Chapter 4 #2
Auren found what he was looking for on the foot of the bed, as if she slept with it like a stuffed animal—the wintry hat. He offered it to her, but she didn’t take it; instead, she stepped closer, a silent offer.
Slowly, he placed the hat on her head—much more gently than Cyrus had when he gifted it to her.
Auren swept her hair away from her shoulders, grabbed her hand, and cut his scythe through the air, thinking of the graveyard’s location.
His gloved fingers tightened around hers. "It will be disorienting. Do not let go of me."
"Never," she vowed, and Auren pulled her through the portal.
Rin would’ve fallen to the snow-packed ground if not for Auren’s steady hands, pulling her against his warm chest.
She leaned into him for only a heartbeat before staggering away, one hand pressed to her suddenly throbbing temples. She felt disconnected from her body, spinning. Slowly, the disorientation relented. Auren remained silent, hovering to catch her if she fell.
When she was able to stand upright without feeling like she would throw up from the dizziness, she tipped her head to watch snow falling in thick drifts. Her mittened hands reached out to catch the flakes. They melted against the fabric on her palms.
"It’s beautiful," Rin murmured.
"It is," said Auren in a melancholic tone.
She turned to look at Auren, finding him already staring at her. Snow swirled around his soft blonde hair. His hood was pushed back, scythe clutched in a gloved hand. He was gorgeous like a sculpture, something created to be looked upon but never touched.
Rin cleared her throat and set off toward Kit’s grave, Auren following. It was dark, and everything was covered in snow, and her last memories of this place were soaked in grief.
"I think it was over here," Rin whispered, walking past a row of mausoleums.
Auren hummed in response.
The graveyard was cloaked in frost and moonlight. It was far from the city, but she imagined the faint pop and crackle of celebratory fireworks to ring in the coming New Year.
The ground was packed with white snow, her small footprints trailed by Auren’s larger ones. She bent to wipe her mitten on a stone, revealing an unmarked grave.
She was aware of Auren behind her. She felt like she couldn’t think with him here. She needed space to breathe, to let the memories come.
Crouched before a grave, snow coating her mittens, she uttered, "I need to be alone. I’m not asking you to leave me here…" No, she had learned her lesson on running away and trying to do things alone. "I just need to be alone, feel alone, for a minute."
Her hair shifted as Auren’s gloved fingers stroked over the ends.
"Very well, Hunter. I will be watching you.
Call if need be, and I will help you. I only say so because I know you are not armed, not because I do not think you are incapable.
" He gave a low, pretty laugh. "We both know you are very capable. "
She heard the rustle of fabric behind her as he left.
"Thank you," she whispered, and heard nothing in reply but the unmistakable hush of falling snow.
As Rin stood, there was a tingle at her nape. He was close.
She felt his eyes on her as she walked deeper through the maze of headstones, each dusted with snow. Their symmetry was disorienting.
Finally, she found Kit’s grave. She stilled, her forearm hovering over the just-wiped surface.
Kiton Blackfall.
Loving son, brother, friend.
Rin sank to her knees. The damp chill of the snow bled through her pants.
"Kit, I don’t know what happened to you, what you were turned into, but I know that—at least, I’d like to think that it wasn’t what you wanted." She swallowed, feeling a tightness in her throat from barely held back emotion. "I’m not the same girl I was before you… died."
She hesitated. But he had died, hadn’t he? The man in the dark room, with those cold brown eyes and unnatural strength, wasn’t Kit. The Kit from her memories had died. And what memories she had…
It was more than just this.
Her mind wrestled with the feverish dreams she’d had over the last few weeks. Their intensity had dulled, but the feelings lingered. Flashes of other lives, other versions of herself.
The memories were fragmented, but she would never forget the thrill of recalling her past lives. She would never take it for granted. Not anymore.
All she had ever wanted, right in front of her—so why did she still feel empty?
She hadn’t spoken a word of it to the others, but the way she caught them staring at her sometimes, she was sure they knew—at least somewhat—that something had shifted after she’d been tortured. Like a lock on her mind had been broken.
The true force of her memories pressed against a slowly fracturing dam, letting only a thin trickle bleed through. She wondered if her mind would finally break if all her memories came rushing back at once.
She tugged off her gloves, pressing her bare fingers to the words carved on the headstone. Beneath her was an empty casket—not because he was gone, scattered among the Stars, but because he was here. Alive.
"I remember now, did you know that? Not everything, but pieces are coming back. I know about the Nightfell roses. How you gave them to me to make me happy, even while you were killing yourself for a cause that didn’t care about you, not the way I did.
I remember how you tried to keep me safe, tuck me away.
I think, in that life, after everything I went through, that was something I wanted—to be kept.
And I remember being in your arms while we watched a planet through a ship’s window.
The rest is fuzzy, but you held me and—" Her brow furrowed as a sudden, sharp pain lanced behind her eyes.
"I don’t know what happened after that."
In the snowy wind, a voice carried to her.
"I do."
Rin’s body trembled with the memory of electricity, her fingernails threatened to crack as they dug into the stone, and slowly, she turned to peer up at the one who’d spoken.
Stepping out from the trees at the edge of the graveyard, cloaked in a dark uniform, cold brown eyes that haunted her nightmares stared down at her.
"Hello, Vesperin," Kit said as he stood rigid and imposing in the distance. His form was like an ink blot, etched in shadows.
Rin pushed herself onto shaking legs, trying to imbue strength into her body. She steeled herself, yet her voice still trembled. "How did you find me?"
Auren. Her eyes went wide. He was nearby. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
The snow was a bright silhouette at Kit’s back as he stalked closer. He wore the same style of uniform he had in the underground lab in Nova Zone 21: a dark bodysuit, the chest fitted with armored pieces, gloves, boots, with the addition of a holster at his hip, the barrel of a gun gleaming.
He canted his head like a predator, his brown hair dusted with snow. "I have been hunting you."
Kit pushed down the orders embedded over the vision of his prey, standing among the headstones:
Return to the base. Return to the base. Return to the base. Return to—
It was a metronome loop, playing constantly ever since the day he’d returned from torturing her, only to find the chair empty, devoid of her strangely entrancing form.
He had spiraled, sharp, thick emotions choking him, before his focus had narrowed in on the memory of her, the feeling she invoked. He had known, then, what he must do—hunt her down.
As if every emotion bottled up inside him had suddenly rushed to the forefront, rage had consumed him until he saw nothing but red.
When the red relented, he found he had been covered in it.
Blood had dripped from his hair, coated his hands.
Body parts had littered the blood-slicked tile floor of the lab.
He had killed all the scientists and guards on that level.
He hadn’t felt horror; he still didn’t.
Kit had fled, ripping an eyeball out of the nearest dead scientist’s eye socket to use for the retinal scanners at every doorway. He’d thundered up stairwell after stairwell, ascending from the bowels of the lab as he’d finally emerged into the fresh forest air.
That was when the orders had started, and they hadn’t stopped. Not even after Kit had tried bashing his head against the wall to make it stop.
Sabine and Talor—his makers—could track him down, but after Kit had ripped apart each guard sent to bring him back, they’d stopped trying. It had been too quiet for too long except for the orders. It was like they were waiting him out to see if he’d grow tired.
But how could Blackfall Industries’ beloved Phoenix tire when he had the most intriguing prey?
The orders went out of focus the longer he stared at her.
For weeks, he’d been plagued by the words, and now she was the only thing to quiet them.
If he wasn’t more metal than flesh and bone, he would’ve sagged in relief. If he could even feel relief.
He felt nothing anymore.
No.
That wasn’t true.
Kit felt obsession. And need.
The two emotions threaded into one—sparked by the very image of her.
Snow fell around her in thick flakes. The tip of her nose was red. Her eyes were wide. The grey shade chased away the cold emptiness inside him. Grey like the snow as the moonlight hit it.
Snow crunched beneath his boots as he walked to her. She was rigid, frozen.
He did not like that.
Return to the base. Return to the base—
The prosthetic fingers of his right hand curled into a tight fist.
When she ran from him, he had no room in his head left to think, no space for anything but her. He needed her to run, but right now, he needed something else—to hear her voice, to break the apathy inside him.
"You remember." Kit took a step closer to her. "We are Soulbonds." When she did not speak, he spoke, if only to get her to. "It is a secret I kept from you for years. They took your memories. I played along."
Each word was spoken in monotone. He was an arm’s length away from her now.
Her scent drew him in. He cocked his head.