Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(104)

BREAK HIM.

I step aside, smooth as water. Scarlett twists in my grip and I let her go, momentum sending her crashing into Finian and both of them to the deck. Fin cries out, leg twisted, and as I raise my hands, I feel another shove to my chest—iron-hard, midnight-blue power crackling in the air around me.

I look up and see Aurora’s hand raised. Aimed at me. Her eye burns like a dying sun, hair whipping around her brow in the breeze of a long-lost world.

“Don’t,” she says.

“I would never …”

And I see it. What everyone who has learned the truth about me has always seen. I was born of a monster, a murderer of billions. And that is what they see when they look at me now. That shadow I will never step out from, no matter how hard I try.

Aurora looks at me, tears glittering like diamonds on her skin. I know what she will say before she says it.

“You need to go, Kal.”

“Aurora, no,” I plead. “No.”

She nods. “Go.”

I am torn. Desperate. Searching for anything that might sway her.

“You do not know him, be’shmai,” I say, glancing at the screen where the man who made me spoke. “You cannot begin to imagine what he is like. He was a monster even before Syldra’s fall. If he has somehow become as you are, imbued with the power of the Ancients …”

“Are you going to tell me I’ll have no chance when I face him?”

My eyes grow hard, my voice like steel. “You do not know him, Aurora.”

“I know one thing, Kal,” she says softly, wiping the tears from her cheek with the back of one hand. “I know I’m ready now. Truly ready, like the Eshvaren said. I am the Trigger. The Trigger is me. And when I strike at the Great Enemy, there’ll be nothing to hold me back anymore. No hurt. No rage. No fear.”

She shakes her head.

“No love.”

I hear the Eshvaren’s words in my head then. That fateful warning it spoke on our last day in the Echo.

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

Burn.

Burn it all away.

Aurora lowers her hand and breaks my heart.

“Goodbye, Kal.”





30

FINIAN

About four hundred light-years from Trask, there’s a star called Meridia. The star’s core is a diamond the size of Trask’s moon, estimated to be about ten decillion carats. My people built a spaceport there—a massive transit hub that’s one of the busiest in the galaxy. You can get a ride anywhere in the ’Way out of Meridia. Says a lot about Betraskans that we built a bus station around the galaxy’s biggest diamond.

Anyway, that’s where we dump Kal.

We’re still wanted terrorists and all, so we don’t waste time on farewells. Zila brings the Zero into one of the tertiary docks, only stopping long enough to let Kal out. Nobody’s there to say goodbye. I watch him through the bay cams, stepping out onto the station deck with a rucksack on his back. He’s wearing civi clothes—long dark coat, those ridiculous PVC pants Scarlett bought him in Emerald City, pockets stuffed with his share of the credits Adams and de Stoy left for us in the vault.

I think he left his Legion uniform in his room.

Bristling with anger, he squares his shoulders and stalks away.

Nobody speaks for a while after we put Meridia behind us, tearing out of the system and back into the Fold. For my part, I just don’t know what to say. I’m scrounging for something—I know I’m meant to be the one who somehow breaks this thick, heavy, hurting silence, but I don’t know where to begin.

Everything Betraskans do, everything we believe, everything we are is about family. And between losing Cat, leaving Tyler behind, and now Kal’s betrayal, it’s getting harder and harder to keep my gaze focused on the future. It feels like I’ve been shot, but I’m still moving. I’m on automatic, but now that the dust has settled, I just don’t know what to do next.

The bridge feels too big—it’s just the four of us now, with Shamrock on the console and Tyler’s and Kal’s empty seats to remind us of what we’ve lost. Which, given that it’s our badass pilotry, our tactical genius, and our muscle, is no joke.

Scarlett is hollow eyed. Just as I can’t summon up a smart-ass remark to keep us going, she can’t find anything in her Face’s book of tricks to make this sound better than it is. I know she’s blaming herself for not having seen this coming, but though her ability to read everyone she meets is nearly superhuman, there are still limits. For the first time I can remember, she looks … I’m not sure what to call it. Beaten? Scared?

Auri’s in her own place, her gaze distant. Everything about her has changed—even her posture. She’s not the girl we’ve known anymore. She’s utterly focused now. I thought she’d be weaker without Kal’s support, but it’s as though the heat and fire we’ve just been through forged her into something stronger.

Something unbreakable.

It’s Zila who ends the silence. She has her back to us, piloting the Zero through the FoldGate and into black-and-white safety. Now she swings around, her face as blank as it was back when we met. I didn’t realize how many small changes I’d seen in it until they went away, along with Kal. She’s closed off again, speaking carefully and evenly, her voice flat and gray.