10. Aryn
Aryn
The whir of the wheels against battered blacktop is the only noise in the van.
Sovran drives with Ronan in the passenger seat.
Cameron, Lillith, and Taryn fill the second row, which leaves Cato and me in the back.
He’s pushed as far away from me on the bench as possible, head leaning against the window as he stares at the world rushing past outside.
Sunlight fights through the clouds and catches in his copper hair, where the wild strands have been pushed back out of his eyes.
It’s thick on top, but the sides have been trimmed since I saw him yesterday.
His beard is groomed too—recently shaped and smoothed into place.
The rest of him always carries a sense of chaos, but not his facial hair. It defies the rest of his energy.
When I'm unable to stand the silence any longer, I glance at Sovran in the rearview mirror. “Are the days aligned with this world and Elyra?” He meets my eyes in question, so I clarify. “The days here are twenty-four hours, and night is a little less than half of that. We didn’t measure our days in the same manner, though night was longer on our side.”
Sovran tilts his head back and forth. “In Elyra, the span of a day stretches longer, but you are correct. The night is prevalent.”
Ronan turns, his profile showing the nostalgic curve of his smile. “I’d forgotten that. The three phases of the night.”
“That passed with the phases of the moons,” I agree. “How old were you when you left our world?”
His eyes land on mine. “Twenty-one.”
“Just a babe,” I tease, trying to picture Ronan lanky-limbed and awkward. The defined lines of his face are hyper-masculine, defying the image my mind is trying to create.
He scoffs at my words, but smiles. “What about you?” he asks.
The lifetime I’ve spent split between two worlds replays in my mind, and I hesitate. Ronan cocks his head at my delay, brows bunching slightly. “I was one hundred and thirty-eight when I crossed to this side,” I finally answer.
In my periphery, Cato’s eyes leave the window and land on me, while Ronan’s widen in surprise. “Most of your life was in Elyra, then.”
“More than most. My entire life was there. I’ve spent ninety-one years in this world, but I wouldn’t call it living. Locked away in research labs, living under constant guard. Being forced to harm others when every one of my instincts screamed against it. That wasn’t living.”
Ronan dips his head in acknowledgment. Having lived a lifetime under orders and following commands, he understands in a way few others do.
“And home?” he asks.
“I was barely over my ninetieth birthday when I was captured. I’d always been fascinated with the neth’rel…” I pause when the others stare at me blankly, then chuckle softly. “The science, as you would say. How the world works together. It had been the center of my studies for decades.”
“That’s why they came for you?” Ronan asks.
I nod. “No one knew it at the time, but Zadeus was trying to open the rifts. It never occurred to me they would force me to come with them. That just… wasn’t the way things were done. Not in my village. Not in any village I’d visited. Maybe I was na?ve for thinking I had a choice in the matter.”
“You said they took you?” Cato asks, watching me curiously, but his lips turn down into a frown when I nod. “You’re a hell of a fighter, and from what you’ve said, your people are, too. Why didn’t you fight?”
“We were outnumbered. There was far too much to risk. My family was there, and if I’d fought…
hells, even if we’d won, Zadeus would’ve hunted them down.
So I allowed myself to be taken to the research facilities.
I told myself if I gave them what they wanted, if I found the answers they needed, they’d let me return home. ”
I brace myself for Cato’s judgment—for his combative tongue to tell me I should’ve fought anyway, but when I catch his eye, there’s something in them that's familiar. It’s an understanding of sorts. A recognition of shared pain.
“You never went home, did you?” he asks.
“No,” I answer with a sad smile. “I didn’t.”
That single decision has haunted me since the day it happened. I’ve replayed it thousands of times, considering every possible way I could have refused or fought back. There had to be a way out, but I was too selfish with those I loved to risk doing more.
Compliance over resistance. That’s always been my way. Even as a child and adolescent, I was softer spoken than many of my peers. Too fast to empathize, too slow to anger, and more interested in science and history than politics and war.
I often wonder how many lives were destroyed because I chose to conform. Would others in my shoes have done something differently? Would they have laid down their lives, sacrificed those they love for the greater good? Would they have fought like I refused to fight?
Some nights the guilt is so sharp it feels like it’s carving out pieces of me I’ll never get back.
“Is that why you’re here?” Cato asks, drawing me out of the past. “This is your chance to go home again?”
“That’s a large part of my motivation, yes. The selfish part.”
“And the not-selfish part?”
I consider how to answer for a moment before letting out a long sigh. “The not-selfish part looks at this as penance. What if I’d refused? If I’d taken my family and run, or fought back until I was killed? Maybe it would have tipped the scales and the veil never would’ve fallen.”
Cato’s frown deepens as he shakes his head. “Do you really think you made that much of a difference?”
“Who’s to say? For all I know, this could’ve been avoided if I’d just said no.”
Sovran makes an indignant noise from the driver’s seat. “The collision of these worlds was inevitable. Zadeus would’ve found a way, no matter what you did or didn’t do that day. That guilt does not belong to you.”
I nod, unconvinced, but don’t comment further. My upbringing barely allows me to question his words, but to argue feels blasphemous.
“It was so long ago it feels like a dream sometimes,” Ronan says as he rests his head against the back of his seat. “I wonder if the moons are the same.”
The sky is gray beyond the windows, though the blue peeks out from behind the clouds as they shift. For a moment, I imagine it’s the blood-orange sunset of the other side, dipping into the deeper crimson that signals the rising of the moons.
A bittersweet smile tugs at my lips as I picture it. “Some things change with time, but some are eternal.”
“Think they’re eternal?” he asks softly.
“Yeah. They’re the same. They’re still home.”
Ronan hums his agreement thoughtfully, and the vehicle falls back into silence. A few more hours pass before the scenery becomes familiar. Over the years, I traveled to many of the known rift sites, and these trees and landmarks are recognizable.
Cameron shivers as we approach a cluster of trees. “Gods, this place gives me the willies. I always think about how Nyx looked when we found him.”
I can imagine the state he was in when they discovered him.
Hells, none of the prisoners were in good shape, but Nyx was out here far longer than any of the others.
Once they realized he could affect the rift, they kept him here just as often as they kept him in his cell and studied him twice as aggressively.
Lillith presses her face against the window. “I thought you said there was a camp?”
I glance toward the site and realize with a start that the tents and temporary buildings have disappeared. All that’s left is an empty field. The landscape shows signs of their existence—square patches of barren dirt and pitted tire tracks—but soon enough the earth will hide those too.
“They were torn down on my command,” Sovran explains. “We can’t risk unwanted attention or traffic by letting others think there might be something left to loot.”
“This is very true,” Taryn says. “Condition has never mattered to raiders when they’re on the hunt. It doesn’t matter if it looks abandoned, they’re going to check.”
“That’d be our luck, wouldn’t it?” Cameron asks. “We somehow get through this and come back, only to get our heads chopped off by a raiding party.”
“Don’t put that shit out in the universe,” Cato grumbles. “It’s bad luck.”
Cameron twists to grin at him. “Superstitious?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to take chances.”
“Alright, so not superstitious, but maybe just a little stitious.”
Cato’s bewildered expression lightens some of the heaviness. The ground bumps under the tires as we veer off the main road, and I stare over the empty field, picturing the camp that was once filled with activity.
“It’s not even been that long since I’ve been here,” I say. “Feels like a lifetime, though.”
“You worked here?” Cato asks. “Like, here, in this exact spot?”
I tear my eyes away from the field and meet his. “Sometimes. Usually, they wanted me at the facility to monitor me, but they’d bring me along when they wanted my opinion.”
“Why didn’t you ever try to escape?”
“If I’d wanted to escape, there were chances. I could’ve slipped away.”
“So why didn’t you?” he challenges.
My defenses flare at the unspoken accusation. “I had my reasons.”
His brows pinch, and he shakes his head, irritation tightening his expression. “I’m just trying to understand. You didn’t fight on the other side because you needed to protect your family. I get that. But once you were here? What made you stay?”
I stare into his light brown eyes for a moment, searching for the judgment he usually wears like armor. Instead, there’s only curiosity and a touch of sadness. The realization drains the fight out of me. “How else was I ever going to get home?”
“You wanted to help them open the divide?”
“I wanted the answer,” I try to explain. “They had resources I could never find on my own, so yes, I stayed so I could be the one to solve it. I had nothing to lose and only one thing left to fight for.”
“So you would’ve… what? Handed them the solution on a silver platter?”