Kittie’s fingers gripped her arm as she reeled, choking on the suddenly lighter air. “What did you just try?” the small girl cried out. “Don’t you do that again!”
Kayla tried to rub the numbness from her tingling arms with her freshly bruised palms. “I just wanted to know…” she murmured before her voice rose defensively. “You’ve asked me to search for him before! It’s wrong to do it now?” She didn’t understand why her speech was so strained, cracking and squeaking hoarsely under the thin weight of her words.
“Look at your arms,” Kittie said quietly.
Purple marks spread out from her hands, over her shoulders, and ended in tiny dots around her collarbone. She reached for her throat, feeling tender flesh beneath her fingers, and she huddled into herself, holding her arms in sudden shame. “I…I just wanted to know…” she repeated.
“You won’t be that reckless again.” Asher’s severe voice was very close to her ear, and she whirled back towards him. She hadn’t noticed that the truck had stopped and he had moved to her opposite side sometime before she fell into Kittie’s arms. Bruno was also missing from his usual spot in the front passenger seat, and she could sense the uneasy, restless movements of the pirates on the other side of the screen that separated her from the bed of the truck.
“I thought—” Kayla began to protest.
“You shouldn’t have run last night. It was dumb luck that he wasn’t in the mood to really hurt you then, but you can’t count on that to save you. It was the second time, Kayla! Don’t let something foolish separate us again. Not until you find your own strength.” He twitched slightly as if he was suppressing a desire to move. “You’re not just flesh and blood, and the sin of thought is just as dangerous for you. There are places you can’t let your mind wander. You have to promise me.”
Kayla let her head rest against him, even as he stiffened slightly at her touch. “How can I make any more promises? How can I tell you that I won’t fall again into weakness or danger? Every time I’ve sworn to cast him aside, my heart hasn’t obeyed and my mind has found its way back to him. I’m responsible for the sin of thought? Suppose your dark imaginings could bring down this whole world. How would you handle that?”
Asher grabbed her by the shoulders, one strong shake painfully raising her head. “I’d have to grow up quick. There would be no other option. Indecision can be more deadly than making the wrong choice. You’ll understand that soon enough. Tomorrow we’ll be in Azevin and you’ll find that if you try to straddle the fence, it will tear you in two.”
29
Asher maneuvered the truck through the broken streets of Azevin with the same urgent speed that had delivered them through the wastelands surrounding the sprawling city. He rounded each corner with certainty, finding his way between buildings and over the detours of uneven pavement and packed dirt without hesitation. His familiarity with this place wasn’t pleasant. Kayla could hear a low growl growing hot in his throat, the almost inaudible sound repeating like a sigh every time they encountered a collapsing, wide-gapped overpass or a toppled train car. Even though these overwhelming spectacles on the other side of the window demanded her attention, her eyes were pulled clumsily back to Asher’s face. She could clearly see his profile as she sat in the Captain’s usual spot, while Bruno joined his friends in the bed of the truck for some homecoming celebration. The tightness of Asher’s jaw and the angle of his brow still expressed his constant, purposeful thrust forward, but in his gaze, everything was torn away by some inconsolable memory.
She was certain that these curving ramps above her head had once met in some graceful way, back when travel was easy and constant. Now they just arched over in incomplete trajectories, the missing pieces sometimes lying in cracked fragments below them. Kayla wasn’t surprised to see power lines, always disconnected or downed, but the signs that dominated the skies were new. Some of the large poles led nowhere, reaching up only to be adorned with the fluttering trash that wanderers left behind after their climb. Others were broadly crossed with large boards proclaiming some unrecognizable messages from the past, and still others were hand-painted with cryptic warnings, snippets of philosophy and profanity, useful directional arrows, crude drawings, and other simple affirmations of human existence. Asher never looked up.
The most captivating and frightening aspect of this new empire was their sudden break from isolation. Kayla could feel that the city was absorbed in its separateness, unsympathetic to their cause and unthreatened by Za’in’s. Whether it was a metropolis of ruined machinery or a village lazily warm with molded earth, she realized that much of the world must be the same way, by either virtue of defiance or ignorance. What made Azevin stand apart was the simple presence of a few other ragged vehicles, kicking up dust and grinding against the cracked pavement in irregular hiccups.
She didn’t know why a sudden, fearful impulse caused her to reach for Asher’s arm. “The people here are…dangerous,” she whispered.
His gaze didn’t flicker back in her direction, but his irises trembled slightly with the gathering pressure that branched out from his temples. “Why do you say that?” His words seemed to be quieted by his precarious grip on some precise control.
“They have no idea.” Kayla’s still-raspy voice left the last syllable silent.
“None whatsoever.”
“Hey, Serafin! Follow that blue scooter thing. He knows where we can park without trouble!” Bruno’s head vanished behind the back flap as soon as it had appeared to make his cheerful announcement.
Asher turned the wheel sharply, as if he was eager to find his way out from under the open sky. An unusually broad, double-storied building came into sight and his breath released with a slackening of his cheeks. He finally glanced at Kayla, his expression less tense, if not kinder. “They don’t understand who the players are or what is at stake.” She could tell that there was something about the arches that crowned the boarded-up doors, something about the way his eyes followed each one as they repeated around the exterior — his familiarity with this place didn’t bring him pain. “For once, I’m glad their loyalties and concerns are so ordinary.” A grim smile started a reaction of deepening lines carving his face, the darkness once caught in those grooves spreading to cover his features completely as the truck moved up the building’s ramp and into the dimly lit garage.
Kayla held her breath, closing her eyes with the knowledge that soon she’d have to face a reality that was quite separate from the cool, dreamy echoes that bounced off the concrete walls and landed against her body in soft vibrations through the truck’s secure shell. Her fingers rested on the latch. This was a city that Asher knew well; her father must have been here too, once. This was the world. Beyond that gray place that she couldn’t call home or the empty streets beneath where her mother once perched, this was really the world. Not an artificial oasis of stars in the desert or some swampy pit with steep, dirt walls. It wasn’t a sad story about her parents or orders to breathe deeply or his damn eyes… This was the idea that was worth saving, and they’d never even been introduced. Her fingers tightened around the handle.
“No.” Her wavering grip disappeared beneath Asher’s rough hand.
That warm pressure halted her forward movement and was a sobering reminder of another warning that followed a far less gentle embrace. “He told me—” she began before a dizzying warmth between her eyes made her catch her breath. She didn’t want to repeat that warning, but… “They know we’re here anyways. Tregenne—”
“You’re not going anywhere near him. He’s not to see you. Tregenne is for me to handle, understand?” His voice was low and sharp, edging the silence that followed with a painful, quiet whir.
Kayla watched through the window as the pirates exchanged embraces and playful blows with the two men that led them to this place on their bike. “We have a better chance doing this together,” she whispered. “How many times do we have to argue about it? I want to prove that I can be a help to you; I know
that I can. I’m sorry I’ve broken promises before, but please just let me show you—”
“You’ve shown me enough, Kayla. This isn’t time for a test of faith. If there is even one life here that you value, just do as you’re told.” Asher’s eyes were fixed on a distant point, his words rigid and toneless, and she imagined the crisscrossing lines of his immediate plans catching his thoughts in a momentary stranglehold.
Her fingers left the latch to absently probe her own throat. Kayla’s hoarse voice was suddenly too weak to form a reply. She waited passively for his commands, fully experiencing this punishment, the sore spots beneath her touch circling around her senses as a kind of final punctuation.
Enclosed in the truck’s airless silence, it was the distorted, hollow sounds of voices and laughter outside that kept the world from completely receding. The heavy sound of quick footsteps boomed closer before a jaunty series of knocks on the driver’s side door brought reality back into close proximity. Asher cracked the door open wide enough for Bruno to slide his head through, awkwardly bumping into the frame in his joyful agitation.
“Serafin! So, yeah, I know you didn’t want to meet anyone, but if you ever change your mind… I mean, Lester and Jax, they’re good to keep their mouths shut, you know? They know something’s up and they’re still helping us, no questions asked. But, shit, I wish I could tell them we’ve been working with you this whole time!” A nervous cough cut off the beginning of a giggle. “But, yeah, uh, awesome — we’re doing this guerilla style, I got it. So, pretty much, Kayla is safe downstairs, as safe as anywhere in Azevin. We’ll see to that.” He nodded soberly, eager to show his hero that in his uneasy excitement he hadn’t forgotten the importance of his task.
“Fine. Please ensure that we remain out of sight.” Asher’s demeanor was still cold, but he briefly grasped Bruno’s forearm in recognition of their comradeship.
Kayla ignored a sudden, blinding twinge of pain, blinking lazily against the blurring of her eyes as she watched Bruno trot back to his friends, throwing his arms around the two Azevinians and walking towards the sunlight. Fec followed close behind, casting one look back at the truck and raising his thumb in the air before disappearing out of sight. She shifted in her seat, glancing behind her to make sure Kittie was still sleeping peacefully, giving her one last moment alone with Asher before Vic and Kerif returned.
He sat beside her in complete stillness, remote as an outlying star or an untouchable ideal. “You’ve been here before,” she whispered, inching closer to him with painfully slow restraint.
“Many times.”
“I’ll do as you say. I’ll wait for you down there, but can’t you bring me to that place yourself? If all I can do for you is sit still, hidden from the world and my own failings, then I want you to be the one that seals me away. I know this place has significance for you, for us. I know I can’t walk its streets. If you only have a few moments, please let me see just one memory of Azevin, through you, in your own words.”
Asher’s only response was a brief lowering of his eyelids.
“I see. You have to go now. Time is running out, and Tregenne—”
He abruptly left his seat, shutting the door swiftly behind him and making his way to the passenger side with a speed that didn’t match his relaxed strides. Kayla’s door was opened suddenly and soon she was on her feet, hurrying to some unknown destination, with only his hand around hers as a guiding force. She was barely aware of the two remaining pirates stopping short, bewildered, as they passed them by, approaching the door of a dark stairway.
A damp, sharp odor was her strongest sensory experience as she descended, her footsteps unsure and falling heavy with unnaturally resonating thuds. When they reached the bottom and the door was flung open wide, a comforting, stale air reached her before her sight adjusted to the changing light. There below the high ceiling was a ring of mirrors and golden bars, chipped paint and frozen horses.
When Asher heard her catch her breath, he released Kayla’s hand and she cautiously made her way towards the still stampede, reined in by so many elegant lines.
“There was a time when the most insignificant amount of money would make this thing move. Sing too,” he whispered behind her.
She turned back questioningly for a moment before she dashed forward, grasping a bronzed, spiral-etched pole, and swinging her leg over the side of a horse, she carefully slid her feet into the double-tiered stirrups. “What was it like?”
Asher walked slowly towards her, his voice gentle. “The horses would be pulled up and down in tiny waves, as they rode around the circle. The music was loud and jarring, but sweet. Familiar songs. The lights would glow and flash, and you would just sit there, passively bobbing on your steed at a safe, steady pace. There was no destination. You only knew that eventually the ride would slow and then it would be someone else’s turn.” He stepped onto the platform, leaning back against the horse beside Kayla.
“Was it really such a useless thing?” She smiled, running her fingers over the deep grooves of the curling mane.
“This is a perfect resting place for a monument to futility. The grandest of all wastes of time…” His eyes were closed as if he was listening carefully for the details of a quiet sound.
“Then I guess it’s the right spot for me to wait for you.” Kayla attempted a little laugh, to shrug off the discomfort of his melancholy. It was lost somewhere in the ribbed canopy above. “I can’t complain. You’ll return before I know it. You’ve always come back for me.”
He held out his hand and helped her down off her mount. She let him lead her over to a brightly painted bench nestled between the rows of horses, and they both sat huddled together, their backs awkwardly unsupported and their knees too high in the small seat.
“Asher, just tell me you’ll—”
“The end of the world stopped me from coming back here for so long. It was the only thing that ever stopped me. My own personal Eclipse. I could deal with Za’in’s Apocalypse, with that world falling down. But what I lost in Azevin…” He let a heavy breath stir her hair. “If it ends here again, if there is even a chance of that happening…” Asher unclenched his fist, letting his fingers move slowly to her temple and across the line of her cheek. The soft motion of his touch dissolved into a trembling grip, a spasm of his hand that pulled her face to his. His tender kiss soothed her restlessness, unwinding the tightness in her throat and limbs. Her body loosened in his arms. It was okay to let go, to let it all go, and resign herself to some dark and peaceful sleep where neither one of them would remember their struggles.
“No!” She was on her feet, crying out streams of memories that weren’t hers, stumbling over curling ribbons of brass and unlit bulbs. “Just because Sebastian killed them and Gabriel gave you all up, just because everything was lost in Azevin — everything, everything gone — just because you were happy here once when this place was ordinary, and you were happy here when it was the shattered backdrop of something greater, and now it’s a reminder of everything that’s wrong and irreversible…just because you think you can’t beat him…you won’t just kiss me goodbye. You’re coming back and we’re finishing this together.” Kayla fell down on her knees and palms, her eyes wide and dry with the futile effort of attempting to hold on to her fragmented visions.
“Whether I’m coming back or not, I’m leaving now.” He was standing above her, his sorrowful warmth now driven out by his purpose. “Kittie will stand by you. Even those pirate boys can be trusted. And if we’re broken and all you can do is run, then I want you to do it.”
She closed her eyes, the memory of that same warning to run echoing through her, with another’s voice as the source. “I didn’t do it then,” she whispered. Kayla stood unsteadily, keeping her balance against a hollow stallion. When she raised her eyes to make another proud declaration, with the faded glitter of the carousel as her romantic backdrop, she found there were only the darkened windows of the gutted shopping center staring back.
&nbs
p; 30
From the ground, it was hard to imagine the original Pre-Eclipsian design painted on the water tower, but up close it was almost decipherable. Jeremy took the time to examine the curving surface, his eyes following the rounded, once-sleek letters. It took some imagination to fill in the gaps of graffiti-covered script, but eventually he pieced together Welcome to Azevin: Star of the Gold Coast. He laughed soundlessly at the slogan, buried beneath rust, paint and soot, as he stared morbidly at the giant A. The futuristic look of the past always made him uneasy. It was just another reminder that the order of the world was senseless and backwards. He walked halfway around the circular platform, eager to escape the faded catchphrase. On the other side of the tower, there was once an image of a white bird — he could see the pointed wings — and a giant sun…or maybe it was an orange. It was hard to tell. Not like it mattered anymore. He couldn’t picture a time when this filthy, disordered city could have ever been a tropical paradise. He didn’t even like to think about it. This world really deserved an Eclipse.
Dominion of the Star (Descendants of the Fallen Book 1) Page 21