Page 28 of Aryn

“Just a babe,” I tease, trying to picture Ronan lanky-limbed and awkward. The defined lines of his face are hyper-masculine, defying the image my mind is trying to create.

He scoffs at my words, but smiles. “What about you?” he asks.

The lifetime I’ve spent split between two worlds replays in my mind, and I hesitate. Ronan cocks his head at my delay, brows bunching slightly. “I was one hundred and thirty-eight when I crossed to this side,” I finally answer.

In my periphery, Cato’s eyes leave the window and land on me, while Ronan’s widen in surprise. “Most of your life was in Elyra, then.”

“More than most. My entire life was there. I’ve spent ninety-one years in this world, but I wouldn’t call it living. Locked away in research labs, living under constant guard. Being forced to harm others when every one of my instincts screamed against it. That wasn’t living.”

Ronan dips his head in acknowledgment. Having lived a lifetime under orders and following commands, he understands in a way few others do.

“And home?” he asks.

“I was barely over my ninetieth birthday when I was captured. I’d always been fascinated with the neth’rel…” I pause when the others stare at me blankly, then chuckle softly. “The science, as you would say. How the world works together. It had been the center of my studies for decades.”

“That’s why they came for you?” Ronan asks.

I nod. “No one knew it at the time, but Zadeus was trying to open the rifts. It never occurred to me they would force me to come with them. That just… wasn’t the way things were done. Not in my village. Not in any village I’d visited. Maybe I was naïve for thinking I had a choice in the matter.”

“You said they took you?” Cato asks, watching me curiously, but his lips turn down into a frown when I nod. “You’re a hell of a fighter, and from what you’ve said, your people are, too. Why didn’t you fight?”

“We were outnumbered. There was far too much to risk. My family was there, and if I’d fought… hells, even if we’d won, Zadeus would’ve hunted them down. So I allowed myself to be taken to the research facilities. I told myself if I gave them what they wanted, if I found the answers they needed, they’d let me return home.”

I brace myself for Cato’s judgment—for his combative tongue to tell me I should’ve fought anyway, but when I catch his eye, there’s something in them that's familiar. It’s an understanding of sorts. A recognition of shared pain.

“You never went home, did you?” he asks.

“No,” I answer with a sad smile. “I didn’t.”

That single decision has haunted me since the day it happened. I’ve replayed it thousands of times, considering every possible way I could have refused or fought back. There had to be a way out, but I was too selfish with those I loved to risk doing more.

Compliance over resistance. That’s always been my way. Even as a child and adolescent, I was softer spoken than many of my peers. Too fast to empathize, too slow to anger, and more interested in science and history than politics and war.

I often wonder how many lives were destroyed because I chose to conform. Would others in my shoes have done something differently? Would they have laid down their lives, sacrificed those they love for the greater good? Would they have fought like I refused to fight?

Some nights the guilt is so sharp it feels like it’s carving out pieces of me I’ll never get back.

“Is that why you’re here?” Cato asks, drawing me out of the past. “This is your chance to go home again?”

“That’s a large part of my motivation, yes. The selfish part.”

“And the not-selfish part?”

I consider how to answer for a moment before letting out a long sigh. “The not-selfish part looks at this as penance. What if I’d refused? If I’d taken my family and run, or fought back until I was killed? Maybe it would have tipped the scales and the veil never would’ve fallen.”

Cato’s frown deepens as he shakes his head. “Do you really think you made that much of a difference?”

“Who’s to say? For all I know, this could’ve been avoided if I’d just said no.”

Sovran makes an indignant noise from the driver’s seat. “The collision of these worlds was inevitable. Zadeus would’ve found a way, no matter what you did or didn’t do that day. That guilt does not belong to you.”

I nod, unconvinced, but don’t comment further. My upbringing barely allows me to question his words, but to argue feels blasphemous.

“It was so long ago it feels like a dream sometimes,” Ronan says as he rests his head against the back of his seat. “I wonder if the moons are the same.”

The sky is gray beyond the windows, though the blue peeks out from behind the clouds as they shift. For a moment, I imagine it’s the blood-orange sunset of the other side, dipping into the deeper crimson that signals the rising of the moons.

A bittersweet smile tugs at my lips as I picture it. “Some things change with time, but some are eternal.”