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“I don’t,” I told him. “I want to. But I can’t. It’s not as easy as you make it out to be. I never trusted anyone and I’m trying.”
“This is you trying?” He asked. There it was again. His anger had seeped into his tone, pushing away the compassion.
“It is,” I told him. “I don’t trust easily, and I don’t think wartime is a good time to change that fact. You judge me for not including you in things, and you get angry at me when I do things on my own, but I’m used to it. I’ve always been alone.”
“You don’t trust easily,” he said, repeating my words as if he wanted to understand them and thought that was the only way. “I don’t buy it.”
It was an abrupt change of tone. I looked away from the dark sky and turned to him. He smiled. It was an angry smile, but it made my stomach flip excitedly.
“What?” I asked.
“Why did you stay with me at the end of the trials?” He asked, cocking his head for emphasis. “When we were in the arena, and I told you I would not be passing through the finish line?”
I hesitated. Why indeed?
At that point, I had known Kieran for only a week. When he told me that he would be staying behind, I did not hesitate. I insisted on staying behind with him, even though I knew it could mean death.
Why indeed?
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t want to leave you behind.”
“You trusted me,” he said. “You trusted me enough to stick with me when I was out with a fever. You could have gone on your own and made it to the bridge before anyone else. You did not. You stayed with me, and you believed in me when I told you I would stay in the arena to find out what happened to all the others before us. You did not hesitate.”
“I...” my voice trailed off.
“And when you broke into the dungeon to speak with the monster, or when you went secretly at night to free the monster in the border town prison, you did not alert us. You did not wait for us to help when Brigid fell into the river. You just jumped as though you did not care about what happened to you,” Kieran did not pause. He kept going, each sentence a new blow to the nail he was hammering into my heart. “But it wasn’t because you don’t trust us. It’s because you want to take care of everyone around you. You think you are not worthy of the same compassion you offer us. You endanger yourself constantly for our benefit. Why? Because you think we are worth saving, and you are not? You act like you are tainted, expendable, unimportant... You are not. You are...”
Toward the end, Kieran was breathless. His eyes were bright under the moons, and his body was tense. He was looking at me, but his expression was twisted as though he could not see me, not because he did not want to, but because I did not let him.
“But I am, Kieran,” I turned to him. “I am tainted.”
“Why?” He asked angrily. “Because your step-parents thought so? They didn’t know any better, Jasmine; they did not try to get to know you. Their hate is not on you. You were a child; you are not to blame for it.”
“I’m not talking metaphorically,” I said.
I realized that this was the moment. The moment I would come clean to Kieran about the monster that was growing in me. I would tell him, and he would know not to push me.
Cari was gone. She could not stop me. Her tendrils that had always been in my mind were gone now; I did not know why and I did not know until when that would be the case. I had to act quickly.
“I’m turning into a monster,” I told Kieran. “I...”
But I could not finish my sentence.
I realized.
Cari was gone. She wasn’t being polite and staying away, ready to come back to my mind and take over. Even as I’d just told Kieran the secret Cari had been trying to keep buried in me, she hadn’t taken over my mind to intervene.
She was not here.
We were alone in the forest, unprotected.
It wasn’t a feeling that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was a low growl, one that made my stomach flinch. I did not dare to make any sudden moves. Wolves avoided fires, but tonight we had none. And monsters weren’t afraid of anything. I reached for my blade without making any sudden movements, it would not be enough to fight a wolf and its sharp teeth, but perhaps it could help scare it away.
Kieran heard the growl too. He did not make any sounds as he looked toward his bedroll, where his sword lay. I could hear his heart beating fast.
When I turned my head toward where the sound came from, I could not see anything in the darkness of the thick forest below. Still, I felt it.
Monsters, I told Cari. Where are you? Come back!
