She leans forward, presses her lips to my burning brow.
“There is no love in violence, Kaliis.”
I see light behind her. A halo of midnight blue flecked with silver.
I hear a voice, familiar but strange.
“Kal?”
“There is no love in violence.”
“Kal, can you hear me? Oh, please, please, wake up.”
… My mother’s touch rouses me from sleep. My heart thumps as my eyes flash wide and her hand covers my lips. I am twelve years old.
“Get up, my love,” she whispers. “We must go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“We are leaving,” she tells me. “We are leaving him.”
I see a bruise, faint upon her wrist. The split in her lip is new. But I know it is not for her that she is running from him at last.
She draws me up off my bed, hands me my uniform. Wordlessly I dress, wondering if she truly means it. My father will never allow this. I have heard him threaten to kill her if she leaves. There is nowhere she can run.
“Where will we go?” I ask.
“I have friends on Syldra.”
“Mother, we are at war with Syldra.”
“No, he is at war,” she hisses. “With everyone and everything. I will not let you become him, Kaliis. I will allow him to poison my children no longer.”
My mind is racing as we slip through the dark to Saedii’s quarters. Mother steals inside while I keep watch, my heart hammering, my mind whirling. He will never forget this. He will never forgive.
“Saedii,” Mother whispers. “Saedii, wake up.”
My sister seethes upright, blade drawn from beneath her pillow, teeth bared. When she sees our mother, she relaxes only a fraction. And when she sees me, she tenses once again.
Her face is still bruised from the beating I gave her. The rift between us wider than it has ever been. She broke the siif that Mother gave me after I defeated her at spar. She can no longer best me in the circle, so she sought to punish me another way. And I punished her in kind. I can still picture her blood on my fingers. The pain in her eyes as I hit her with the siif she broke. I feel shame even now that I laid hands upon her so. Mind echoing with the memory of Father’s words when he learned what I had done.
“Never have I been more proud that you are my son.”
“What do you want, Mother?” she whispers, lowering her blade.
“We are leaving, Saedii. We are leaving him.”
Her eyes narrow. Her lip curls. “Are you crazed?”
“I am crazed to have allowed this to continue as long as I have. Caersan is a cancer, and I will allow it to spread no further. Come now.”
Saedii snatches her hand away from Mother’s grip. “Faithless coward. He is your lifelove, Laeleth. You owe him your heart and soul.”
“I have given him both!” Mother hisses, pointing to the bruises on her skin. “And this is how I have been repaid! And were it only I to bear the burden, perhaps even now I would keep my troth. But I will not stand by and watch my children fall into the same darkness that consumes him!”
Saedii looks to me, face bruised, teeth bared. “You allow this, brother?”
I meet her eyes, pleading. “I am sorry, sister. But you know the truth. He is no good for us. He is not what I wish to become.”
“Coward!” she spits, rising. “Both of you, faithless cowards!” Midnight-blue light flares behind her, and I squint, blinded. The warmth of it bathes my skin, tingling through every part of me.
“Kal?”
“Saedii, come with us!”
“I would die before I betrayed him.”
“Kal!”
“Coward! Shame! De’sai!”
“KAL!”
… I open my eyes.
I see her above me, a halo of light playing around her head. My heart surges so painfully I press one hand to my ribs to stop the ache. My sight is blurred, mind aching, but still, one thought burns bright enough to pierce the fog of my broken thoughts.
She is alive.
My Aurora is alive.
The walls around us are glittering crystal, and I realize I am floating a meter above the floor. As I shift my weight, try to rise, the air about me hums gently, rainbow-colored—the same as the energies of the Echo, where Aurora and I lived half a year, a lifetime, in the memories of the Eshvaren homeworld. But they feel different now. The song of energy hanging in the air is—
“No, don’t try to sit up,” she whispers, one hand on my shoulder. “Just rest, okay? I thought I lost you for a minute there, I—I thought I …”