Shards of Hope

Chapter 35

ADEN REFUSED TO give up. He couldn’t, wouldn’t take her back like this. Never would he put Zaira in a position where others might see her as weak or helpless.

He may as well carve out her heart.

“The first time Vasic teleported me to this desert,” he said into the heartbreaking silence, “I didn’t understand why he came to such places. All I saw was endless nothing.” He slid one hand up and down her arm, wishing she wasn’t in uniform, that he could touch her skin. “I think that was what Vasic saw at first, too. But by the time he brought me to it, he’d started to see how much existed here in the nothingness.”

He pointed. “Look over there. See the grasses. I can’t understand how they survive, much less the small insects you sometimes see. But there’s life in this barren landscape and there’s beauty.” Taking a handful of sand, he allowed it to fall slowly through his fingers in front of her. “Even now, the moonlight hits the silica and the minerals within. In sunlight, it can be blinding, but I prefer it in the moonlight.”

“I told you, you were never Silent.” The words were a rasp of sound from a ravaged throat.

The hand crushing his own throat eased its grip. “That means I must be very, very good at shielding.”

“Why won’t you just admit I’m right? We both know it.”

“Because then what would we argue about?” He closed both arms around her again, wanting to hold on forever—but Zaira couldn’t be held. She’d have to come to him, have to choose him even after the horror and the nightmare and despite the very real fear that haunted her. He was selfish when it came to her, would ask it, but he’d never turn his back on her if she said no.

Zaira’s name would always be written on his heart.

They lay there for a long time, watching the moon rise to its highest point over the sands, bathe them in silver. “Let me see your hands.”

She lifted one, allowed him to cup it, examine the damage.

“You’re badly bruised and cut up.”

“I’ll live.” Dropping her hand back down, with his curled around it, she stared out at the moon, but her next words had nothing to do with the landscape. “They gave it names—antisocial personality disorder was one. I can’t remember the others, but in the family, we always just referred to it as the madness. Like it was a sentient being out to hunt us.”

“You’re not mad.”

“You can’t make that true by saying it, Aden.” Her head remained turned toward the moon, her profile fine and haunted by echoes of nightmare. “My family is one of those that was meant to be helped by Silence.”

“Silence was flawed from the beginning.”

“Yes.” A deeper breath before she fell back into the quiet, shallow rhythm that barely seemed enough to keep her alive. “It clearly didn’t restrain my parents, though it gave them the appearance of sanity. But it helped me.”

“If I’ve never been Silent, then neither have you.” Zaira’s emotionless discipline wasn’t something external that had been forced on her. It was an internal winter of the soul, one she’d chosen in childhood in order to survive.

Her hand moved under his as she flexed her fingers, fingers that had to be stiffening up. “I took pieces of Silence, used those pieces to build a cage to keep the rage and the insanity inside. The cage shattered in the RainFire aerie and I’ve been trying to rebuild it since. I’m failing.”

Aden took the first clear breath he’d taken since leaving RainFire. “You say you have the madness, but what I saw today was anger.” He didn’t know why she’d attacked the male but her raw fury had been unmistakable.

“I was totally out of control.” Stark words. “If you hadn’t pulled me off that man, I would’ve killed him.”

“And if you didn’t have anger inside you, you’d be inhuman.” He thought of the classified recordings he’d seen, recordings made by her family during her punishments for purposes of “monitoring the progress of the education program.” It had been sadism, pure and simple. It was her father who was a Neve, but he’d clearly found his perfect partner in Zaira’s mother. The two had enjoyed watching Zaira suffer. And she had suffered.

A small girl, fine boned and with dark eyes, dark hair, trying futilely to protect herself against belts and canes and whips.

In the later recordings, she’d simply curled into herself like a turtle inside its shell, taking the blows on her back and arms and legs. Until they’d forced her hands up above her head and beaten and beaten her as she spun suspended from a hook in the ceiling. Her blood had soaked her shift, splattered the walls.

And Aden, for the first time in his life, had understood rage. Even then, believing himself Silent, he’d understood rage. He’d been glad her parents were dead, that she’d beaten them to a pulp. If she hadn’t, he would’ve gone out that day and done it himself. As it was, he had gone out and made sure no other Neve child was in the same situation. The warning he’d left for those who might attempt such horror in the future had stained the air with sick fear.

“Your anger is honest. It’s real.” He had to make her understand that it wasn’t her fury at fault; it was her refusal to accept it. “Ivy says that the things we hold inside, the nightmares we stifle, have far more power than the things we expose to the light of day.” He hadn’t betrayed Zaira’s trust by asking specifically about her, the question a general one, but he thought Ivy knew. She was an empath—she saw into hearts, even ones stunted from years of deprivation. “Accept your anger, Zaira, and you’ll strip it of its power.”

Zaira was quiet for a long time. “I don’t believe you.”

Aden realized at that instant that Zaira would believe his words only when he proved them true, and the only way he could prove them true was if she didn’t retreat, as he could already feel her doing. “Don’t go.”

“I can’t leave this desert until Vasic returns—though I will try to walk out eventually.”

“Will you face me?”

Not an immediate response, but she did eventually turn.

“Don’t go,” he said again, bringing his hand up to lie against her face. “Don’t step back from the world again. Don’t leave me alone.”

Dark eyes that hid so much. “I’ll give my life for you.” Fingers pressing to his lips when he would’ve spoken. “This is my peace.” Her breath brushed his skin, so warm and alive even when she was shutting down in front of his eyes. “Let me live it. Let me be as normal as I can be.”

Aden had spent his life fighting. For his Arrows, for the Net, for a better future . . . and for Zaira. He could’ve done so forever, but right then, he realized he couldn’t when his battle would be at the expense of her sanity and her peace. He would not make her feel hounded, would not make her feel as if she wasn’t good enough, as if she was too broken for him.

He would take her exactly as she was, because one thing was true, would always be true: “I’m yours.” It was his turn to stop her words. “Just stay with me,” he said. “In any way you want.”

“You deserve better.” Rough, broken words.

“There’s no one better than you.”

“I’ll be the best soldier you ever have,” she repeated in a shattered whisper.

“I know.” It would have to be enough.