Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(85)

“Then it won’t mind if I take a win at its expense,” I reply.

I can feel it. All of it. The dozen boulders I have suspended in the air above our heads, twirling and whirling like butterflies on a breeze.

I can feel the power, not just inside me, not just a part of me, but all of me. I let go of the feeling of my body, the sun on my skin, the sense that I’m anything at all but this force within me as another boulder rises from the river and joins the others.

I look at Esh, my lips curling. “Not bad, huh?”

“Jie-Lin,” says a voice behind me

My heart stops beating. My stomach lurches sideways. Because even though I know the sound of that voice as well as my own, I know it can’t be, it can’t be, it …

I turn and look behind me, and there he is.

He looks like he used to. Before … before Octavia. A bright smile and twinkling eyes and the wrinkles in his brow Mom used to tease him about so much. He’s standing there in the meadow, surrounded by rippling flowers, smiling at me.

“Daddy?” I whisper.

The ground beside me thunders as one of the boulders above me crashes to the earth. I shriek as another falls, then another, throwing myself aside as the tons of rock I moved around so effortlessly a moment ago all slip away like sand through my fingers. The ground shatters, the flowers are crushed to pulp.

Why do you fail?

Sprawled on the ground, I look up and see the Eshvaren above me, silhouetted against the rose sky, looking down with its rainbow eyes.

What stops you burning? it asks.

I look at the space where my father stood. The broken earth, the shattered rocks. There’s no sign of him now. Nothing remains but the tears that the sight of him brought to my eyes. I realize he was nothing but a phantom. A ghost. An echo.

“How did you do that?” I demand, looking up at Esh, anger rising inside me like a flood. “If you’re just a collection of million-year-old memories, how do you know what he even looked like?”

We have told you before, Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, Esh replies. Your only obstacles in this place are those you put in front of yourself. You must let them go.

It leans closer, its voice like a song in my mind.

Burn. It. All. Away.





23

TYLER

I open my eyes, wondering where I am.

I can taste the vaguely metallic tang that Terran oxygen scrubbers leave in the air, and for a moment I wonder if I’m back in my dorm in Aurora Academy. Thinking about the academy puts me in mind of my squad, and of course that makes me think of Cat, and suddenly it’s crashing down on me like an avalanche. That detention cell. Those faceless mirrormasks. Cat’s new blue eyes, boring deep into my own, dry, cold lips pressed to mine.

It’s warm in here, Ty. I can’t wait for you to feel it, too.

I jolt upright with a gasp, rewarded with flares of pain: head, chest, throat. My screams have torn my vocal cords up good—it feels like I swallowed broken glass. I wince, pawing at my neck, looking around the cell and finding a pair of cool eyes staring back at me. Black hair. Black lips. Black heart.

Saedii.

You were gone a long time, little Terran.

Her voice rings in my mind, radiating Syldrathi arrogance, a melody of faint disdain. I still find it more than a little frightening that this psychopath can speak inside my head, but given the state of my voice box, it’s probably for the best. I don’t think the damage is permanent, but I doubt I’ll be singing karaoke for a while… .

What did they do to you? Saedii asks, looking me over.

What do you care? I shoot back.

I care, little Terran, because they will probably do it to me next.

Frightened?

Know your enemy, boy.

My eyebrows rise slowly.

Are you honestly quoting Terran military strategy at me right now?

She scoffs softly. Of course not. Do not be a fool.

Sun Tzu said that. He was a Terran general. “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will not be imperiled in one hundred battles.”

Sarai Rael said that. She was a Syldrathi Templar. “Know your enemy’s heart if you wish to feast upon it.”

… I think Sun Tzu’s way of saying it is a little more poetic.

I am Warbreed, Tyler Jones. What need have I of poetry?

Saedii stretches out her long legs in front of her, glaring. I’m painfully conscious of the fact she’s still wearing nothing but her underwear from the waist down, but, gentleman that I am, I keep my eyes fixed firmly on hers. Saedii’s fingers brush the string of severed thumbs around her neck, and I realize that once again, she’s trying to get a reaction from me. She knows how beautiful she is. She knows how that beauty throws people off balance if they let it, and she wants to see what it does to me. Everything about this girl is measured. Strategic. Calculating.

I also realize I’m still not wearing a shirt.

And that those legs of hers go up forever …

They want information about my squad, I tell her. Information you don’t have. Torturing prisoners of war is a violation of the Madrid Conventions. So don’t worry.

She arches one perfect brow.

Do I strike you as someone who is particularly worried, Tyler Jones?

If you had any idea what was really happening here, you would be.

I know exactly what is happening here. Your people have consigned themselves to suicide. Who will you mourn most, I wonder, when your world is dragged screaming into the black hole Archon Caersan makes of your sun?