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Until now.
Guilt tugs inside my chest. I’m promised to one, but seem to want another. And worse, my promised person is rotting away somewhere unknown, in a country unfamiliar to her, with people who would use her and hurt her for her name and status alone. A tension rises within me as I think of Lena barely surviving— hurt, starved, waiting for life or death, but not knowing which will greet her. If her brother were here, if Evander had been around instead of me, I have no doubt she’d already be safe at home in the arms of her family. Breathing becomes more difficult as I think of her, and I know sleep won’t find me anytime soon.
Ari stirs in front of me, mumbling words I can’t make out. My eyes fix on her, watching each delicate movement. I don’t know what I feel for this girl. Maybe it’s simply lust or infatuation. But even as I think it, I know it’s more than that. The surface of my understanding disappears into plunging depths that I can't yet put words or feelings to.
Wherever this leads, no matter what happens, I’ve had a taste of the real thing. It’s not love, not yet. But now I know the ache felt in the absence of someone I care about. The hunger for more of them. The desire to be close to them.
I try to close my eyes, to let sleep overtake me. But even with my eyes shut, all I see is Ari.
My eyes are dry and red as the first light of morning fans through the sky, the rising sun still a ways away. The smoke and dry fire left their mark. I do my best not to rub at them, but I find myself mindlessly reaching for them nonetheless. My midnight revelations slowly come back to me. Once feeling courageous and true in the cloak of night, they now seem difficult and uncomfortable in the light of day.
My future may be unclear and rocky, but I know it isn’t Ari’s fault. None of it is her fault. If anything, she has set me free of mirroring my life to duty alone. Of giving me at least the desire to open the doors to my dreams once again. Dreams I long thought dead and buried.
A loud crack of thunder shoots through the sky, darkened clouds looming on the horizon. Boots crunch through the forest floor, my focus quickly returning to the person emerging in front of me. I can’t help but stand and smile at Ari as she approaches. It’s the oddest thing, how my spirit instantly lifts just by looking at her.
“Good morning,” I beam.
The smile nor the greeting are returned. My brows knit together as I watch her cautiously gather up her things and pack them away. Perhaps she also didn’t sleep well. “It sounds like we’re going to get wet this morning,” I add.
Still, she says nothing, only nodding briefly. I pretend to busy myself cleaning up my meager accommodations as if nothing is amiss. When she passes close by I can’t help but reach out for her, moving directly into her path.
She cocks her head to the side, narrowing her eyes. “We need to hurry. It’s already late in the morning, and the rain will slow us.”
“The sun hasn’t even risen yet. I’d hardly say it’s late.”
“Every morning we have been on our way long before the sun rises. But today, you decide your royal hide needs its beauty rest.” My royal hide? I’m not sure who would ever consider a captain as royalty, but I can’t help but grin at her snide remark.
“My hide is far from royal, but it does occasionally enjoy the benefits of a longer stretch on the hard dirt the outdoors provides,” I joke. She rolls her eyes in response.
The wind picks up around us, whipping loose strands of hair around her face. The storm is moving in quickly, stronger than I anticipated at first glance. Her hair isn’t in her normal braid, but pulled to the side and tied with a thin piece of cloth, her wavy strands rippling past her shoulder.The influence of Tess Santana. But my inward smirk at the thought doesn’t reach my outward presence, nor do I tell her the look frames her face well.
“When did this turn into your summer diversion from the city?” she questions. Her gaze is swirling with something deeper as her words sink into me.
“Excuse me?” I ask. My defense is sparked, but I do my best to calm myself. I’m not sure in what world I would call eating dried meat, sleeping on dirt, getting soaked by rainfall every other hour, and being chased around by men with swords a summer diversion.
“Have you forgotten why we are out here, trying miserably to sleep on thishard dirt?” I narrow my eyes at her— another push against my composed demeanor. Another crack of thunder, coming in closer this time. “A princess is out there,” she continues, “in the hands of who knows who at this point. Wanting her for nothing more than their own gain. She’s scared. Alone. And some of us actually care about getting her back.”
My jaw clenches and each muscle in my body is taut and alert. I’m not sure how the morning could have shifted so suddenly. Last night I could’ve sworn I saw her anger and annoyance fade away. I even thought maybe her clumsiness was because she had been as distracted by me as I had been of her. Now, looking at her seething form, I don’t know what to think. Not only that, but she’s accusing me of not caring for Lena, of this being something other than my entire being trying to get her back, and get her safely home.
I attempt to focus my vision on the trees behind her. The branches, and leaves they hold, blow wildly in the building wind. I manage a few breaths before I open my mouth to respond. “Don’t say I don’t care,” I declare through softly clenched teeth, my voice the ice to the fire within. “Not a minute goes by that I don’t think about her. That I’m not strategizing every possibility to get her back.”
She holds her ground, her gaze meeting mine without any hint of melting away under my heat. I continue, “And why do you presume to know what she’s going through? You don’t know her. You’ve never even met her. She might be scared. She might be alone. But she’s one of the strongest people I know. She’s brave and courageous. She’s one of the only good things this world has to offer.” My final words take aim and fly from my grasp. “At least I’m not trying to find her as a means to escape my own life.”
Ari stands rigid, her burning eyes fixed solely on me. “You would too if you were me. You have no idea what my life has held up until now. I tell you a few sentences about me and you think you’ve figured me out? Nice try. Growing up in your fancy palace with your rich family. What have you ever had need to escape from?” As she speaks she moves closer to me, her admonishment wanting to hit its mark as squarely as my words found theirs.
“Money and finery isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I respond.
“Spoken like someone who has it.”
Her green gaze storms heavier than the clouds above us. I don’t break away from her, and she doesn’t turn away. “Yes, I grew up with money,” I say, all the heat suddenly gone from my voice. “And I was ripped from my family as a child. Sent somewhere foreign and unfamiliar to live out my days, seeing them again for only a few weeks each summer. Yes I was blessed that the family I had to live with was good to me. But my choices have rarely been my own. I was born with everything decided for me, and the more I tried to take my choices back, the more I hurt those I loved.”
I try not to wince as I think of Evander, of his family grieving these last seven years. But I continue, “And the older I get, the harder it becomes to break away from that pattern. I’m a wolf caught in a trap, trying to determine if I should succumb to my fate or chew off my leg.” It feels as if all hope has abandoned me. And I suppose in a way, it has.
The truth is that life can be shifted. But mine has always felt fixed. I let myself get here— never questioning or standing up for what I wanted. When Evander died, a part of me went with him. Watching light leave someone’s body, someone I cared about— it transformed me in a way that nobody else can see. I was on my own. A boy of fifteen trying to figure out how to get over my role in the death of my best friend.
I busied myself. I entered the recruit program two years early, finishing my education in whatever spare time I could find. Never letting myself have a free moment to think or to remember.
It worked. Up until it didn’t.
