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As he spoke, I sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and pulling the blanket around myself to listen. This was new information. Useful information. And strangely, despite learning that Mia was his sister, not his partner, that feeling in my belly continued to grow by the second.
“Mia was his sister,” I whispered, mostly to myself. I had even more questions now. Why hadn’t he mentioned her earlier? Why would he have? He didn’t owe me his life story.
“I’m sorry. What happened to her?”
“The Sovann’ash came for her. They tried to take her away. We tried to hold them off, to save all the women in our village, but there were too many of them. They landed with their ships and their soldiers and they stormed every house, and we couldn’t do anything. They had Mia in their hands, dragging her away. They were shocking her. I remember her screaming. I remember the way her body quaked and jolted under their touch, how she couldn’t defend herself. Malik broke away from the crowd, he tried one last ditch effort to save her, the other half of his soul. They stopped him, tackled him to the ground and held him there, screaming and pleading for her. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t bear to see them take her, knowing that he would kill himself trying to save her, so I made the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make.”
He fell silent, and an involuntary shiver ran down my spine. I didn’t want to ask what he meant by that. I didn’t want to know. But some part of me had to hear it for myself, to understand.
“What did you do?”
“I pulled out my gun, and I fired a single shot. It was quick. She didn’t suffer. Even if Malik can’t accept it, I saved her from a fate worse than death.”
I clenched the covers tighter, shivering at his admission, the way he said those words in such a dull monotone, like even he couldn’t bear to feel the emotions that flowed beneath them.
“Obviously, the Sovann’ash didn’t take that lightly. They came after us, and we had to hide, and Malik was fighting me all the way, desperate to get back to her. Eventually, he went silent, and the Sovaan’ash pulled out. They left Mia’s body there in the dirt, stepping over her as they loaded the rest of the women up and took them away. Malik stayed by her side for a long time. He picked her up and carried her to the middle of the village, and lit the fire to free her spirit. I tried to help, but he wouldn’t have me. All I could do was watch from a distance. We stayed until the last of her flesh was consumed, and then he gathered her bones and ground them into a powder, and we took all of her ashes and placed them into an urn. All except a little bit that he placed in a vial that hung at his heart. He kept a piece of her with him, always. That was before we formed the Vaclan Brotherhood. This is all we have left of our people. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. On the day that Malik lost his arm, he also lost that vial. The Sovaan’ash had not forgotten. They recognized him and they came for him. As he was bleeding out, they stripped him of everything he had, including Mia. It was like he lost her all over again.”
All of this information was too much. The burning coal in my gut had transformed into… something else, something I didn’t have words for. Pain? Sympathy? A desire to hold space for Malik and Torgus, and all of their people. A burning desire to get back to my people and fight the good fight with Tayla, not just for myself, but to honor Mia’s memory.
Silently, I drew my feet up onto the bed and laid back, staring at the ceiling, wrestling with my thoughts.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask softly.
He shrugged. “When he lets you in, be gentle,” Torgus said softly. “He is not as strong as he once was.”
Before I could respond, Torgus rolled away from me, ending the conversation at once. Fury swelled inside me, followed by confusion. Malik had been there, on the ground with me, when I begged him to save those other women. And yet, he declined. He knew what was at stake and he’d told me no. It made little sense. Or at least, I couldn’t make any sense of it.
But there was this other feeling, too. Something calling me to him, making me want to get out of bed at this very instant and go to him. I wanted to tell him I saw him. I heard him. I understood, or I was trying to understand. And I couldn’t help but feel like Torgus was begging me to try. He hadn’t said it that way, but he knew that Malik was broken, and despite all of his doubts, there was a reason he’d laid it all out to me.
I continued staring at the ceiling until I heard the uneven sound of Torgus sleeping. Maybe he was faking it. I couldn’t be sure. But it didn’t matter, because that feeling inside me would not go away, and there was work to be done.
Quietly, I slipped off the bed and went to the door, praying that it wouldn’t wake Torgus on my way out. It took me a moment to find the button to open it, and as it slipped sideways, I darted through it and padded down the hallway as quickly as I could without looking back.
10
MALIK
The starsbeyond the window glittered and sparkled, coming in and out of focus as my eyes drifted among their many complex formations. Mia loved the stars. Back on our home planet, she used to climb up to the very top of the hill beyond our township. She would lay there for hours, watching the constellations and talking about all the lives she might have led if we had been born anywhere else. I humored her, only because I did not know what else to do.
Now, I came to look at the stars whenever I missed her. I secretly hoped that her spirit had found its way to one of those other worlds. In my dreams, Mia was running through the flowery fields of a far distant land that only she could conceive of, untouched by the cruelties of reality.
“It’s beautiful.”
I grunted, glancing down at Cosma as she stepped close to me, a blanket from the infirmary pulled around her shoulders like a cape. She did not look at me. She merely stood there, silently, staring into the distance. Something about her sudden appearance riled me. It was an invasion of sorts, the way she inserted herself into the sacred space I shared with my sister. But like so much else, I could not stop her from looking at the stars. They did not belong to me alone.
“You should be resting.”
“I slept on the way back,” she retorted. “I don’t think Torgus was too keen on me sleeping in there, either.”
I huffed. “Torgus rarely agrees with anything I do.”
She turned then, lifting her defiant little chin until she was staring straight into my eyes, a soft smile playing at her lips.
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“You must know something I don’t then.”
I wanted so badly to turn away from her, to stomp back to my room and sulk alone in my bed. I did not need Cosma to come along and lecture me about my relationship with my brother. And yet, she held me steadily in her gaze, confident in her words. As much as I wanted to turn away, I could not.
