Chapter 21
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
“I don’t know where to start,” Kal murmured, rubbing the space between his brows.
I focused on my breathing, on the sharp pain radiating through my ribs every few breaths, and tried to find the pieces of my long-lost friend beneath the mangled remains.
I wondered if it was the same for him, if I was unrecognizable as the girl he’d grown up with.
After a moment, he exhaled loudly and shook his head.
“You have to understand it was chaos. I started my climb and it was easy, just the way we’d all practiced for ages.
But then…then I got this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.
” He touched the spot. “I stopped on the first platform to wait for you, but there was some part of me that knew I’d never see you again, I think. ”
I don’t want to leave you here on the ground, he’d said that day with a panicked look in his eyes.
“And then there was a rumble I thought was thunder and whispering in the canopy. People were running everywhere, climbing down to their homes. I’d frozen on the platform, unsure whether to climb up to our families or down to you.
Finally, when the screaming started, I decided to climb up—you were safer on the ground, I rationalized.
But the moment I started climbing, they lit the canopy with explosives and I fell . ”
I remembered the heat, the blast that made my ears ring. The fire was still burned into the back of my lids. He could see it too, judging from the faraway look in his face before he dropped his head into his hands.
“I was on fire, and not just my hair or my clothes—my whole body. The heat was suffocating to the point where I couldn’t even scream.
And then someone grabbed me and I was covered with a tarp and slung over a shoulder.
I woke up hours later in the cargo hold of a ship, half alive and surrounded by mainly our elders and children.
But there were a few others there. Chars had made it out, but he was bleeding badly from a wound in his stomach, and my mom too, with Niko, my brother. ”
Something twisted in the pit of my stomach. He’d said nothing of my parents or sister. It was humiliating to realize I’d held out a pitiful hope that somewhere they waited for me.
Kal covered my hand. “I’m sorry, June.”
I tried to slip my hand from underneath his, but he held firm, ducking his head until he caught my eye. After a second, I realized there was worry there in his face, as if I blamed him for their deaths. I tried to lower my shoulders a fraction and push back the rising tide of grief.
“Where does Captain Ruciyah fit into this?” I rasped.
A throat cleared from the doorway and I froze.
Captain Ruciyah slowly made his way into the room, his brows drawn together.
“I was a part of a mercenary group run by the leader of my Quinzyr unit. Over the years, he’d lost his taste for killing and instead worked against his competition.
For most jobs we were hired to do, there were at least two or three other crews as well, so we’d do our best to stop them.
” He shook his head. “It didn’t matter to them if the victims had what they wanted or not, it all came down to the credits in their pocket. ”
I blinked. “But you were there…”
He dipped his chin. “I was.”
Heat sparked across my eyes and I blinked to clear my vision. “What are you saying, then? That you were there to save my people?”
A sigh distorted itself through his mask. “We were there to do what we could to mitigate the damage.”
“The damage,” I scoffed. “You mean the wholesale slaughter of an entire village.”
His hands flexed at his sides. “Yes… The leader of my crew was there to play a part and we were there to get as many out as we could.”
Kal shifted, squeezing my hand, but I shook him off and sat up a little straighter. “Why didn’t you kill the mercenaries instead? Why didn’t you stop them before they made it to the atmosphere?”
Pain blossomed across my chest and I pushed my fingers against my sternum. Captain Ruciyah looked at me as if he was being burned alive and suddenly I could see the guilt he carried with him. But his guilt did nothing to assuage my anger.
“There were too many of them. We did the best we could,” he murmured.
The best we could. But I remembered the way the mercenaries crawled over our home tree, the countless engines rumbling in the sky. So many bent on the destruction of our people…and for what? “Why did they come at all?”
Kal blew out a breath, his voice heavy with grief. “They believed we had the stone.”
Another bout of pain rippled through my limbs and I moaned. This time I didn’t shake off his touch. “Di-did we?”
Captain Ruciyah shook his head. “The client misspoke. They meant Seyf V’ah, not Selhveina.”
Our people had died for nothing. I blinked quickly, pulling my hand out of Kal’s and wrapping my fingers around the thin bedsheet, wanting to tear, to destroy, to feel anything other than this.
“I saw you there.” My gaze landed back on Captain Ruciyah. “I heard you tell them to ‘burn it to the ground.’”
He nodded and ran a hand through his messy hair.
“We had a role to play. Our job was to slip in undetected and retrieve as many as possible. My team up top took the elderly first, along with the younger children who had stayed below the canopy, and stashed them on the ground in a nearby cave. Then when the fighting broke out we…we grabbed as many as we could and got out of there.”
Part of me didn’t believe it, not with what I’d seen—the brutal expression on his face, the discussion with his superior. But Kal was here, he was alive. So did that mean he was telling the truth?
“We aren’t heroes—”
I laughed bitterly. “That is not the word that comes to mind.”
Captain Ruciyah huffed, but it didn’t sound frustrated, it sounded almost like he agreed with me. “I have done what I could to make amends…to keep making amends.”
“Did you know who I was?” I asked.
“No,” he answered. “I knew you were from Selhveina but I had no idea you were from that specific village. Kal was not particularly forthcoming with your true identity.”
I turned to look at the male in question, who shrugged. “You didn’t recognize me and it felt unfair to reveal your true identity when you didn’t know mine.”
My throat clicked with a dry swallow. The expression on his face was so heart-achingly familiar, from the set of his mouth to the furrow between his brows. I had the urge to touch the vee with my fingertip as I had when we were children. “And you joined him?”
“It took more than a cycle for my wounds to heal. I spent the time recovering in a safe house on Uhkazar with Mom and Niko. Asher would come to visit occasionally, checking on us and the others, and we struck up a friendship.” He let out a huff of laughter and, though Captain Ruciyah didn’t join in, his expression softened a little.
“When I was old enough, after he’d donned the mask and started his own crew, he agreed to let me join.
That was…Maker, that was almost eight cycles ago now. ”
My old friend’s hands covered mine, squeezing tight and forcing me to look up at him. Another apology lingered in his eyes. “If I’d known you survived, I would have never left you behind, you have to believe me.”
I nodded. “I do.”
“When Asher told us he’d found our final member of the crew on some outpost orbiting a Class Three planet, I’d never in a million years have thought it was you.
It was like seeing a ghost the first time you came on board.
At first, I thought I was wrong but the more I looked, the more I saw you there beneath the cycles and cycles you spent on that outpost.”
I couldn’t help but share a look with Captain Ruciyah. “It wasn’t an outpost.”
Kal’s face fell at the same time I shifted my arm, pulling up the sleeve of the medical gown so the dark scar was in view.
Color flooded his cheeks and fury washed over him in a way I’d seen countless times when we were children.
The look was sharper now, like a weapon, but he didn’t reach out to touch it.
In fits and starts, I told him how I’d fallen unconscious on the ground after the explosion. How I’d also woken up in a cargo hold but I’d been gagged with my hands and feet cuffed together.
And as I spoke, both males paled in horror.
“They got a good price for me selling me to Ebyd III for labor, I think,” I murmured, my throat aching now along with my lungs.
I skimmed through the years on the prison outpost—Kal didn’t need my nightmares—but I explained about stowing away on the Daskquah after years of looking for a way out. About Lunastra’s generosity in allowing me to stay, her mercy that no one ever touched me.
And how she’d contracted me out to Captain Ruciyah for this mission.
I spoke until my words were merely whispers. With each one, Kal’s face dropped further and further until his knees hit the floor. Until he clasped my hand in his and pressed his forehead to my knuckles. Until he sobbed into the thin mattress and I stroked his hair off the back of his neck.
And through it all, I could just barely make out the words he spoke over and over:
“Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.”