Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(93)

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.