Chapter 4
Zaraq
The two-person transport pod landed in a small clearing that seemed to have been designed to accommodate the craft. During their descent, Zaraq marveled at the sprawling woodland below them. Despite the busy lifestyle found in the capital, Thryal was very much a place for exploration.
It was as though the citizens understood that big cities and industrialization were important to furthering a species, but maintaining a connection with the natural world was crucial for the individual. He found that comforting.
Sofia pressed a few icons on the control dash and the door to the pod opened. Fresh, sweet air flooded the cockpit, and Zaraq breathed it in deeply. For the next few hours, they would be wandering the forest together, searching out the site of a ruined Thryal monastery built in the feudal days of the planet’s early life. It was said that the souls of the monks who worshiped there could still be seen meditating in the moonlight.
“Do you have your pack?” Sofia asked. Her tone was uncharacteristically business-like.
“I do,” Zaraq answered, slinging it over his shoulder. “But you knew that since you’re the one who loaded the pod before we left.” He smiled, hoping she would recognize the sparkle of humor in his eye and return the expression.
It would be nice to know that she is looking forward to having a good time with me , he thought.
She grabbed her own pack and got out of her seat without even looking at him.
Being ignored felt like the nerves in his chest were being tied into knots. Had he done something wrong? Her demeanor toward him had changed since the uncomfortable dinner with her family. He could have done a better job of masking his discomfort with what even he had to admit were rather harmless questions, but he wasn’t ready to discuss his past with anyone yet. He wasn’t sure he ever would be.
Following the dinner, Sofia made all kinds of excuses for her sisters and brother-in-law. “They think they have to protect me because I have a habit of committing super hard to things,” she said. “I mean, the second the opportunity to leave Earth presented itself, I jumped at the chance, only to panic a bit on the trip here. I bet they think I’m jumping into a thing with you so quickly.”
“A thing ?” Zaraq had asked, tickled by the phrase.
She fluttered her hands in the air as if shooing away a bothersome insect. “Never mind. I’m being dumb. They were being dumb.” She stopped then, and Zaraq noticed her eyes shift from her feet, to him, and back again.
She wants to ask me something but is too afraid , he worried.
“It was fine,” he told her, desperate to put her mind at ease. “They were just curious.”
Dodging the questions of two royals and an extraordinarily intelligent woman was difficult enough. He didn’t think he’d manage to keep anything from her.
If she asks me , he admitted to himself, I will tell her. Everything.
Now, noticing how she avoided eye contact with him and kept an odd distance between them, he became increasingly concerned that the conversation he desperately wanted to avoid was soon to be unavoidable.
I’m sorry , he silently apologized. I’m sorry that you’re going to have to see me differently.
Sofia’s body language changed the moment their eyes found the rocky remains of the small monastery. Instead of being perched atop a cliff, as they’d both imagined, it was built into the bottom of a cliff face itself. The overall structure of the place was crumbling and pocked with decay, but the spirit of what the building was remained.
“Oh my god,” Sofia said in a stunned whisper. She gently gripped Zaraq’s right biceps. Her touch sent ease through his entire body. “Can you believe it?” she asked, her mouth hanging open. “It was built thousands of years ago, and here we are, stepping into history.”
“It’s smaller than I expected,” Zaraq said. “But still beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” Sofia chided. “The place is creepy as shit. I love it! Let’s go inside.”
Laughing, Zaraq followed her to the entrance of the ruined holy place. The tunnels beyond the deteriorated entrance were deep, dark, and cavernous. The air slowly flowing from it was damp and sour.
“Feels like we’re peering into a dead thing’s mouth,” Zaraq said.
“Yeah, that’s what blows about haunted places. They always stink.”
Sofia was, of course, the first to cross the threshold. The beam of her flashlight served as a beacon, chasing away shadows just enough for them to avoid getting surprised by some sleeping predator. It did not, however, protect them from unsteady ground.
A few feet into the main entryway, Sofia’s foot snagged on a stone and she almost went face-first into a boulder, but Zaraq was able to hook his arm around her midsection in time. He held her tightly with both arms to help lift her out of the divot. Placing her on a more even surface, he felt her shiver.
“Are you cold?” he asked. “I can give you the jacket from my pack.”
“No,” she said, almost breathless. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
He smirked in the dark. She wasn’t being cold and distant like before. That was the tone of excited nervousness. Holding her like that, with her form fitting perfectly against his own, had been a thrill for him as well. It was comforting to think she was affected by it.
There were etchings on the walls that neither of them understood. Zaraq tried to find corresponding diagrams in the guide they brought with them, but the carvings were far too weathered to match them with anything on the pages. Instead, they made up their own stories.
“That is Puroo the lazy,” Sofia said, pointing at what could have been a woman lounging on a piece of furniture. “She thinks she’s better than everyone else just because her husband is a god and people have to do whatever they say. Typical god-wife complex.”
“And this,” Zaraq said, approaching markings that suggested a very skinny person with long limbs. “This is Skirak the lanky.”
“What’s his story?” Sofia asked.
Zaraq thought about it. “He stole food from the gods and was punished by never being allowed to eat anything ever again.”
“Jeepers,” Sofia said. “Gods are such dicks. Aren’t they?”
As the monastery caverns grew even darker with the setting sun, Sofia suggested they make their way back to camp for the night.
“You want to sleep here?” he asked, assuming they would be flying back to the annex.
“Of course!” Sofia replied. “How else are we going to know if the stories about the ghost monks are true if we don’t stick around?”
Her pack had a pair of sleeping bags, a fire starter, and cans of rations. Watching her light the small bundle of wood beneath the stars triggered a memory of his younger days.
A cold hand pulled at his heart. Despite how much time he spent on his own, he knew that people who care about each other share things. Sofia had told him all about her failed career as a ghost hunter, about the loss of her parents, and the trip across an endless sea of blackness. Wasn’t it wrong to keep his own past a secret?
Not if I want to keep her safe , he decided.
They ate, laughed, and shared more stories about other haunted spots around Thryal. Seeing the joy with which she discussed such things made him want to spend as much time as he could exploring them with her. She had an infectious enthusiasm, and he’d been bitten by the paranormal bug.
They slept beneath the Thryal sky. Zaraq dreamed of his childhood and his life moving from place to place. He saw blood and heard screams echoing through eternity.
Jolting awake, he noticed that it was still dark. Sofia slept peacefully beside him, her breathing easy and rhythmic. He moved to reach over and caress her hair.
His hand dripped with blood.
“Look what you did, Z-boy,” a deep, craggy voice said from the darkness of the trees surrounding them. “I guess that beast inside you got out.”
Zaraq clamped his eyes closed and counted to ten. When he opened them again, the blood was gone. He scanned the trees. No one was there.
As he lay back down and turned on his side, he realized these ruins were haunted but not by peaceful monks. The only ghosts around here were the ones he brought with him.
The flight back to the capital was an uncomfortable one. The roles between Zaraq and Sofia had completely flipped. She was her usual talkative, comedic, and bubbly self while he remained quiet and introspective. A pit had been growing deeper and deeper in his stomach, and if he wanted to keep himself from falling into it, he needed to come clean about his past.
“You good?” Sofia asked as they approached the landing platforms bordering the city.
The question startled him, and he couldn’t hide it. “Uh…yeah,” he said. “Didn’t sleep all that well.”
“Oh, me neither.” She arched her back, stretching. “There must’ve been a root or something digging into my back. Still managed to sleep through the night, though. I guess that’s why Carmen is the princess and I’m not.”
Zaraq tilted his head, confused.
Sofia sighed. “Duh. You don’t have the story of the princess and the pea all the way out here. Never mind.”
They went to Sofia’s quarters upon their return. Both of them were exhausted and didn’t feel much like making conversation with the family. When the door shut behind them, the silence threatened to crush Zaraq.
“You can just throw your stuff in the corner,” she said. “I’ll shower real quick. Then we can get some dinner. Are you hungry?” Her eyes caught his, and he saw that she’d noticed something was wrong.
Instead of acting concerned, Sofia huffed. “Jesus, man. What the hell is up with you?”
Zaraq didn’t answer. He only blinked, trying to find somewhere else to look in the room rather than at her.
“No, cut that shit out. Don’t ignore me.” Sofie stomped into his eyeline. She folded her arms and scowled better than anyone in the history of scowling.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said. “A lot of somethings based on the way you acted at dinner the other night. Spill it. All of it. Now .”
Zaraq’s mind spun in a million different directions, unable to find a proper place to start. Sensing her growing displeasure, he decided to open his mouth and see what came out.
“I like you,” he said. “More than I thought I could like anyone. That… disturbs me.”
“Why?” Sofia asked. “What’s so terrible about me that you’re disturbed by the thought of liking me?”
“No,” Zaraq said. He stepped forward to touch her shoulders, but she stepped out of the way, deciding to sit on the foot of her massive bed. He noticed she did not offer him a place next to her. So, he had a seat in the chair near the balcony window.
“You don’t disturb me,” he continued. “You dazzle and amaze me. Your love for history and folklore, your attachment to your sisters, your bravery. It’s all so incredible to me. You, Sofia from Earth, are a truly spellbinding person.”
She uncrossed her arms and rubbed her legs. “Then what aren’t you telling me?”
He almost stopped right there. He almost got up and left her behind forever just so he could protect himself from the shame he knew he would feel once she saw the real him.
No more running , he thought. It’s time to plant your feet and take root.
“I didn’t grow up the way you did,” he began. “I didn’t have any brothers or sisters to play with. By the time I was old enough to remember them, my parents were already gone, killed because of some gambling debts. I had no one.”
He stopped, deciding that wasn’t quite right. He corrected himself.
“People were looking out for me. But they either bailed when raising a young one got too expensive, or got mixed up with the wrong crowd themselves. You should feel lucky that your sister found the prince. The rest of the galaxy isn’t quite as nice and stable as it is here. Most of us have to take any job we can to make it through the day. And a lot of those jobs aren’t very nice.”
He couldn’t make himself meet her gaze as he continued. “During my teenage years, I ran away from a foster couple. They were nice enough, I guess, but I was a wild kid. I couldn’t stay in one spot for too long. As you can imagine, the galaxy isn’t built to accommodate young people with no money. That meant I needed work. I found a job in a casino.”
Sofia didn’t say anything, but she made a humming noise that told him she was, at least, still listening.
“The owner was a bastard. He manipulates people by reminding them how nice he was for giving them a job and guilting them into doing more and more for them. For a long time, I didn’t care. He was paying me to fix a few tables and run messages. So what if he wasn’t the nicest guy in the universe? I could afford clothes and food and my own room.”
He could feel her staring at him. He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably and cleared his throat.
“After a few years, he bumped me up to security. That’s when I learned how to hurt people. The boss would suspect someone was cheating the house and he would tell me to make sure they never came back again. That was his way of ordering me to break their legs. Then he’d laugh and say, ‘Wow, Z-boy! You got a beast in you!’ Like it was my idea to hurt those people.”
He sighed. “Another security guy and I wanted to go freelance, start our own security business. Working for someone else wasn’t sitting right with me anymore. The boss found out about it, and had my friend killed. He framed me for it. The law has been after me ever since.”
Zaraq rubbed his face, drained by the info dump. He’d always known if he ever told anyone, it would come erupting forward like a geyser. What he didn’t expect was how fatigued he would be after.
Still, he had more to say.
“That’s why I couldn’t answer all those questions at dinner,” Zaraq said. “I’m always on the move, and it can be hard to keep my story straight. Well, that’s only part of it. I also worry that knowing what I’m running from might put people in danger. That’s stupid, I know. But it’s true.”
Sofia stared at him, her jaw slack and her eyes glistening. “Get out,” she said.
Those two words slid between his ribs like a sizzling blade. “Sofia…” he started to say, but she cut him off.
“You lied to me,” she said. “You lied, and I don’t want to see you right now.”
He started to protest, but she screamed at him to leave.
Honoring her wishes, he lifted his bag and walked out the door.