone survived depression living in a town like this.

  “Where is here?” I whispered.

  Ayden began to walk and, out of fear from being left alone, I followed his every step. “This is Loracre, Old Haven’s richest city.” He smiled ruefully.

  This is rich? “What happened?” We turned left down a street and I watched the darkness escape into the alleys. “To the city, I mean.”

  “Your father,” Ayden said, glancing back at me. “His reign sought no room for Old Haven, and so we grew poor, desperate. We’re used to it, really,” he added at the sight of the look on my face.

  Silence grew between us and I whispered, “I’m sorry.” Ayden nodded his head and continued walking. I didn’t know what the apology was going to fix, but it was a start. I was truly sorry, and being it my father’s fault, I was ashamed.

  The neighborhood grew quieter the more we explored it. Birds stopped singing and the moon seemed to hide from us. There was only an unsettling darkness. Finally, Ayden stopped at a small house with a mess of a lawn and stood to stare at it for a while. Only one light was on and it seemed to be coming from the kitchen. I looked up at him to see if I could see what I was apparently missing, but he just sighed and started walking again. I wanted to ask, but dismissed it as none of my business. He could have left me at the river, but he didn’t.

  We cut through the back of the same house and he unlocked a gate. Plastic toys and dolls lay strewn across the overgrown grass, but he easily kicked them aside. He kept quiet the whole way across the backyard, which wasn’t much but grass and weeds. I looked up from my feet and noticed a small hut-like home that sat oddly alone. I followed him in through the door and realized how small the place was, barely room for one but somehow managing.

  A pang of guilt hit me hard in the chest and almost knocked me back out the door. This was his home, this was where he lived. I wasn’t the judgmental type, but I knew this was probably all he had. The feeling made me want to wrap my arms around him and apologize until words were no more.

  “The bathroom is through there,” he said, motioning down a small corridor crowded with boxes. “You can sleep in my room; I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “No. I wouldn’t want to be an inconvenience. By all means, let me sleep on the couch.” I glanced around the small area that was supposed to be the living room. Also cramped with boxes, but warmer in a way.

  I handed him his coat and he draped it across a chair. Our fingers touched for a second and I wondered if he felt it. If he did, he didn’t look into it. “Ill just take the floor, then.” He sighed and led the way to his bedroom, which was the biggest room in the cabin. A few blankets already lay on the floor and the ones on the bed seemed slept in.

  “Was someone here?” I asked without thinking. I mentally kicked myself in the shin.

  “Was here. She’s gone now.” He moved to the bed and began stripping it bare.

  She? Was he married? He did look old enough and was the farthest thing from unhandsome. Or was it a girlfriend?

  “You can have the bed,” he said, looking up at me. He’d replaced the blankets on the bed with new ones.

  “Thank you,” I answered inaudibly. I moved into the room and sat on the edge of the bed, watching him as he made his own on the floor. By the way he seemed so unbothered I could tell sleeping on the floor was no oddity to him.

  Glancing across the room at the mirror that hung on the wall, I finally took into account how disheveled I looked. I looked…scary. My hands went to the clips in my hair and I quickly plucked them out. I raked my fingers through my unruly curls, and then spun it into a tight bun using a single pin. Better, I thought, gawking at myself in the mirror. I lay the rest of the pins on his dresser and ignored the fact he had nothing personal in his room, everything was quite…plain.

  I settled into the bed as Ayden turned the lights out. The moon seemed to be back, but still remained cautious and tentative outside the one window.

  “Ayden,” I whispered into the darkness.

  “Princess,” he called back, turning over on the floor.

  I stammered. “What’s it like not knowing how to read?”

  “How can you explain not knowing something if you never knew it in the first place? I never needed to know how, so I never tried to learn.”

  Silence engulfed us.

  Fingering the edge of the blanket, I said, “You work for my mother and father, what is that like? Are they cruel to you?” I held my breath for the answer.

  “No. They can be lovely people when they want to. But for the most part, I try to stay out of their way and finish my job as fast as possible.”

  “And your parents?”

  I could sense his hesitation. “They’re…around. My mother can’t do much since she is ill. I’ve been working since I was eleven in place of her.”

  “And how old are you?”

  He laughed. “Sometimes it feels like ninety.”

  I giggled into the pillow and suppressed the anxiety. He couldn’t be a day over nineteen. “But really, how many years?”

  “I’m twenty-two. And you are seventeen,” he answered matter-of-factly.

  My eyebrows rose. He looked young for twenty-two. I’d been calling him a boy all this time when really he was a man.

  Tiredness grew on me and I caught myself slipping in and out of consciousness. Ayden got silent below me, so I guessed he was in the same state.

  “Ayden,” I murmured. He mumbled something in reply. “What is your last name?”

  It took him awhile, but he finally whispered, “Grey. Ayden Grey.”

  “Thank you for saving me tonight, Mr. Ayden Grey.”

  “You’re welcome, Princess.”

  After the silence grew thick, I turned over and stared out the window, gazing up at the moon. Absentmindedly, I began to sing, mumbling like I always did when tired.

  “I wish for today and dream of yesterday / If the gods should hold me in their favor, then I shall hope for tomorrow,” I sang. It was an old prayer I’d turned into a song, one my mother didn’t even know about. I had no idea where it came from, but I’d been singing it s
ince the longest I could remember.

  “Ayden,” I called out one last time.

  When he mumbled and I turned to see his eyes watching me with concern and warmth, I said, “You can call me Echo.”

  E L E V E N

  Ayden

  If the gods did exist—not saying that they do—I was sure they were having a good laugh at me right now. In less than twenty-four hours I had managed to sign my death sentence with barely a second thought.

  I glanced at her sleeping face, my emotions betraying me. Hysterically I thought, you’ve done it now Ayden—you’ve actually stolen the princess. I couldn’t help but smile, though as soon as I thought back, I felt something akin to terror.

  She’d been so afraid last night that looking into her eyes had caused me to lose myself. If anyone knew fear like I did, it was her—this angel who had somehow stumbled into my life and reasoned me into thinking irrationally. That second I looked at her and saw how scared she was I decided that I really only had one choice. It wasn’t whether or not I would take her with me, but how I would keep her safe.

  The Princess—Echo was her name—stirred and mumbled something in her sleep, smiling as if the darkness of our world had no effect on the euphoria of her dreams. I knew right then as I took in her soundless form and beautiful face that I would have protected her with my life last night. As much as it pained me to admit it, I had to pay truth where truths were due.

  Before my thoughts of her could drive me crazy, I left the cabin and made it through the backyard without disturbing the neighbors. The back door of the house was left open, so all I had to do was pound the doorknob a couple of times before it gave way. The house sat eerily quiet, and for a moment, I hesitated.

  Soft footsteps padded into the room and I quickly recognized them as Misty’s. I turned to face her and was saddened by the look in her eyes, which seemed swollen with tears.

  “Ayden,” she murmured, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, Mis?” I crouched down to her level and smiled at her frilly, pink pajamas and bed hair.

  “I had a bad dreamy. Mommy left and Milo said he....”

  That was all she really had to say. I scooped her into my arms and carried her back into the room. Milo, bare-chested and oblivious, laid half on and half off his bed.

  “Here.” I handed Misty the stuffed bear she’d become oddly infatuated with over the years and tucked her into the bed.

  “You left,” she whispered, yawning and pulling the blankets up to her neck. Her green eyes stood out like a thousand suns against her sandy brown hair and olive complexion. Just like her mother.

  “I didn’t go anywhere. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, you are. Did you do it yet, Ayden? Save mommy, I mean.”

  My fingers paused on her forehead as I took in her words. “What do you mean ‘save mommy’, Mis? I’m doing the best I can.”

  “I know, but you’re going to fix this, aren’t you? That’s what Milo said. Please don’t tell me he was lying.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and I quickly moved to lie beside her. “Yes, I’m going to fix this, everything.” I kissed the top of her head and held her close. “How about I tell you a story?”

  “The Princess and the Prince,” Misty said excitedly.

  I cringed at the close comparison, my mind conjuring thoughts of the Princess who lay barely ten feet away. Sound asleep in my bed.

  “How about The Family That Strived?”

  “What’s that one? I don’t remember that one, Ayden.” Misty entwined her arms through mine and snuggled closer.

  “It’s a new one, you’ll love it.”

  I began to tell her the story of a poor family who strived on what they had, which wasn’t much to begin with. The father worked hard, but not nearly enough, and the mother stayed home to cook and clean. The two children went to school off of what little money they had and the older brother worked hard hours to help his parents. Somewhere down the line I had lost myself in the story, quickly realizing that the concept was no incident.

  The family didn’t end up rich in the end like some overrated fairytale, but they survived. No sicknesses, diseases, or King broke them apart—they strived.

  Misty lay still beside me, sound asleep, yet still hanging on to me tightly. I allowed my eyes to drift close for a moment and I welcomed the darkness. Sleeping on the floor two nights in a row beat sleeping on that rock of a couch, but it definitely had its disadvantages.

  “Ayden,” I heard Milo call out. I hadn’t even realized he was awake. He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes, staring at the door with apprehension. “Who’s she?”

  My eyes followed Milo’s hand to the door, and froze. Echo stood in the archway looking cautious and out of place. She still wore her underskirt and bodice from last night and her hair lay in a loose bun around her shoulders. I untangled myself from Misty and quickly went to her.

  “You shouldn’t have come in the house,” I told her. I closed in the twins’ door and led her through the kitchen.

  She only shrugged me off. “Well, I woke up and you weren’t there. I thought maybe...”

  “I left you,” I finished for her. “Just stay in the cabin and don’t come in here.”

  “Who lives here?”

  Ignoring her, I walked her out the door and into the backyard. “My parents,” I finally answered, scrapping my fingers through my hair.

  “And why don’t you—” She nodded at the expression on my face. I didn’t know of she understood that I couldn’t stand being in the same house with my father for so long, but she definitely got that I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Just... I’ll be back in a second with some food.”

  She nodded and headed back into the cabin. I watched her retreat, feeling somewhat guilty for being so harsh.

  By the time I returned to the kitchen, Father was already up and busy doing the dishes. Though, as I stepped through the door, his attention turned to me. He’d shaved and wore some of the clothes he’d gotten from church donations, a shirt a size too small and faded jeans a size too big. I knew he was going for the sober look, but one glance into his eyes and you knew the man was a full-blown addict.

  “You’re up,” I whispered.

  He looked at me indifferently. “I am. Where were you all night, you missed dinner and your mother cooked.”

  I shrugged a shoulder, showing him the same amount of nonchalance he showed me. “I stayed at a friend’s. And I’m sure there are leftovers.”

  I moved over to the refrigerator, desperate to find something and leave, but was stopped by the sight of Mother walking through the corridor. I took in her frail body and tired expression and went to her without thinking twice.

  “Oh, please,” Mother said, dismissing my help. “I may be sick, but I think I can find my way to the table, Ayden.” When she sat down, she looked up at me with pale green eyes that used to hold a special fire but had long burnt out. “My handsome boy is getting big, isn’t he, Francis?” She looked towards my father and he gave a scowl over his shoulder.

  “Just take it easy,” I whispered to her. Her pale eyes watched me. “I need my mother, so just...slow it down, okay?”

  She reached up to kiss my cheek and smiled a smile of memories. “You don’t have to worry about me, Ayd. Just work on making me a grandmother before the next apocalypse, eh?” She laughed and turned towards the newspaper on the table.

  She knew she couldn’t read, but that never stopped her from trying. In fact, none of us could read properly, or at all, except my father. He had grown up lucky—his mother had learned from her grandmother. You’d think he would make it his duty to teach us, but he always had his selfish moments, always would.

  “Oh, the Princess looks so lovely, doesn’t she?” Mother held up the newspaper to the light.

  I zoned out as my father joined her at the table and they flipped through the papers. When I looked inside of the fridge, I found it hard to hol
d back the bile rising in my throat. Old meat, spoiled milk, and left over lasagna was all there was, and the lasagna looked as if it’d been laid out on the asphalt in the sun to bake. I bit my tongue to hold back my snarl, but it was a battle so easily lost. With all the work I’d been doing, the money I’d been giving them, they should have had more than this—more food, more something. Where the hell was it all going?

  Looking over my shoulder at my father, I knew exactly where it was going.

  “What does that say, Fran?” Mother asked him.

  He took the papers from her and began reading what he could. Though my father was definitely a narcissist, he loved my mother more than life itself. He could have left, but he didn’t. The thought made me realize that he might’ve been trying a lot more than I was giving him credit for.

  “I’m not sure what this word is, Carys, but I think it’s talking about a missing person.” He handed it back to her and shrugged.

  “Well, that can’t be right.” Mother turned it around in her hands as if another angle would help her read it better. I smiled. “They’re talking about the Princess, honey. How could she be missing if she was just at the Ball the other night? Or was that last night? I can’t remember.”

  “No, that was a few days ago, love. And I’m sure I read it correctly.” He pointed down to a specific word and began to sound it out. “Mis-sing. Missing. It’s right under her picture.”

  I slowed as I turned to the cupboards. The Princess couldn’t be missing, she was…

  I cursed loudly and Mother turned around to scold me. I barely gave her time to say anything before I reached into the cupboards and grabbed a can of sausages and a banana off the counter. At that moment I don’t think I was breathing, or even thinking.

  “Can I see this for a second?” I asked Mother. I pointed at the newspaper.

  “Yes, but Ayden—”

  I took the papers from the table and rushed through the back door. “Language, I know. Won’t happen again.”

  As I walked into the cabin, my emotions ranged from anger to shock, and right back to anger again. The Princess missing? No doubt the entire civilization of New Haven was looking for her. She was heiress, who wouldn’t be trying to find her? Worst of all, though, was that she hadn’t gone missing at all. I’d taken her—stolen her—and now I was facing death because of one moment of weakness.