Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(103)

But she shakes her head, lost in righteous rage. “I don’t know anything about you, you pixieboy bastard. Other than that we can’t trust a single word coming out of your mouth.”

Zila is chewing furiously on her hair, obviously distressed at the confrontation. Drawing down into herself, hunched small and silent.

Finian speaks, his voice soft. “Did you know your dad …” He shakes his head, clearly wounded as he looks at me. “Did you know the Starslayer was a Trigger? That he had the Weapon?”

“No,” I insist. “I had no idea. My mother and I left him years ago. I was eleven the last time I looked upon him in the flesh, and he was possessed of none of Aurora’s gifts then. He has wandered long years since Orion. Perhaps he discovered another probe in the Fold during his travels. Perhaps he stumbled across the gateway or—”

“Or perhaps you’re lying about this just like everything else,” Scarlett growls.

“I am not lying!” I snap.

Finian meets my eyes. “How can we know that, Kal? How can we trust anything you’re saying?”

My heart sinks in my chest. I can feel them turning against me, their hurt, their sense of betrayal, all of it blinding them to the person I have been. So I turn to the one who knows me best.

“Aurora …”

She looks at me like I have struck her. I remember the same look in my mother’s eyes as a child when she looked at my father. When she realized he was not at all the man she had thought him to be.

“Aurora, I am sorry,” I say. “Forgive me, please.”

“You lied to me, Kal,” she says. “That night in my room. The night we first …” She shakes her head, arms wrapped tight around herself. “When you told that story about your parents. You looked me in the eyes and you lied.”

“He is dead to me. My father died at Orion, be’shmai. He died again when he burned my world to cinders. When he took my mother from me. All that remained after that moment was what he’d become.” I spit the name, like acid on my tongue. “Sai’nuit. Starslayer.”

I take a step toward, and she takes one away, and my heart is bleeding, breaking inside my chest. I should have seen this coming. I have never felt so hopeless, so helpless, as I do right here and now. I can feel her slipping through my fingers with every breath.

“I tried to tell you,” I say. “In the Echo. That night in the meadow. I tried to speak it, no matter what it would cost me. But you told me I was not the thing I was raised to be. You told me tomorrow is worth a million yesterdays. Remember?”

“I remember,” she whispers. “And I remember you said our past makes us what we are. I remember you told me love is purpose.”

“It is,” I breathe.

“But how can you say you love me?” she asks, bewildered. “When you can just lie to my face like that? And how can I say I love you? When I …”

She shakes her head. Tears shining in her lashes.

“When I don’t even know who you are?”

“You know me,” I plead. “You are my moon and my sun, Aurora. You are my everything.”

Her tears do not fall. They crash, shaking the ship around me. I look to Finian, to Zila, to Scarlett, desperate for reprieve. For anything.

“I have fought beside you. Bled for you. I have known no home since the Starslayer took mine away, save here among all of you.” I thump my fist to my heart. “Squad 312. I know I can appear cold. I know I am hard to read, and harder to get along with.” I look to each of them. “But I know my friends, and they are few. And those few, I would die for.”

Silence rings across the bridge.

And into that silence, Scarlett spits.

“Tell that to Cat.”

I feel the words as a blow to my chest.

For a moment, I cannot even breathe.

“Scarlett … that is not fair.”

“Fair?”

Bristling with fury, she stalks across the deck toward me. Finian rises to his feet, wary, but he does not step closer. Zila hugs her shins, presses her face into her knees. But Scarlett is in my face now, shouting. She only reaches my chin, but her rage makes up for her lack of stature.

“You’re talking about fair?” she shouts. “My brother’s in the hands of the GIA because of you, you son of a bitch! How is that fair? What if they took him back to Octavia, huh? Have you even thought about that? What if they did to him what they did to C … to Ca …”

I murmur as her voice fails.

“If I could trade places with him, I would, Scarlett. I am so sorry.”

“Fuck your sorry,” she snaps, raising her hand. “And fuck you, Kal.”

She swings. Full of rage. Clumsy. The Enemy Within me flares, the violence I was born to, the violence in my blood rushing in my veins like thunder. I move, instinct and muscle memory, seizing Scarlett’s wrist so hard she cries out in pain.

“Do not touch me,” I warn her.

“Hey!” Finian shouts, stepping forward. “Get off her!”

“Finian—” Zila begins.

“Let her go!” he shouts.

Our Gearhead plants both hands on my chest and shoves, his exosuit whirring. My whole body bristles, my every instinct aflame with threat.

Break him, Kaliis.