Ashes of the Stars (5 page)

Kieran and I found a place in the maelstrom that was the meadow where we weren’t excessively obvious but we could keep her in sight as long as we could.

I watched as her people finished eating and Whitestrand walked up to her. They exchanged a few brief words and then he left her company again, finding us.

“What did you say?” Kieran asked.

“I told her that it was a pleasure to meet her, she offered the same pleasantry in return, and I told her to have a safe and pleasant journey home. That was all,” Whitestrand reported.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her. I watched as she stood just as calmly as she had before Whitestrand had invaded her personal bubble, in which only Finn (that bastard) was allowed. She looked unaffected, as if no one had ever known her in any life she couldn’t remember. Finn said something as he stood up and brushed off the back of his pants. She turned her head and nodded her agreement. As Finn brushed past her, she finally betrayed herself. Her face fell slightly, her lower lip puckered, and I could see a flash of pain in her eyes. Almost as quickly as it had come on though, as soon as Finn whistled and caught the attention of his people, she had lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and was back to her façade.

“That’s it,” I whispered, shooting to my feet. As her people flooded towards her and readied themselves, I lost sight of her.

“That’s what?” Whitestrand asked.

“You didn’t see that?” I asked, inclining my head towards Aili’s crowd.

“I saw,” Kieran replied.

“I’ll find her, I know where to look now. I’ll go get her, I’ll watch and wait until she needs us again and then I’ll bring her back where she belongs,” I said. I announced my plan so readily that I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t been waiting for some sign from her all along.

“Are you sure that’s wise? You’ll be gone a long time,” Whitestrand asked.

“He’s sure,” Kieran said answered for me, his tone lifeless. He knew that he was taking a chance at losing more than a sister. We were best friends, brothers even. He knew if he let me go, there was a good chance he’d never see me again. He was willing to take that chance and so was I.

Aili

Home was the least peaceful place I could imagine anymore. Now that my life had been turned upside down by Whitestrand, I couldn’t find the beauty in my home anymore. The nightmare plagued me even worse than before because now I knew it was a memory. I tried not to sleep unless it came crashing in on me and I had no choice but to ride a wave of pure fear and pain. The march back took longer than it had on the way out. I didn’t eat the entire way back, though I pretended to. It was easier when we were back in the cold. I could bury my food in the ice and snow and pretend I had eaten it when Finn tried to covertly inspect my empty containers.

I walked in a daze. I was mostly aware of how the cold was even bitterer than it was before. I remembered heavy heat and I shuddered, trying to bury those new memories too. I noticed that when we crossed back over into the ice lands, my team’s heads seemed to clear up and they stopped acting like untrained beasts. At least the cold helped
somebody
. It only made me realize more what life I lived.

Was it true? Kieran was my brother? The dream I’d had, that I’d always been so afraid of… Was that a memory? Did the Legion truly wash away my memories somehow? If so, then how had I held onto that one memory?

My head felt fuzzy with all of my new questions and dulled the rest of my senses. I tried to keep the façade up as much as possible because I was in front of my team; I, being my team’s leader, could not show any sign of weakness or instability. But my heart hammered painfully in my chest, air never seemed to fill my lungs, and my body felt weak from the internal war I was fighting and lack of sustenance.

Whereas before it felt like there were two parts of myself that were jagged edged and trying to split apart, now I felt as if my entire body was split into two beings. Not the evil versus the good parts of me, but the child I used to be, who may or may not have said something about peace being in the middle ground, and the murderous adult. I tried to block out the images of my victims but they kept bombarding me. My ghosts were finally getting their revenge.

It felt like there was a storm brewing somewhere inside of me and when it finally struck down, it would never stop raining. I fought against it the entire way home. I forced myself to stay awake, only sleeping in small increments. I fought against sustaining my body in case the strength that came from food would only encourage the evil memories to overwhelm me. There was a storm brewing alright. I wished I knew how close it was…

Chapter Five

I met the Commanders with the same dazed feeling that I’d marched home in. The four of them were all too old to lead field missions so now they made and upheld the law. No real decision could be made without their consent. I didn’t want to meet with them or be around people at all. I could barely look at them.

“What happened on your mission, Captain Renault?” One of the sallow, greyed Commanders asked me. As I looked at them, I couldn’t help but wonder, if what Whitestrand had said was true, if any of them were directly responsible for turning me into this monster.

“I found the town in question. After approximately fourteen days of observation, I determined that they were neither foe nor friend. I met with their… leaders,” I took a big gulp of air before I continued. It was hard to speak when all I wanted to do was forget. It didn’t help that my ghosts had followed me to this meeting and were whispering my name. Babies were screaming, children crying, mothers pleading for their children’s lives, and fathers fighting uselessly. I saw blood spraying out into the dark of night and fires destroying the souls of innocent people. I tried to shake the images out of my head. “They wish no one any harm, they claimed. They do not participate in the war. They welcomed us, allowed us shelter, fed us, and let us leave freely.”

“Interesting,” Another elder Commander commented.

You did this,
a ghost whispered in my ear.

“That is all I have to report at this time,” I announced. My hands itched to tighten into fists but I couldn’t do such a thing here.

You killed everyone,
another ghost hissed.

“You may take your leave now. Rest, Captain. You look as if you haven’t slept at all since you left.”

You’re a monster.

“Thank you, Commanders,” I bowed my head and then spun on my heel. I practically ran from the room, I couldn’t leave fast enough.

Though it only took minutes to reach my house from the Command center, I felt as if it’d taken years. I was exhausted from trying to hold myself back so that I wouldn’t run like a madwoman through the streets. That was the kind of ‘chaos’ that wasn’t acceptable here. When I finally did reach my house and threw my door open, I was surprised to see a light flickering up the stairwell. Perhaps Finn had set a fire and was waiting for me downstairs. I appreciated the thought but conversation would have to wait.

I ripped the fresh white cap off of my head and let my hair flow freely. My footsteps were heavy on the stairs as if my legs were suddenly made of lead. I tried to take deep, steadying breaths. My ghosts had left me alone for now but the fear raged on inside of my body. It flowed freely through my veins. How would I survive even a few more days without giving my body the peace it required?

I reached the bottom staircase and momentum alone forced me off of the stairs and onto the floor. The wet sucking noise my boots made against the floor echoed in the wide open space. The fire crackled in the fireplace, casting an eerie light all over the blood that covered my floors. It was splattered on my walls and soaked into my furniture. I was either too exhausted or too scared to withhold my reaction. I let out a shaky breath that sounded a little bit like a wail to my ears. I didn’t feel my vocal cords vibrating with sound but I was making some sort of noise. It was like a high-pitched screeching.

I had to get this cleaned up before someone saw and thought I’d done this. I knew that I had done this. I had spilled all of this blood and more but I couldn’t let anyone see the extent of the evil that had rooted itself out a home inside of me.

I dropped to my knees, hearing the splatter of blood. It was a thick, muffled sound, like it wasn’t completely liquid but it was far from dry. It was almost like the sound of boots squelching in mud. The smell of iron rust, salt, and bile filled my nose. I scrubbed the floor with my soft white cap but it quickly filled up with blood and made no progress so I tossed it aside. I ripped off my jacket and started trying to clean with that but it wasn’t helping much either. I needed bleach. It would dilute it and clean it away.

I crawled on my hands and knees through the blood into a closet stocked with cleaning supplies and I dragged a huge container of bleach down to the floor beside me. I didn’t want to pour it onto a rag, I didn’t have time for something like that. Someone could stop by at any moment. I took off the top and tipped the container over on its side. I watched as the clear liquid glugged out of the bottle. Bleach lightened the blood to an unnatural pink color wherever it flowed. I grabbed my jacket and scrubbed away at the pink, swirling fresh red into it. It wasn’t going away. I sobbed to myself and tried to ignore my salty tears as they fell straight from my eyes and onto the floor. My jacket was the problem now. It had soaked up too much blood from before. I scrambled to my feet and ran into my bedroom, yanking drawers out of my wooden dresser. I balled up my piles of fresh uniforms and other clothes in my arms, and when I got back to my living room, I dropped them straight onto the floor. I didn’t care as long as they soaked up the blood and got it out of sight.

Monster.

Evil.

The Reaper.

Worthless. Even your brother is ashamed.

You deserve to die.

Die, Reaper.

“
No
!” I screamed at the ghosts. My throat was raw and my nose burned from the bleach but I didn’t care. My head was throbbing and the tears were still flowing unchecked.

I hadn’t noticed before, beyond the blood, but now I could see that under my furniture, as if someone had tried to hide them, and piled up in corners were mounds of disconnected, fire-blackened bones. They sat there, taunting me. It seemed like the blood was gushing straight out of the piles of bones. I cried out and kept scrubbing away at the bloody floor where I could still see pink.

As I scrubbed I could see it all, unfiltered and impossible to block out. My first kill had been a woman. She was much bigger than I was but she wasn’t very old. Her skin was still smooth, free of wrinkles, her eyes wide with fear. I knew what was expected of me. I winced as my blade pierced right through the skin and muscles of her stomach. Blood sprayed out from her and splattered my perfect white clothes. She made a noise that I associated with the dying, a kind of shocked gasp mixed with a choking sound. I pulled my blade away from her body and watched as she fell over, her blood staining the ground around her as it poured from the wound in her stomach and back.

I killed a mother and her child. I was preparing to become Captain and I was eager to prove myself worthy of the challenge. Already a reputation had been made where I was ruthless, and part of me loved that. Part of me encouraged the nickname they’d started giving me,
the Reaper.
I stormed into a house to ensure it was cleared and a mother sat in a rocking chair with her newborn baby. I hadn’t thought twice as I’d stabbed both of them. It was so quick that there wasn’t even time for them to cry.

I’d killed men. Most of the time they fought back, I had plenty of scars to prove it. I’d killed people my age, old people, young. It never mattered to me. A stab or a slice, the tearing of flesh that gave way so easy to the sharpened points and edges of metal. It was all the same.

As I scrubbed away at the blood that wasn’t clearing at all, murders flowed through my mind. This was the storm. It was raining, pouring, down on me now. This was the fate that I deserved. My ghosts had wanted vengeance and now I was theirs completely. I was a slave to this house, this blood, and I could do nothing until it was gone.

At one point I was sure I’d tried to claw the skin away from my face because it burned and stung horribly. It felt like pouring salt into a wound. I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t ripped my hair out. My body seemed to be falling apart as I kneeled there and scrubbed at my floor with all of the clothes I owned. This was what I deserved.

Kai

I gave Aili and her team a day’s head start before I followed. I loaded up with packs of clothes, food, a tent, and various other supplies. I packed as if for a trip that would take months. I hoped it wouldn’t take that long before I could take her away from that horrible place once and for all.

Because of the head start I had given Aili and her team, I didn’t end up catching up. I would, on occasion, find a footprint heading in the right direction which made me wonder if I was keeping a faster pace than they were. And then, finally, I saw it; it was so far away that it was almost like a mirage. The walls of the city were higher than I remembered them being. The stones reached up as if to touch the sky, the black iron gates looked like they were welcoming lost souls into the pits of Hell. I couldn’t see any of the buildings, even the tops of them, from this distance and I couldn’t dare to go any closer. I’d hoped never to see this place again, to remember the nightmares that living under the Legion’s reign had produced in me.

I set up my campground and I waited. I froze, shivering and then laying completely still. My frozen, dried eyes stared unseeingly at the wind shaking my tent. I was going to die here.

I didn’t know how long I waited. In this frozen tundra with the perpetual snowfall and the dark gray sky, I didn’t know how many hours and days were passing. I ate when I was hungry and kept the smallest fire possible going. I tried to keep it low enough that any guards passing the outside wouldn’t see the flickering flames. After a while, I assumed I was safe.

When I wanted to give up hope one night and return, tell Kieran of my failure and accept his full hatred for the rest of my days, I knew I had to get up and leave my tent, I was going stir crazy. I needed a fire, I needed to be free of the small, confined space. I jerked my way free of the tent, barely zipping the door closed again, and went to rebuild the small fire. I couldn’t have been outside for more than a few minutes, the flames weren’t even really dancing, when I heard the noise of someone’s approach.

I froze. I stayed crouched in front of the fire. It was too late to run, I could only hope that my body had the strength to fight whoever had discovered me. I waited, listening to the heavy footfalls on the ice, the kicking of heavy snow.

“Kai?” I heard a deep, male voice ask incredulously. I jerked my head around to see a man covered head-to-toe in white. He was a broad man, a mass of pure muscle. He had a heavy travelling pack on his back and in his arms was a tiny white bundle. I could see nothing else.

“Finn?” I asked in shock. Had I lost my mind already? Was I seeing things?

“Hurry, help me get her inside,” Finn said by way of answering. I hadn’t seen anyone else with him, but I instinctively knew the bundle in his arms was Aili. He wouldn’t have anyone else with him. I shot to my feet and ran around the side of the tent, unzipping it and ushering Finn and his bundle inside as if I were welcoming them into my home.

When I followed him inside the tent I zipped the door closed, and then I turned to look. He was laying her down gently on my sleeping bag. She was tinier than I remembered her being and her mask covered most of her face, but her closed eyes were disturbing enough. There were thin, angry-looking scratches across her eyelids and extending further down into the mask. Her lids were purple and swollen. She looked like she’d been ravaged by something wild.

“What happened?” I asked coldly.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Finn snapped at me quietly. He barely glanced over his shoulder to ask me, he was too busy zipping my sleeping bag closed with her inside of it.

“I came for
her.
What
happened
to her?” I snapped back at him. I didn’t have the patience for friendliness.

“She’s destroyed herself,” Finn whispered. He let himself fall backwards. He didn’t even bother taking his pack off, he just watched her carefully and every once in a while would reach his hand up as if to touch her but then changed his mind.

“She… I don’t know, she’s lost her mind. I thought it was coming but I wasn’t sure. She’s tried to be strong all her life, or at least all the time that I’ve known her. She never wanted to show weakness to anybody. I knew that she was dissatisfied with the way we do things, I knew she didn’t want to kill people. I should have taken her away a long time ago,” Finn said. I knew he was talking to me but it sounded as if he were talking to a ghost, like he wasn’t sure of his company.

“We’d been home for two days. I went to her place to check on her because I hadn’t seen her at all. At first I thought she’d been sleeping because, well, she didn’t sleep except maybe an hour here or there after we left your camp. Then I got worried. She wasn’t showing up for meals. I found her on the floor in her living room. All of her clothes were everywhere and she hadn’t even changed out of her uniform from when we’d been on our mission. The house was cold like there hadn’t been a fire in the fireplace in weeks…

“The smell hit me first, before anything else. She’d dumped out probably two gallons of bleach on her floor and was scrubbing at it with her clothes. She was frozen solid, too. There was blood on the floor from where she’d scratched at her face and where her hands had gotten ruined from so much bleach for so long. It was like parts of her hands had melted away. And then there was the whispering. She just kept saying, ‘I did this. All this blood, I did it. I killed them all’ and she wouldn’t snap out of it for anything. I had to pick her up to get her away from the mess she had created.