Aurora Burning: The Aurora Cycle 2

by Amie Kaufman

  She’s older than me, which feels strange, but this is how it must have been almost all her life. I wonder what it felt like for her to reach my age, and then her eighteenth birthday, knowing she was now older than I’d ever been.

  “I’m so sorry,” I sob, tears soaking through the green silk of her shirt. “I’m so sorry I left you. I never meant to do that.” “Stop it,” she chides me gently, one hand smoothing down my hair.

  “But I left you,” I insist.

  “Nothing’s forever, Auri. Everything has its season. The world keeps turning, and the stars keep dancing after we’re gone, just as they all did before we came.”

  “I was your big sister, Cal. I was supposed to look after you.”

  She looks me in the eye then, a small smile on her lips.

  “Come with me.”

  One arm around my shoulders, she leads me out through the door. We make our way along the hall in silence, and pause in the doorway to another room. I see a toddler in a crib, curled in a tiny ball. There’s just a mop of black hair and a small face, slack with sleep, visible above the quilt.

  “This is Jie-Lin,” Callie murmurs.

  “She’s beautiful,” I breathe, tears in my eyes.

  “I miss you, Auri,” my little sister tells me. “But I’m all right. Everything continues without us. The dance carries on.”

  She’s beginning to fade away, and I want to reach out and grab her, hold tight and refuse to leave this moment. But instead, gazing one last time at her face, I let her go.

  I let all of it go. Finally. Completely. I look at that little face, that beautiful baby girl who shares my name, and I feel it wash away. The anger and the rage and the pain and the sadness. The thought that I missed all of this. Because I didn’t, really. I was here all along. In the hearts of the people I left, but never truly left behind.

  I let it all go.

  And as I open my eyes, I find the Eshvaren above me. I feel the Echo around me shiver—a ripple that runs through the length and breadth of this whole plane, changing the sound of the horizon and the taste of the sky. And I feel it smile down on me with all the colors in its memory.

  At last, it says.

  Kal

  The world around me trembles.

  My fingers fall still; the music coming from the siif in my hands fades into silence. I look to the sky and note that it is a different shade of perfect. For a moment, I sense a shadow at my shoulder, and inexplicably I am put so deeply in mind of my father that I turn, almost prepared to see him standing there.

  My fists are clenched.

  But there is only the Eshvaren, wearing its crystalline form. It peers at me intently, as if truly looking at me for the first time. I can feel the power in it, in this place, the legacy of the Ancient Ones flowing in this plane’s every atom.

  Remember what is at stake here, it says. This is more than you. More than us.

  I blink. “I do not understand.”

  Only one obstacle remains. Only one hindrance that binds her to what she was, and stands in the way of what she must be.

  I feel a scowl at my brow, growing slowly darker. “And that is?”

  The Eshvaren tilts its head and smiles a rainbow.

  25

  ZILA

  Finian is leaning in close to Aurora’s face, studying the rapid fluttering of her eyelids. “It’s been nearly twelve hours since they went under,” he says. “Shouldn’t something have happened by now?”

  “I take comfort in the fact that nothing has,” I say. But the truth is, although my tone is calm, I am also concerned. Based on Aurora’s account of her first visit to the Echo, it appears that during the two minutes of unconsciousness we observed, she subjectively experienced a period of approximately twelve hours.

  This suggests that she would pass a day in four minutes, and so the almost-twelve hours that have now elapsed mean that she and Kal have been in the Echo for nearly six months. Their brain activity is off the charts, which implies they are indeed experiencing the passage of time at astonishing speeds.

  The question that troubles me is how long a human or Syldrathi brain can maintain this kind of workload without suffering permanent damage.

  “How is the tracking of the probe’s particle signature progressing?” I ask.

  “We’re on the trail,” Finian shrugs. “Scar’s upstairs on the bridge right now. I’m still trying to fix Aurora’s damn uniglass.”

  I blink, struggling for a moment to identify the feeling in my chest.

  Alarm, I realize.

  “Scarlett Isobel Jones is flying this ship?”

  Finian grins. “She’s not that bad. The auto-guidance is helping. Apparently one of her ex-boyfriends gave her some lessons. And she picked up a little from Cat.”

  I feel a pang of hurt at that. The memory of Cat’s face, her smile, her end. The barriers that hold back my responses to these things are not as strong as they once were.

  I am not feeling nothing.

  “But there’s no telling how far across the Fold the probe originated from,” Finian continues. “We could be traveling for weeks.”

  “Let us hope not,” I say. “Our brains are not suited for prolonged Fold exposure. Nor should we tempt calamity with Scarlett at the controls that long.”

  Finian nods. “Yeah. And I don’t think the Unbroken are gonna wait long before they let Earth know what they think about the attack on their flagship, either.”

  I nod. “It is extremely unlikely an attack by Terran forces against a blooded Syldrathi Templar will go unanswered.”

  Finian looks down at Kal’s slumbering figure, chewing gently on his lip. “Pixieboy’s big sister was really something, huh?”

  “She was … most formidable.”

  Fin checks the bay about us, as if to see if anyone is listening.

  “… Kinda hot, though, right?”

  I blink. “I did not know you found psychopathy an attractive quality, Finian.”

  “Come onnnn,” he grins. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. I sure wouldn’t say no to a short visit to her torture chamber?” I purse my lips, picturing Saedii’s face. Her form. It is true. The aesthetic qualities of Kal’s sister are … undeniable, despite her demeanor.

  But still …

  “She is too tall for me,” I finally declare.

  Finian rolls his eyes and gives me a friendly smile. I feel my cheeks warm a little at the thought of discussing romantic notions with him. I tip my head forward to hide any sign of the vascular response, wondering if this is perhaps what having friends feels like.

  I am not feeling nothing.

  I nod to Kal and Aurora in an attempt to divert the discussion.

  “I will continue to monitor them,” I say.

  “All right.” Finian steps back, his exosuit whispering softly as he stretches his arms. “I’m gonna grab snacks—you want anything?”

  I contemplate. “Those cookies Scarlett enjoined me to eat were adequate.”

  “Adequate? You two have practically eaten the entire supply.”

  “The excess calorie intake will result in an upscaling of my mass, which …”

  I frown. That is incorrect.

  “I mean to say, your affection for me will increase as I also increase in …”

  No. That is also wrong.

  I fall silent. Look up into Finian’s blank black eyes.

  “Still getting the hang of this humor thing, huh,” he says.

  I lower my voice to a whisper. “It is extremely perplexing.”

  “Well, keep working on it. I’m off to the galley.” His mouth quirks to a crooked smile, and he glances down at Aurora. “I’ll see you kids in a month.”

  26

  AURI

  I’m gliding home on a storm wind, flying on wings of thunder. I can feel the power rushing inside me like a waterfall. All the shackles holding me back, the guilt, the fear, who I was—all of it is gone.

  I roar across the Echo, the earth torn up by the force
of my passing. My right eye burns like a newborn star, a midnight-blue tempest crackling in my wake, a tornado of pure psychic force that I can beckon with a wave of my hand.

  I can’t wait to show Kal.

  I think about him waiting for me, like he’s always done. The time we’ve spent here, all he’s come to mean to me. I think about Scarlett and Finian and Zila waiting for us outside the Echo, these people who’ve become my family. All the faith they’ve placed in me, all they’ve sacrificed—all of it, all of it has been worth it.

  I’m not that girl who set out for Octavia anymore. I’m not the girl who woke up two centuries later, cut off from everything I was. I am the vessel they made me to be, the unmaking of an enemy set to consume all life, all light, all hope. And I smile fiercely, almost giddy with the thought of it.

  I’m the girl who’s going to save the damn galaxy… .

  Kal sees me coming, the power raging in my wake, his eyes wide with wonder as I drop down to the beautiful green grass around our camp and throw myself into his arms. I kiss him, letting myself flood into his mind, feeling the golden strands of his psyche entwined with mine, the two of us together, complete and perfect.

  “I’m ready, Kal,” I whisper.

  I press my lips to his again, caressing his face, his mind.

  “I’m ready.”

  Not yet.

  The voice comes from behind us, soft and melodic. I turn, see the shimmering rainbow form of the Eshvaren watching me. I sense a wrongness in the air—a ripple shivering the trees around us, the golden threads in Kal’s mind. And I can suddenly feel something I’ve never felt in him before.

  Kal’s afraid.

  You have come far, Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, the Eshvaren says. But you cannot yet wield the Weapon.

  I hold out my hand, and a psychic shock, massive, tectonic, flows out across the Echo, shaking every tree, every rock, every blade of grass.

  “I’m ready,” I say.

  Ready, yes, Esh nods. To cast off the final impediments that hold you to your old self. Your every thought. Your every cell. Your very existence.

  The words hit me like a slap. I glance at Kal, drag myself free of his arms.

  “My existence … ?”

  And looking into the Eshvaren’s glowing right eye, I finally realize …

  “That’s what you meant,” I whisper, my heart twisting a little in my chest. “When you said, ‘Like us, you must sacrifice all.’ ”

  I look around the Echo, at its beauty and its splendor, all that remains of a civilization that collapsed eons before mine was ever born.

  Esh told me that if I failed in my testing, it would cost me my life.

  It didn’t say that even if I succeed …

  “Using the Weapon … being the Trigger …” I swallow hard as the truth finally sinks in. “It’s going to kill me, isn’t it?”

  In all likelihood, Esh replies. Yes.

  “… Mothercustard.”

  “There must be another way!” Kal spits, his Syldrathi composure fraying.

  Look around you, young one, Esh says, its voice a song. All this, our world, our civilization, our very name, is lost to the sands of time. We gave all we had to destroy the Ra’haam when first it rose. One thousand years of blood and fire from which we never recovered. Our entire race spent itself so that future races might be spared the Great Enemy’s hungers.

  Esh looks at me, and I think maybe I feel something close to pity in its mind.

  Is one more girl too much to ask?

  I can feel Kal’s fury. His fear of losing me. But deep down, I know …

  “No,” I say.

  I shake my head, and even as I speak, I know it’s true.

  “No, it’s not too much at all.”

  “Be’shmai … ,” Kal whispers, reaching for my hand.

  “It’s okay,” I say, smiling as I turn to face him. “I’m not afraid, Kal. I’ve made peace with who I was. I’m ready to become what I was meant to be.”

  I think of that little girl, asleep in her cradle, and can’t help but smile.

  “It’s all a cycle, Kal. And if I have to … stop for others to go on, it’ll be okay. Because here with you, these last few months, I was more alive than I’ve ever been. And even after I’m gone, you’ll still have this. You’ll still know I loved you.”

  I rise up on tiptoe and slip my arms around his neck. And I lean in slow, kiss him slower, tears in my eyes, lips brushing his as I pull back far enough to whisper.

  “I love you,” I tell him.

  He touches my cheek and kisses my tears away, folds me in his arms and—

  No, Esh says.

  The world falls still. The spell between Kal and me is broken. Fingers entwined with his, I turn to meet Esh’s eyes.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  You must abandon your past totally. You must surrender your future utterly. There is only the moment you were made for, and you must be ready to act without hesitation when it comes. You must not flinch. You must have nothing that binds you to this place, this self. Nothing at all. You must burn it all away.

  It looks at me with its glowing eye, all the way into my heart.

  Including him.

  “But … that’s not what humans do,” I protest. “We fight for ideas, sure, but we fight for people, too.”

  Esh tilts its head, as though I’ve said something curious. Do you truly believe you are a human girl anymore? You must be emptiness if you wish to succeed. When you strike at the Great Enemy, no impediment must remain to stem the power’s flow. You must be pure will. No regret. No hurt. No rage. No sorrow. No fear.

  Its words hit me like a punch to my chest.

  No love.

  I look at Kal, see him looking back at me, agony in his eyes. The sun has sunk beyond the edge of the world, and all the stars, those beautiful, long-dead stars we looked at together, are out above.

  And I understand—finally, really understand—what they need me to do.

  I have to let him go.

  I have to burn him away.

  I have to prove to Esh that my ties don’t define me or hold me back. That when the moment comes to trigger the Weapon, for the good of all around me, I’ll be willing to sacrifice anyone and anything.

  My eyes trace out Kal’s features in the starlight.

  They’ve become as familiar as my own in the last months.

  My mind’s a whirlwind of blue and silver, and I know what needs to be done. I have to control it and refine it, shape it into a knife’s blade to cut the ties between us. He knows as well as I do. What’s at stake here. Everything hanging in the balance.

  “Kal,” I whisper.

  You must, Esh replies.

  “Be’shmai?” Kal breathes.

  That word.

  That beautiful, wonderful, alien word. When we first spoke about it on Octavia, Kal said there wasn’t an adequate human translation for it. He looks at me now, silently making me the same offer of his heart that he does every day. And in that moment, I know that although I might not be Syldrathi, and though I’ll never know what it’s like to feel the Pull, I do know what it is to fall in love. I know that I’ve accepted his heart, and given him mine in return.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  And I know that there is no universe in which I’m stronger without him.

  “I can’t,” I declare, turning to Esh.

  Silence rings in the Echo. I feel Kal’s heart surging behind me, the ripples those two words send spilling across this entire plane.

  “I won’t,” I say.

  You MUST, Esh commands.

  “No,” I say.

  No.

  Because I won’t do what Esh wants.

  Not because I refuse to sacrifice myself.

  Not because I’m afraid.

  But because every moment I’ve spent here, in training and with Kal, has led me to the same bone-deep truth. Tomorrow might be worth a million yesterdays. But a tomorrow without him isn’t worth anyth
ing at all.

  You will not have the strength, Esh says, something close to fury in its voice. If you are not emptiness, you will fail.

  “I guess we’ll see about that,” I say.

  You are the Trigger. THE TRIGGER IS YOU.

  “Yeah,” I nod. “But I’m Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, too.”

  I reach for Kal’s hand.

  “And I’m willing to fight for what I love.”

  I take hold of the power. Willing us gone, I feel a severing, a sundering, a tear as wide as the sky and as deep as forever. And in a heartbeat, two heartbeats, mine and his, we blink out of the Echo and back into our bodies aboard the Zero.

  And the first thing I feel, even before I open my eyes, is his hand in mine.

  27

  TYLER

  They bring Saedii back into our cell a while later.

  The door opens and the marines throw her, limp and boneless, to the deck. The sound of her body slapping the floor, the sight of her—it turns my stomach. They’ve torn the medi-wraps off her legs. The bruises on her thighs are faded, but the ones on her face are fresh. Her lip is split, her eye swollen, one hand pressed to her ribs. The black paint across her eyes and at her lips is smudged, running. Her immaculate braids have come loose, and a curtain of black hair covers her face as she tries to drag herself up.

  I rise to my feet, glaring at the marines. Saedii is an officer of the enemy. A Templar of the Unbroken. I saw the kill counts during the battle on the Andarael. I know most of these TDF troopers probably lost friends in that attack. But still, there are rules here. There’s a line you don’t step beyond. That’s supposed to be the difference between us and them.

  “Maker’s breath, what did you do to her?”

  The marines don’t even look at me. The door slides shut without a sound, leaving Saedii and me alone.

  “Here,” I murmur, leaning down to help. “Let me—”

  “Do not touch me!” she roars. Her fingers are curled like claws, black fingernails glinting in the antiseptic light. I back off, out of reach.

  Saedii draws a deep breath, steadies herself. I almost don’t catch it, but I swear I hear a small, strangled sob in her throat.

  “Your sun will b-burn,” she whispers. “Your whole … wretched r-race …”