by Ava Jae
Dima shakes his head and sits on the edge of his bed. “I wouldn’t say well, but I’m fine, sha. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I always worry about you. I’m your sister; it’s impossible for me not to worry about you.”
Dima closes his eyes like I’ve hurt him, and I don’t understand. I replay my words in my mind. How could what I said be hurtful? I glance at Jarek, but he just looks grimly at my brother. His arms are crossed over his chest, and when Dima opens his eyes again, Jarek arches an eyebrow at him and tilts his head toward me.
Is he expecting something?
“You’re too good to me, Kora,” Dima finally says.
I frown at him and open my mouth to answer, but he lifts he hand.
“Please, just …” He takes a shaky breath and grips his knees. “I … did not treat you as a brother should. We were close once, as children, but … my jealousy corrupted what we had, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I framed you for Serek’s attempted murder as I admitted in front of the council. I tricked Anja into giving you the lip paint—I told her it was a gift, and I gave her the antidote and said it would calm your nerves. She had no idea what she’d done, and when she figured it out … she couldn’t handle the way I’d used her to hurt you, and her blood is on my hands, and I’m sorry.”
My eyes sting as my brother slides off his bed and onto his knees at my feet. And there is the answer to the question I’d been too afraid to ask—if her blood is on his hands then she … she must have … I press the side of my fist to my mouth.
“No number of apologies will ever be enough,” Dima rasps. “I’m a failure—and worse, I betrayed my own blood to take a throne I was never meant to have. Kala didn’t choose me to rule—he chose you. I can see that now, and I wish—you don’t know how badly I wish I’d seen it sooner.” Dima’s shoulders shake, and then he’s crying, and I’m crying, and we’re on our knees together and Dima is hugging me. His arms are wrapped around me and he sobs into my shoulder and says, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over, and these are words I never expected, not from him, not ever.
“I know,” I whisper, then clear my throat and try again. “I know. And I accept your apology, but Dima …” My voice catches and I inhale deeply. My brother pulls away and wipes at his face, but his body still trembles with unshed tears. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to trust you again—not like I did when we were children. You’re my brother, and I’ll protect you however I can, but I can’t return a high position to you again. As it is, there are some who think I should keep you in the cells.”
Dima bites his lip and nods. “I don’t expect my position back, not ever, and … ” He takes a shaky breath. “If you want to keep me in the cells, I won’t fight it.”
“Hold on—” Jarek starts, but I lift my hand and he quiets.
“I’m not going to keep you in the cells. Not if I can help it, and right now, at least, I can. But it’s good to know if … things intensify, you’ll cooperate.”
“I brought you here to keep him safe,” Jarek says. “Not to treat him as a prisoner.”
“And I said I’d do my best.” I look at Jarek. “I don’t want to put him in the cells, and for now, I can refuse. But if the demand becomes too high, I may have to give in—and he may end up safer locked up than outside. But I need to temper the will of the people first—without their support, I am nothing.”
Jarek frowns, but nods. “You should be able to avoid it, at least until a new Sira is crowned.”
I nod and look at Dima. “Once a new Sira is chosen, whoever they are may choose to call for your prosecution.”
“After everything that happened, I … wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“Okay.” I squeeze him one more time, then release him, and stand. “Thank you for apologizing. I may not be able to trust you, but I hope we can rebuild our relationship over time.”
“I hope so, too.” Dima takes a shaky breath. “And for what it’s worth, I think you’re a great Avra. I always have.”
My eyes sting and my vision blurs anew. But I stand tall, and when I leave my brother and his partner, the buzz of something new rings in my bones, even through the pain of knowing my friend, Anja, is gone forever.
A hope for something better.
The meal table feels empty without Iro curled up at my side and Anja nearby. I sit at the apex of the curve, as always in Elja—or always since my coronation, anyway—with Dima across from me and Jarek to his right. The table is large enough to seat dozens of others, but without the council joining us, and they rarely do, the wide room feels empty.
I was sitting in this very spot with Anja at my side when Eros burst through the doors with Jarek and Dima on his heels, and collapsed on the floor, screaming—
I close my eyes and inhale deeply through my nose. Things are so different now. Eros is in Asheron, poised to become Sira. Anja is dead. My brother got what he always wanted and nearly ran Elja into the ground with it. And tomorrow, the people will choose someone to represent them, for the first time in Elja’s history. And I will work with them.
I don’t know what to expect. I just hope whoever they choose is someone reasonable. But this is the right decision—I feel it in my bones. I think Eros would agree.
“Guide,” I call. My voice is too loud in the empty room, and Dima and Jarek watch me curiously as an orb-guide floats from the wall opposite us to my side.
“May I be of assistance?” it chirps.
“Turn on the world feed.”
The guide twirls and the screens across the table hum to life as I retrieve a glass held on the underside of the floating table—one for each seat.
“Checking on Eros?” Jarek asks.
I nod and scan the article headers on the glass. “I didn’t get the chance to check last night. Have you heard anything?”
Jarek’s silence makes me look up. He and Dima are looking at each other with an expression I don’t like—as though they’re having a silent conversation.
My back prickles with cold. “What is it? Is Eros okay?”
“For now,” Dima says carefully. “We assumed you already knew.”
I open my mouth to tell him to get to the point, but Jarek beats me to it. “The High Priest and council have decided to allow Kala to make the ruling directly.”
My heart withers in my chest. “You mean … through a fight.”
“To the death,” Dima confirms. “Sha.”
There’s no question that Eros can fight, but this—this is different. One wrong move and he’d be killed for all the world to see on the feed. He has a chance, and a good one at that, but I … I didn’t want to have to see him fight for his life.
Then again, he’s been doing just that all along. I just hope this fight will be the last he’ll ever have to be part of.
I need to sleep.
It’s not a question. If I’m not well-rested tomorrow, it could kill me. Insomnia tonight is the last thing I need—but I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a full night’s rest, and tonight, of course, is no different. Even if I need the sleep more than ever. Especially because I need the sleep more than ever.
I listen to Mal breathing beside me, keep my eyes closed, and try to let it lull me to sleep. I synch my breaths with his, try to focus on darkness, on nothing at all, but through the darkness comes whispers. I touch Aren’s bracelet and run my thumb over the smooth black and gold ring on my hand. This might be the last time I lie awake in bed, listening to Mal fast asleep beside me. This might be the last time I struggle to sleep, because tomorrow sleep may be eternal.
Tomorrow might be the last fight of my life. I wish I could pretend otherwise, but the truth is I don’t know what to expect, not really. Deimos and I could only guess at how well Lejv may fight. We don’t know what weapons he’ll choose or even what weapons will be available to us. We don’t know if there will be a weapon I’m familiar with, or a weapon Lejv is familiar with, but everything tells me the odds wil
l be stacked against me. Again. Because they don’t want me on the throne. Because this world wasn’t built for me, and the Sepharon never fail to take the opportunity to remind me I don’t belong here.
Except Deimos and Kora. But they aren’t on the Council, and neither of them can help me tomorrow.
At least Mal will be okay. At least, whatever happens, Deimos will take care of him and keep him safe. I trust he meant that promise. I trust he won’t break it.
I don’t know when it happened, but I trust Deimos more than I do Kora. I trust him not to turn his back on me—or Mal—when things get difficult. I trust when he gave me his word, he’d rather die than break it. Kora broke that trust with me too many times, but something tells me Deimos never would.
I wish my mind would let me rest; I wish the nightmares suffocating me in death, ash, torture, and blood would leave me alone. Because if I didn’t have the same paralyzing nightmare tape smothering me every time I manage to sleep, I think I would dream about Deimos. I think I’d let myself imagine what something more might mean. I think I’d kiss the spot on his lip he bites when he looks at me; I think I’d lie under the moons with him in a dream world far from reality.
But I know my mind and what those sets in Dima’s dungeon did to me. What watching people die again and again while I couldn’t help them imprinted into my dreams. And tonight, with my thoughts racing and tomorrow looming overhead, sleep couldn’t be farther away.
Eyes open again. I drag myself out of bed, and head outside. My brain can’t rest, so maybe a run will calm me enough to collapse into bed. Or hopefully wear me out enough, at least, so when I pass out, I won’t dream at all.
I don’t have any other ideas, but I desperately need sleep, so it’s worth a try.
The complex looks different at night—the deep black-purple sky paints the white sands light purple. Three of the four moons are visible tonight, scattered across the sky, shining among the stars. Our jogging path is on the edge of the complex and isn’t as well-lit as the sparkling white streets of the inner city, but I’m not worried. Deimos and I have gone around our track enough that I could do it in my sleep.
I run through the shadows, past the silent buildings, my bare feet slipping through the course, cool sand. I run across the night, my breaths settling into a familiar rhythm, every step closer to tomorrow, to the fight I never want to have. I run into the black, the stars gathering on my shoulders and sinking into my blood, whispers of lost loved ones settling between my lungs.
I don’t know what Nol would tell me to do, but he’d hate to see me fight for my life. He’d hate to see me become this person with blood on his hands and lives in his throat. He’d hate this violence, this coldness, this kill or be killed. That was never Nol’s way. That was never what he taught me.
Fighting to survive was Day’s method of living. Bloodshed was Day’s necessary sacrifice. Violence broiled in his bones, not because he wanted it, not because he liked it, but because we were being hunted. Because the Sepharon decided we didn’t deserve to live free. Because he’d never spent a set when he wasn’t running, wasn’t scared for his life, for his family. Violence wasn’t Day’s nature, but it was what this world demanded from him. It was the only way he could see out of the ever-looming threat. It was the only way he knew to live another set, see another sunrise. Fight. Fight for air, for food, for water. Fight for the life they don’t want us to have—take freedom from their mouths and watch life bleed from their eyes.
Nol told us if our lives demanded blood, we’d have to sacrifice our own. Nol told us infusing violence into our souls meant racing into blood-soaked deaths. He said ask for violence and you’ll get it—he said our only hope was to separate ourselves from brutality.
In the end, he was right. But he was also wrong. Because Day died violently, but so did he, and so did Esta, and so did so many who never asked for this, who never wanted violence. So did the young and old, the sick and healthy, the dreamers and fighters.
In the end, it didn’t matter if they’d vowed to fight for their lives—it didn’t matter if they’d shunned violence from their hearts or embraced it to their cores. In the end, there was pain, and blood, and screaming, and crying. In the end, everyone became ash, and ash rose to the stars.
In the end, there was Mal, and me, and the haunted faces of survivors who will relive those nights for the rest of their lives. In the end, everyone bled, everyone hurt.
In the end, it didn’t matter who you were or how you viewed the world. There was no escape.
Tomorrow, it won’t matter if I want to fight or not, it won’t matter if I’d rather do anything else than take another life. It doesn’t matter if the weight of people I’ve killed, the people I couldn’t save, drags me down a little more, makes me feel more like a monster, an animal. It doesn’t matter if I never wanted to be this person, this guy who has to fight for his life again, and again, and again. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t want politics, if I didn’t want power, if I didn’t want anything but to live in peace with my family on the red sands of my home.
No one cares what I do or don’t want. No one cares I’m dreading this fight because no matter how it ends, I’ll lose. It doesn’t matter if victory, to me, will never taste like blood and death, like sweat and struggle, like one last gasp under the suns. Not for me, not for my enemy.
I’m so tired of fighting. But it doesn’t matter. It will never matter.
Sweat drips down my temples, my back, my chest. The clean scent of the desert air—too dust-tinted to be home, too sweet for the crimson sand. I’m about halfway around the track, and the rhythm of running is sinking into my muscles—the low burn, the steady pounding, the tart taste of just a little farther, just a little farther, just a little—
Gasping a mouthful of black—
On my back, head throbbing, throbbing, throbbing like—
Warmth trickles between my eyes and down the bridge of my nose. It smells like rust. It feels like agony. My visions swims in and out of darkness as I sit up, and black figures block out the moonlight, and the world spins to the left, spins to the left, tilts, and tilts, and tilts, and—
I’m staggering backward and on my feet and something—someone—has my arms pulled back until my shoulders burn and my back is against someone’s chest. I’ve been here before. I threw Jarek over my shoulder and ran, and ran, but not now. Now blood pours over my lips, and I blink, and pull—
Screaming. Coughing. It’s me. Something hard slams into my chest again, and I can’t see through the stars, and I’m on my knees. I’m on my knees and every breath burns through me, and it’s so dark, and I spit blood, and everything tastes like rust, like death, like fire licking through my lungs and the dull throb between my eyes. Someone—probably several someones—is attacking me and everything hurts.
I’m in the room again, and Dima is wedging a knife behind my jaw. And my mother is screaming, and I’m frozen, and burning, and let me sleep, let me sleep, please I just need to—
The back of my head bursts with a blow into a starry night sky and the sleep I’ve wanted swallows me whole.
“Kafra, kafra, kafra—you are not dead, you’re not kafrek dead. I swear to Kala I will destroy you if you’re dead. Wake up. Wake up. Eros—”
“Shut up,” I groan. Everything hurts. Not everything. My head, and my face, and my ribs. Everything above the waist, then, and every breath flames across my chest and burrows behind my eyes. “Kafra,” I whisper.
“Open your eyes. I just—Eros—”
“Relax.” I open my eyes. Squint into shadow. Deimos is huddled over me, his eyes wide, bathed in silver moonlight. You’d think he was the one just attacked in the middle of the night, with the way he’s looking at me.
To be fair, I probably look bad. I think my nose is broken. And maybe my skull. And definitely some ribs.
“Can you get up?” Deimos asks. “I can call some medics, but I don’t want to leave you here … kafra where are those orb-guides when you need
them?”
“It’s fine.” I start to sit up—hiss. That fucken hurts. Moving above the waist at all hurts like a—
Fuck.
“Here.” Deimos gingerly touches my back. “Is this okay? Did they get your back?”
“Naï,” I mutter. “Just my ribs, the back of my head, and my fucken face.”
Deimos tries to laugh but it sounds strangled. “Good news is you’ll still be handsome as Jol when your nose isn’t a disaster.”
“Thank the stars. I was worried. As long as my looks haven’t suffered, I guess everything’s fine.”
We look at each other. Then Deimos laughs and so do I—but I stop because laughing feels like ripping my ribs out of my chest—and then I’m pretty sure Deimos is crying. Seeing him so upset almost hurts worse than my throbbing body.
“Deimos,” I start, carefully, “correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m the one with the broken ribs, shae?”
“Skel.” Deimos presses his palms against his face and laughs weakly. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I just—skel, you scared me there for a minute.”
“My face looks that bad, huh?”
“Stop joking,” he says, but when he lowers his hands, he wears a weak smile for all of a breath before it fades. “Kafra. Those skoi. C’mon, let’s get you inside—I’m going to destroy Lejv first thing in the morning, I swear to Kala.”
I grimace. “I’m not sure who did this. I didn’t get a good look at anyone. But it was two men. And I thought you said Lejv played by the rules.”
Deimos slips his arm around me and carefully helps me to my feet. It still hurts, but I bite back a groan. “That’s what I thought, but … Kala knows. Even if it wasn’t Lejv, it was obviously some of his supporters. We’ll get the council to delay the fight until you’re recovered, but this is—what cowards.”
“I guess this means Lejv isn’t a great fighter,” I say through a wince. “If they felt the need to sabotage me before the fight.”
“I suppose not,” Deimos answers. “But that’s not good news when you have broken ribs and a cracked skull.”