Ashes of the Stars (11 page)

I let out a slow and deep breath and then, with a shaking left hand, I grabbed the end of the arrow sticking out through the front of me. I whimpered against the pain of simply touching the wood but I held onto it tightly and then I ripped it out. I screamed against the pain and my knees went weak. Kai held me up even as my legs were giving out and I let his fast heartbeat lull me as I rode the waves of pain.

“I have spent so much time fighting for you since you got here,” Kai was saying. I had been sleeping but his soft and tormented voice had woken me up. The pain wasn’t quite as sharp now, more of a dull throb. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to interrupt Kai’s confession. He obviously needed to get his words off of his chest.

“I’ve spent so much time telling these people that you
are
a good person. I felt like I was fighting fate trying to keep you here and I can’t lie, you scare me. I don’t know why you saved me, but Whitestrand knew you would. He knew and he did the one thing that would make people accept you here. I’m still pissed at him. Of course, it’s nothing compared to Kieran. I think he wants to kill Whitestrand now,” Kai told me.

When I thought it might be safe to open my eyes, he sighed and whispered, “Sometimes you look at me and I think you hate me. It kills me to see that.”

I couldn’t hold back now. I let my eyes slide open to see that Kai was sitting in a chair beside the bed in the medical hut. My hand was limp over his and he stared down at the edge of the blanket, looking at the pattern.

“I don’t hate you,” I whispered.

He jumped, startled, and then he cleared his throat in embarrassed. “You, uh, heard that?”

I groaned as I tried to sit up. He jumped to his feet and helped me into an upright position. I was hunched over, my shoulders slumped, but I didn’t care about posture. “Why would you think I hate you?”

“I don’t know,” He mumbled. “It’s just that you look angry when you look at me sometimes. You don’t look at anyone else like that.”

“Sometimes I think you hate me, too,” I sighed. “The way you’ll be so open with me at times and then you’ll avoid and ignore me.”

“That’s… um,” Kai didn’t seem to know how to respond. I watched him shift uncomfortably.

“Well, whatever. Thanks for keeping an eye on me while I was out,” I waved nonchalantly at the bed. I rolled my eyes as I threw my legs over the opposite side of the bed. I was in pain but I didn’t see the point in being bedridden. I wasn’t tired, was far from it. In fact, I was really very hungry.

“You should stay sitting. At least until Tali makes sure you’re okay,” Kai said from behind me.

“I’m fine,” I grumbled, heading for the door.

“See? That’s my point. That’s why I think you hate me. You start acting like
this
,” Kai said, obviously frustrated.

“Do you know,” I whirled around near the door to face him. He was watching me with wide eyes. “The day I decided to come back down to Earth, or come out of my insanity, whatever you want to call it, I decided to do it because
you
hadn’t come to see me that day. I got up and I walked out because I wanted to find
you.
So you can sit there and say you think I hate you all you want but I’m not the one with the fucking problem here.”

“We can’t do this, Aili,” Kai wouldn’t look at me now. His body and his voice were stiff. “We can’t be more than friends.”

“Funny,” I almost spit towards him, “Since we’re not even friends.”

I slammed the door of the medical hut and stomped away from him. I passed by Finn heading towards the medical hut and he stopped, seeing me.

“Hey! You’re up!” Finn said happily.

“Oh fucking joy,” I growled.

“What’s wrong?” Finn asked, catching up to me and then slowing to match my pace.

I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about Kai. I continued stomping down the path. I wondered, vaguely, what time it was and how long I’d slept for, judging by the people heading towards the meadow, it seemed like it was meal time. I needed to get my mind off of Kai’s words so I asked, “How’s Wren?”

“Pissed off like the rest of them,” Finn shook his head. “We all are. Pretty much everyone in the camp is pissed off at Whitestrand.”

“Well, no one should be,” I frowned up at him.

“He
shot
an arrow at their Lieutenant’s unprotected back. Kai was lucky you were there to save him,” Finn told me. “People
should
be pissed off.”

“I would
never
have let that arrow hit Kai and Whitestrand knew that,” I told him.

“You care about him a lot, don’t you?” Finn eyed me perceptively.

“I don’t want to talk about him, okay? We’re nothing to each other except allies,” I sneered.

“Fine. If that’s what you want to believe,” Finn shrugged.

We got our food in silence, at least towards each other. Countless people asked me how I was doing and thanked me for saving Kai and being so brave. I nodded and smiled at each of them but it was too weird for me to keep it up. Once Finn and I got to the meadow with our food, I ignored everyone else and walked right up to Whitestrand. I threw my arms around his shoulders even though I had to stand on my toes to do it.

“Guess they were betting on the wrong person killing me,” Whitestrand chuckled as he hugged me back carefully so as not to irritate my newest wound. “I’m really sorry, Aili.”

“No need,” I pulled back and looked up at him. “Next time you want to shoot an arrow at someone to gain my acceptance, make sure it’s not Kai, okay?”

“I don’t think there needs to be a next time,” Whitestrand winked at me.

When I sat down on the bench, Kieran put his arm around my shoulders and I didn’t complain despite the pain it caused. Kieran glared at Whitestrand the entire time. When Tali and I had finished eating, she looked at my wound dressings without moving my shirt much. When Kai showed up, I could see his eyes were red, but I ignored it. We weren’t friends, like I said. I couldn’t care. I couldn’t.

“Guess you moved out of the hut too soon,” Tali teased me. “Should’ve known you’d get yourself hurt again.”

“I’m fine to go home,” I told her.

“No, you’re not,” She laughed at me like I’d made a joke. “You’ll tear open any number of wounds you now have again.”

“Just a flesh wound,” I mumbled to myself.

When the meadow started clearing out as people headed home to relax and sleep, Tali and I got up and left the thinning group. Whitestrand had left to put Pio to bed and Finn had run off somewhere with Wren. Tali and I left Kieran and Kai sitting in silence.

As soon as we were out of earshot, Tali whispered to me, “What did you do to Kai?”

“What? I didn’t do anything to him,” I said, not trying to be quiet about it.

“Really, because I left him with you in the hut hours before you came to dinner and you show up with Finn and then Kai shows up
late
after he’d been crying. I have
never
seen that man cry,” Tali told me.

“Don’t blame me for that. He said we couldn’t be more than friends, whatever the hell that was about, and I told him we weren’t friends so it didn’t matter anyway,” I shrugged it off. The motion caused a sharp pain to cut through me. I winced and then went back to trying to ignore the pain.

“You did
what
?” Tali pulled up short and stared at me incredulously.

“You heard me,” I told her.

Just as Tali was opening her mouth to say something else, I heard a deep, male voice shouting back in the meadow. I rolled my eyes at Tali and then turned back the way I came. I didn’t know what I expected but it wasn’t Kieran standing, shaking and angry, over Kai who was just sitting there taking it with a wince every once in a while.

“
Hey
!” I yelled. I darted forward. The motion of running caused my shoulder and arm to flare up in pain more than it had since I’d woken up. I grabbed the back of Kieran’s shirt and pulled him away from Kai. I stood between the two of them, glaring at Kieran.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I snapped at Kieran.

“Oh yes, defend him. The man who claims to be my best friend and brother and betrays everything he ever told me!” Kieran’s eyes were wild. Tali stood in front of me and put her hands on Kieran’s chest.

“Kai would
never
betray you,” Tali told Kieran in an exasperated tone.

“Oh no? Why don’t you ask him what he and my sister talked about earlier before they came to dinner?” Kieran was almost spitting with rage.

In that moment I saw Kai’s scared and indescribably sad eyes in my mind when he’d said we couldn’t be more than friends. I saw his red eyes not looking at anyone when he’d shown up to dinner. I saw clearly now and it hit me like a ton of bricks, knocking the wind out of me.

“Did you tell him to stay away from her?” Tali asked in a shocked tone. She seemed to have come to the same conclusion as I did, maybe even a little faster. I could feel the shock numbing me.

“You’re fucking right I did. I’ll be damned if my sister winds up with
him.
Like I couldn’t see how he looked at her from the beginning.” Kieran took away any shred of doubt that Tali or I might feel in that moment. I felt like the wind was being knocked out of me.

“How
could
you? Your best friend? Your sister? How could you do this to them? Can’t you see that he’s the reason she’s getting better?” Tali shrieked at him.

“No,” Kieran shook his head violently. “She’s getting better because she’s strong.”

“She might be strong,” Tali looked over her shoulder at me and shot me an apologetic look, “But that is
not
making her better. Her strength makes her worse, every time she
tries
to do what people expect out of her she gets worse again.”

“Stop it,” I growled. Everyone seemed to freeze in that moment. I glared at Kieran. “You have no fucking business making decisions for me. But…” I looked to Tali. “I think he was just trying to protect me because he didn’t have the opportunity before. And you…” I turned back and looked at Kai. He stiffened underneath my gaze, he was staring at the ground and I couldn’t see his eyes. I softened my voice, although not much, “I’m sorry.”

I spun around and walked away. I was getting better here. People were accepting me, but if I was being honest with myself, I knew Tali was right. I was getting better because of Kai. I knew I felt something strange inside for Kai, something that I knew but couldn’t put a name to. It was as if I felt
whole
when he was around, like he was all I really knew. I knew what I had to do. I had to leave before I ruined anything else.

Chapter Eleven

I never thought it would be so hard to leave a place I’d only been at, consciously, for a week or so. When I climbed the ladder to my tree house, I felt nothing but loneliness. And because they were used to, at this point, leaving me alone when I stormed off, I got to pack my small amount of belongings in peace. I tried not to think about what I was doing even as I was doing it. I knew there was no way to say goodbye to everyone but I desperately wanted to.

When I’d finished packing up, I threw my bag over my good shoulder and climbed back down the ladder. It was dark now, the torches lighting up the pathways. It looked foreboding now. I stood there for a long, silent moment and stared towards the meadow that I couldn’t see.

“Goodbye,” I whispered to all of the people who couldn’t hear me. I turned around and took the shortest path to the hill that I could. I climbed the hill, half expecting someone to notice me and stop me, but I got out free and clear. I wondered what that said about me that no one could see me leaving. Maybe they could see and didn’t care. I didn’t know where to go now, I had no one and barely anything, but at least I knew where I wasn’t going. I looked to the south where I used to live as a Legionnaire and then walked north, away from the home that was never really mine.

Kai

I’d seen her walk away, I’d watched her leave. I couldn’t look at her when she’d been standing protectively in front of me but I could watch her go.

“Don’t
look
at her,” Kieran growled at me. Tali still stood in front of him, but if he really wanted to get at me, she wouldn’t be able to stop him.

I looked at the man who’d been my best friend for so long now. His face was red with his anger, his nostrils flaring like a bull. I frowned at him.

“You are
such
a dick,” Tali shook her head at her husband.

“She’s my sister! She’s
just
getting over losing her damn mind and you already want to get in her fucking pants?” Kieran growled at me.

“It’s not like that!” I could hear my pathetically pleading tone but I couldn’t make myself sound any differently. I didn’t want to. I
was
pathetic.

“Can’t you see that your best friend
finally
loves someone?” Tali said, the first notes of acid in her voice. I’d never heard her so angry before. I didn’t know she had it in her. “You got me. You got your sister back. And he has done
everything
for you. He
loves
her.”

“Get over it,” Kieran spat at me, and then without another word he spun and walked away. Tali’s arms dropped back to her sides and she watched him go, a defeated set to her shoulders.

“I tried to stay away from her,” I whispered. I was really trying to tell Kieran but he was gone now. I knew what he’d say anyway,
you didn’t try hard enough.

“Well that’s fucking stupid,” Tali spun around to face me. “I’m really disappointed in
both
of you. He was wrong for what he did but so were you.”

“What…” I pulled back, furrowing my eyebrows. “What the hell did I do?”

“You should have told him to go fuck himself and made sure that Aili knew how you felt,” Tali shook her head at me as if it was obvious.

“Well I can’t tell her now,” I threw my hands up in the air. “Kieran will take it as a slap in the face.”

“And he’ll get over it,” Tali shook her head. “Whatever.
I’m
going to talk to her. She doesn’t need all of this stupid ass drama and I’m sure she could use a
friend
.”

I watched Tali walk away, too, in the direction of the medical hut. I dropped my head into my hands. I’d screwed everything up now. My best friend hated me, his wife was disappointed in me, and the woman I loved… She was out of my reach no matter how close I got.

I didn’t know what to do. I jumped to my feet and pulled my fingers tightly through my hair as I paced back and forth in front of the bench. Kieran was bordering on hating me but so was Tali, and they were both telling me to go in different directions. Stay away, go to her. And if I did stay away, would Aili know it was because of Kieran still? If I went to her would she think worse of me for turning my back on my best friend and her brother?

It was impossible to function like this. This battle between two different things, one of duty to my closest friend and one that I desperately wanted. Was this how she lived, always fighting in her head? Always trying to make sense of the right path to choose?

I didn’t know how long I paced back and forth mulling my thoughts over. I knew something was wrong, again, when I heard Tali’s voice screaming into the night. I froze, listening to her words.

“You did this!” She shrieked, her shrill voice echoing in the valley. She’d never sounded so upset before in all the time that I’d known her. I’d never seen something shake her so badly. I took off running in the direction of her voice, still listening to her screams. “You are
horrible.
How could you do this? Are you
happy
now? You get to lose
both
of them! I really hate you right now!”

“What’s going on?” I showed up as a small crowd was appearing. Some people were staring down from their houses.

“She’s fucking gone. Her stuff isn’t in her house,” Tali told me, throwing up her hands towards Kieran. “You’re a piece of shit.”

“Whoa,” Whitestrand said, putting a hand on Tali’s shoulder. Kieran winced at every slur Tali spit at him. He looked like a kicked animal. I felt horrible for him but the panic was seizing my heart. She was
gone?
She had left, run away.

“She can’t be gone,” I whispered. I could feel the blood draining out of my face.

“Go after her, dumbass,” Tali shrieked at me.

It took me a moment before I could convince my legs to move. Would I never stop searching for this girl? Even before the thought was finished I knew that I would never
want
to stop looking for her, even if she ran away every time.

Aili

I didn’t know how long I ran for. I didn’t take a break. I tried to keep my footsteps as silent as possible through the jungle, but sometimes it was impossible. Dried leaves crackled underfoot and I had to slice through vines that had overgrown in places.

I didn’t stop running until the sun was high in the sky. I hoped that they hadn’t noticed that I had gone missing but I knew that hope was in vain. Tali would have come looking for me this morning, she would have wanted to tend to my wounds which were now bleeding and stinging with sweat. I hoped, at least, that before they started looking for me that my tracks would have long since disappeared.

I didn’t really want to stop running; I was afraid that they would catch up. I hoped that above all else Kieran and Kai had found some way to settle their differences in my absence. I was too exhausted to keep going so I set up a small campground beside a large pond. It probably wasn’t the best area to rest but it would have to do.

I made a fire and caught a fish. I knew how to survive in the wild, at least. I was just picking the last of the cooked meat off of the bones when I heard footsteps crunching against the ground. Something was coming up fast. I closed my eyes and listened. Two feet. Human.

I stood up, whipping my swords out of their sheaths and looked at the clearing I had come through earlier. It didn’t take long for the person to reach me and as I saw who it was, I rolled my eyes and slowly put my swords away. His hair had fallen out of his tie and his face was red and dripping with sweat.

“Aili,” He groaned when he saw me. He walked the short distance towards me and threw his arms around me, pulling me into a crushing hug.

“Ow,” I whined.

“Deal with it,” He mumbled into my hair. He put his palm against the back of my head and cradled me against him. His heart was racing, his breath coming out in wheezes.

“What are you
doing
?” I complained.

“What the hell are
you
doing? What are you
thinking
, Aili?” Kai finally pulled back and looked down at me. He put his too warm, sweaty hands on my cheeks and forced me to look back up at him.

I felt like a child being reprimanded. I shook my head and managed to pull away from him. “I’m tired of everyone trying to control me. My
brother
wanted you to stay away from me, you
did.
No one bothered asking me. And you two are fighting. You can just, you know, go home now. Tell everyone I’m fine, I’m alive.”

“Sure,” Kai nodded, crossing his arms at his chest. “I’ll go once you’ve got your shit together.”

“There it is again. Controlling me,” I glared at him.

“No,” Kai shook his head at me. “I’m just saying I’m not going back without you and if you’re not going back then I guess we’re both not going.”

“
Why?”
I groaned at him.

“Because I said so,” He said to me. He walked to my makeshift seat and sat down. He sighed. “Look. I promise I’ll leave you alone if you want or never leave you alone if that’s what you would prefer. But I’m not going to fight with Kieran anymore. I think he realizes how badly he screwed up. We’re over it. Okay? So please just come home with me.”

“It’s your home, not mine,” I mumbled, sitting on my pack.

“You know it was
Tali
who figured out you were missing? Obviously not long after you’d left since I caught up to you. Whitestrand and Kieran and Finn were going to come, too, but Tali made them stay. You have people who care about you. Friends, family. I’d say that’s a home to me,” Kai shrugged at me.

“Do you want to be with me, Kai?” I whispered. I looked at the fire, not wanting to see the expression on his face.

“Yes, I do,” He told me honestly. I wanted to ask him why but I couldn’t let myself. I didn’t want to know anything else now.

“Fine, I’ll go back,” I sighed.

“Now?” He groaned.

“Guess you didn’t think to grab food or water,” I rolled my eyes at him. I tossed my canteen towards him and he caught it. I stood up from my pack and made my way back to the pond. The fish were gentle here, not afraid of people yet. I crouched near the edge. It took longer to catch a second fish than it had taken me to catch the first one but I finally caught it. I fileted it in silence and then I handed him the raw fish on a stick so he could hold it over the fire.

“Thanks,” He mumbled with exhausted gratitude.

“Mhm.”

We couldn’t walk back without a rest. We ended up sleeping by the pond for a few hours. When I woke up, still exhausted but rested enough to begin the return journey, I nudged Kai awake.

“No,” He groaned.

“The sooner we leave the sooner you can sleep in your own bed,” I told him as I crouched down beside him.

He cracked open his eyes and looked at me. “But I’m sleeping now.”

“What are you, five?” I rolled my eyes.

“No, Pio is much smarter than me. Must be three,” He said, grinning to himself.

“Okay, smartass. I’ll leave you here,” I told him.

“Fine,” He groaned. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, “God you’re
mean
.”

“Uh, yeah? Do you not know me at all?” I asked him.

The walk home was mostly quiet except for Kai’s occasional complaints about being tired. I shot him angry looks every time he made a comment. Of course, the trip back was taking far longer because we were walking now instead of running. We found a relatively decent place to make camp late in the night and we both fell asleep quickly.

When I woke up I could feel his hand in mine. I could see the sunlight through my eyelids. It was my turn not to want to get up. I let my eyes drift open and I saw Kai was sitting up, his back to a tree. His eyes were closed, his hand loose in mine. I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or not so I asked, “What are you doing?”

“You had a nightmare or something,” Kai mumbled, keeping his eyes closed.

“Oh,” I frowned. I sat up slowly and brought my free hand to my forehead when I swayed from the head rush. Kai kept his hand in mine. I looked over my shoulder at him. He looked peaceful. He’d put his hair back in his ponytail and he looked just the same as he always did. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Kai said without moving.

“Why did you listen to Kieran if you wanted to be with me?” I wondered.

“He’s my best friend,” Kai said. He rolled his head to the side and let his eyes drift open. When he found mine there was such sorrow, it made me ache with it as if in an echo to his pain. “I remember my family. I was with them for a long time. I lost them a year before I found Kieran and he’s been my family ever since.”

I nodded, looking away from him. I felt his hand gently squeezing mine and I looked back at him. He asked, “Why did you come looking for me that night?”