Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
Aesira
Stone led the way through what was left of Dire. Aesira avoided the building from last night the best she could and despite knowing the Strix was holed up somewhere away from the daylight, she couldn’t help the uneasy feeling that they were being watched.
A few sparse trees lined a path up the mountain, rocky ground churned under her boots, so different from the grainy sand she was accustomed to.
The lights of the torches on Aquila eventually disappeared and when the first star shone in the dusty pink sky, Stone made the announcement they were going to stop for the night.
He led them to a small cave that would provide some protection and with enough torches to surround them while they slept in shifts.
“I’ll take the first watch,” he said. Birdie and Bee busied themselves by pulling some pre-packaged food from their bags while Aesira tossed her pack aside and helped Stone with the torches.
“You really think these will be enough to keep the Strix away?” She pressed the torch into the dirt, twisting until it felt stable.
“We’re far enough outside of town, I don’t think it will be a problem.” He tossed her another unlit torch. “They have one goal and that’s to feed as much as they can in order to breed. Judging by the number it did on Dire, the Strix we ran into likely had its fill and will leave to find a mate.”
Aesira could only hope that would be the case. Still, she made sure the torches were secure and completely surrounding the outside of the cave. “And Patch and Nora…”
Stone lit the last torch, warm flames tangling with the darkness. “I can’t speak for Nora, but Patch can hold his own. If he isn’t scared of taking on Vic, we shouldn’t be either.”
After a quick dinner of preserved meats and a few precious sips of water, Stone took first watch like he said he would.
Aesira tossed and turned on her thin bedroll.
She had so many questions that didn’t have definitive answers so instead of continuing to stew over them, she decided to put herself to work elsewhere.
“I’ll take it from here.” She sat down next to Stone, who had one of Desmond’s journals opened in his lap.
“You should be sleeping, Commander.”
She shrugged and peered through the line of torches, out to the jagged peaks tinted blue from the moon.
“Sleep and I don’t get along these days.
” Her gaze drifted upward, to the stars twinkling like millions of eyes watching in the dark sky.
The eyes of Celestria, they were told as children.
She’s always watching. Always sees. “What do you believe in, Stone?”
She glanced at him. He closed the journal but kept it clutched in his fist. “I believe in a lot of things.”
“Celestria?” The name felt bitter on Aesira’s tongue. She spent her life devout to the goddess of the stars.
As a child, it was drilled into her that everything they have was because the goddess allowed them to have it.
As a girl forced to join the Order her reverence in Celestria was made permanent.
She could still smell the sting of burnt flesh when her commander touched the white-hot iron brand to the back of her arm.
The “C” forever branding her skin. Proving her loyalty.
“There was a time I believed in the goddess,” Stone said. “I thought she might save me from the Outpost. Save me from Vic.”
“And now?” She was grasping for something, she just wasn’t sure what. Even after what she’d learned, that astra may be something organic, a part of her needed to believe in Celestria. Needed to know that all the years of her life spent on her knees was for a greater good. She needed it to be real.
Stone sighed and pulled his glasses off to clean them with his shirt. A sliver of skin exposed when he pulled the material up. Thick scars ran over his ridged muscles and Aesira had the fleeting thought to run her finger over them and ask him where they came from.
“Now,” he said, “I’ve learned the only one that’s going to save me is myself.
” He slid his glasses back on. “I believe in the practical. I believe what I can see and hear”— his eyes slid to hers—“taste and touch.” His eyes dipped to her mouth briefly before darting away.
“I believe in what’s reliable. What’s always been there to get me out of a bind.
” He nodded over his shoulder, where Birdie and Bee slept curled around each other.
“Them. Patch. They’re the only ones I pledge my loyalty to. ”
Her throat burned as she swallowed back the memories from all the years of servitude and dedication.
The punishments for saying her prayers wrong.
The crack of a whip against her back. The piercing of sharp splinters under her nails for singing the wrong key at temple.
The sting of a needle to her neck when she refused to obey.
All in the name of Celestria.
“That doesn’t mean miracles don’t exist,” Stone said. She snapped her gaze to his. “Astra exists and that’s a miracle on its own.” He gave her a smile and some of the frayed edges inside her began to soothe.
A crack sounded from beyond the torches, loud enough to make Aesira jump.
“Just the wind,” Stone said. He slid closer so their shoulders pressed together.
“What are you reading?”
He handed her the book, it was worn, the spine frayed and barely held together. “It’s my favorite. About an empress who defied her father to free her lover from his oppression."
She studied the book, like she could find something in the pages that would stop her from spiraling. “Stone Odega, a romantic?”
He laughed and snatched the book back. “We all need to find joy somehow.”
Her cheeks warmed from the torches, the anxious thoughts that kept her awake settling in the back of her mind as she and Stone sat comfortably together. “I just can’t wrap my head around what Desmond wanted when he left. What he was thinking he’d do if he found Ravki.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted something so badly you’d betray anything, even yourself, just to get it?” Stone was still pressed close, the heat from his body spreading to hers. He rested his hands on his knees and her fingers drifted to them, tracing a scar on his knuckles.
“No,” she answered honestly. “To want is a vice, it only sets you up for disappointment. Just look at my sister.” She pulled her hand away and placed it safely in her lap.
Stone smiled. “I guess that’s fair. Even still, there are plenty of things I want, but I suppose I'm not naive enough to think I’ll get them.”
“Do you think my sister is naive for wanting us to find Desmond? For believing he’s still alive?”
Stone stretched his legs out, lining them with hers so they sat side by side. “No,” he said. “I just think she’s in love and people in love tend to do desperate things.”
“And you know this first hand? Or was it from one of your books?”
“Not me,” he said through a smile. “But them.” He gestured over his shoulder to where Birdie and Bee slept in the back corner of the cave. “I’ve watched them do enough careless, desperate things for each other, it’s easy to spot when I see it in someone else.”
A bright star shot across the night sky, leaving a trail of blazing dust in its wake.
Kamari could find love in everything. Even when they were children and they’d found an injured bird, she refused to let Aesira put it out of its misery.
She kept it alive, cared for it, named it, helped it.
Aesira was a hammer and Kamari was a feather, soft and light and now she was pinned in a corner with very little room to escape.
“I don’t know of love,” she said, “but I know my sister is overflowing with it. She carries enough for the both of us.” She yawned, her body betraying her. “I should actually try to sleep.” She made to move but Stone caught her arm.
“Maybe you could lay down here,” he said, pushing his jacket toward her on the ground. “Let me read to you.”
Their eyes met through the firelight and a flurry swirled in her stomach. Before her mind had the time to go over why it was wrong, she found herself settling her head on his jacket, closing her eyes.
Stone cleared his throat, the spine of his book creaking open.
“Every great story starts the same. With a time and a place and a hero or heroine desperate for change. This story is no different.” His voice poured over her, velvet smooth, as he continued reading and the more Stone spoke, the more ease Aesira felt in her muscles.
In her mind.
The soothing cadence of his voice settled over her like a blanket and the nightmare she’d been dreading was nowhere to be found. Her body melded into the ground, the scent of his flight jacket wrapping around her as it acted as a cushion under her.
Stone flipped a page, cleared his throat, before starting a new page when another crack sounded beyond the torches. Aesira’s eyes popped open.
“The wind again?” she asked before sitting up.
Stone closed the book and set it aside. “I don’t know.”
They both stood, Aesira drawing her sword, all thoughts of sleep abandoned. Blurry shapes of a few, naked trees and rocks but otherwise, she couldn’t see anything.
Another crack.
She raised her sword.
“I thought you said the Strix doesn't like the light.”
“It doesn’t,” Stone said.
“What is it?” Bee asked, joining her side.
“Quiet,” Stone whispered and took a step back from the wall of flames they’d barricaded themselves behind.
Another crack followed by a deep rumble that traveled through the soles of Aesira’s boots up to her teeth.
Aesira continued backward until her back hit the wall of the cave. Another rumble, another crack. “What is that?”
The four of them stood shoulder to shoulder, their breaths syncing together. One of the torches flickered to Aesira’s right, then another to her left. The low rumbling increased. It sounded just like–
“Holy shit, it’s raining!” Bee slapped her hands over her mouth.
Rain.