by Wendy Knight
“It will be okay, right? Dani and I? We won’t be like—”
“Like Mom and her many husbands?” Ari finished for him. She crossed the hall, leaning her forehead to his forehead. “Will, listen to me.” He stared into his big brown eyes, and her heart warmed. “For one thing, Mom never had a choice who she married. She did what Richard told her, what he thought was best for the war. She never got to follow her heart.” He nodded, scrunching up her skin where it still met with his. “Second, you and Dani have been through so many nightmares together, and you were stronger after every one. She was there for you when you needed her most, Will.” She leaned back, offering him a small smile. “You will be great together.”
He reached up and tugged on one of her escaped curls. “When did you get so wise?”
She scowled at him. “I’ve always been wise. You’ve just been too busy telling me what to do to realize it.”
“I—I told you what to do?” He raised the pitch of his voice so he sounded like a squeaky mouse. “Will, go in, kill everything. Will, stay there. Will, go here. Will, give me the biggest room—”
Ari laughed in mock rage. “I never said that! And I don’t sound like that!” Crossing her arms, she eyed him dubiously. “This is how you thank me for my wisdom? I’m going to bed.”
His chuckling followed her back to her room. “Brother calm. Check.”
She changed into shorts and a tank top, climbed into bed and turned off her lamp. Sleep, she figured, would not come easily. It never did — nightmares plagued her. She’d seen too much, and during the daylight she could forget. But her subconscious would not. When she heard the first ping pings, she thought it was rain. Rain in northern Washington was pretty normal. But it didn’t sound right. Too infrequent. She sat up as more noise bounced off her window. Her flames roiled eagerly, anxious for a fight. “Knock it off. We don’t need a lirik to kill a desperate mosquito,” she muttered as she threw back her blankets and stuffed her feet in her pink fuzzy slippers. She padded across the room and pulled back her curtains, her eyes first going to Shane’s window across the street. It was dark. This made her heart sad, for some reason, although rationally she should have wanted him to get some rest. His story about weird bachelor party rituals made no sense at all, since Will still paced in his bedroom.
She squinted below just as a rock flew at her face. She jumped back, flames leaping from her fingers, but the rock merely pinged and fell to the ground. Angry now, she flung open her window and stuck her head out. Shane stood on the grass under her window, his hand full of rocks. “What the snowballs, Shane? Do you know it’s the middle of the night?”
He didn’t crack a smile. His face was pale in the moonlight and his voice was deadly serious when he spoke. “I need to talk to you.”
She stared down at him. Somehow, she’d known it was coming. Shane wasn’t used to chaos. He might love her until the day he died, but he could only be expected to take so much. “I’ll be right down,” she said, her voice hoarse.
She moved silently through the house, glad her super-warrior skills could be put to some use. Heaven forbid Will realize she was sneaking out and quiz her on it. If he realized Shane was about to break her heart, he would be obligated by the big brother code to hurt Shane back. And then they’d both be battered and burned for the wedding. Well, probably not technically, since the colony was swarming with healers and Shane himself was the greatest healer to ever live—
“Ari?” Shane waited at the bottom of the stairs. She was in a tank top and shorts. He was still dressed like he’d stepped off a magazine cover. Awesome. And the metallic blue eyes she loved so much refused to meet her gaze.
“Hey. You wanted to talk?”
“Yeah. Walk with me?” He held out his hand, which seemed odd if he was about to break up with her. Maybe he thought it would help soften the blow. She took it but refused to smile. The way his entire arm was shaking, she knew whatever was coming would not be good.
And then she was jerked off the stairs and practically dragged down the dirt road. “Shane! Slippers! Slow down!” He finally paused and she pulled them off, tossing them into the grass and making a mental note to pick them up later. She’d had those slippers a long time.
“Sorry,” he muttered. And then he was dragging her down the road again.
After she stepped on the eight hundredth rock, she planted her feet and refused to move. Pulling her hand away, she crossed her arms and waited until he looked at her. It took a long time. “Shane, if you’re going to dump me, do it already. My feet hurt.” There. Hardest words she’d ever spoken but she’d said them and her voice hadn’t even cracked once.
“Dump you? Are you insane?” he practically bellowed. Holy snowballs he was all over the map tonight.
“No, I am not insane. You’ve been ornery enough to give Hunter a run for his money for the last… I don’t know. For a long time. Now you’re acting like you’re dragging yourself to slaughter.” She frowned, tipping her head like the small dog again. “Except I’m being dragged so that doesn’t work…”
“Ari.” Shane started but she wasn’t done yet. He talked over her. “Ari, stop talking.”
She jerked her mouth shut, glowering at him.
“I’m nervous. I’m sorry I’ve worried you. That was not my intention at all.”
She narrowed her eyes. He’d already killed her, so there were no more uncomfortable prophesies to fulfill. What did he have to be nervous about? “School? Weddings?”
His lips quirked. “Something like that.” It was the first hint of a smile she’d seen since he’d left her at the bonfire.
She squinted at him. “Is this your weird bachelor party ritual?”
Now he laughed, the sound so unexpected Ari jumped and landed on another blasted rock. Shane had lost his mind.
“Trust me. Just a little farther.” He took her hand again, but this time he didn’t drag her off. He stayed with her while she picked her way through the rocks.
His hand still shook like he’d been dipped in ice.
“Okay.” He stopped, sucked in a deep breath. Ari looked around, wondering why on earth her feet had to be tortured all the way to… an empty street leading to an empty cul-de-sac. She was becoming more suspicious by the second that Shane had somehow gotten the impression he had to kill her again.
When sparks lit at his fingers, she jerked away from him, poised to run. She loved him, but she did not love dying. Luckily, he didn’t aim any spells her way. Instead, he pushed it gently forward, and she watched as it floated away from them and landed on what looked like a torch. She’d been watching the spell and hadn’t realized he’d done the same thing to the other side of the road.
There was a great whoosh, and flames exploded, racing down the road on both sides, giving them a lane of fire. Shane smiled and took her hand again. “Ari, I know we’re young. But we’ve been through a lot.”
Her eyes felt like they’d been too wide for too long, and now threatened to fall out of her head. “Shane…?”
He paused in front of an easel holding a big white poster board. And on it were stick figures. “Shane?” she asked again, trying to will her saucer eyes to blink, already.
“This was the first time we met. You probably don’t remember it because I was just a stupid kid to you then. But I remember.” Shane smiled and Ari looked more intently at what, exactly, the stick figures were doing. There was one, with what was either a cloak or a lot of feet-length hair, facing two others, with a smaller stick figure crouching on what she could only guess was a boulder.
She frowned. “I don’t remember that.”
“I know. But I do. You could have killed us. Instead you told us to leave.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her diagonal across the street to the next easel. This one had more stick figures, but she recognized it right away. “That’s me under a ladder. Of all our first moments, that’s what you decided to remind me of?”
Shane’s thumb slid lightly across the back of her hand
. “It was the first second I loved you.”
She wanted to say something clever about the fact that she’d been bruised and unconscious and her hair was messy, but his words took her breath away. Her eyes stung like they thought maybe they would cry.
“I thought love at first sight was a joke. Until you.”
Before she could think how to respond, he pulled her diagonal again, down the street. “This is the first time I held your hand. After that girl was attacked and we had to talk to cops all night.” The stick figures were very skinny but had immensely large hands. Ari tried not to giggle.
“And this,” he said at the next one. It was a battle. There were lots of stick figures. Many were lying on the ground with x’s for eyes. Ari assumed that meant they were dead. “This is the first time you tried to kill me.” He grinned at her when she raised outraged eyes to his, and grabbed her hand to drag her to the next one.
The next one they came to was black. All of it was scribbled with black marker. “This is the second worst day of my life.” She knew that day. He and Hunter had set a trap for her, and when their trap failed, they’d almost killed her with two liriks. Good thing they were young and untrained then. The fact that they hadn’t realized who she was made it hard for her to stay mad at them for it.
They didn’t linger on that one. “This is when Will found us.” His face split into a grin again. “You aren’t in this one.”
“I can see that. There’s no one with medusa hair in this one.”
He chuckled. “Hey. I barely passed Art, and that was only because Charity helped me. Work with me, here.”
The next one, Ari remembered too well. The day Will brought them home and Shane had healed her when no one else could. “Are you wearing a superhero cape?”
He smirked. “Just to show that I saved the day.”
She hid a smile as they walked to the next one. The street wasn’t much longer. She had a suspicion of what waited for her at the end, but she didn’t even dare hope.
“This is when you told me you loved me.”
She smiled at the stick figures with their heads meshed together. She assumed they were kissing. “That was the same day as you being a superhero.”
“Yeah, but they were major events.” He winked at her and she nodded.
“Yes, they were.”
She reached toward him, pulling him to her. Rising on her toes, she kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her tight, like he would hold her forever.
And then he let go.
“We’ve got more pictures. Come on, beautiful.”
He led her to the next board. “So, I sorta started running out of poster board. This is all the battles we fought together over the next six months.” The poster board was divided into lots of tiny squares with what looked like fireworks exploding in all of them.
“There were a lot,” she said, giggling because she just couldn’t help it any more.
He looked at her solemnly. “There were.” He took her hand again, because he dropped it at every board to show her the details of his fine art work. She realized that he was no longer shaking, and that the scary Hunter-like Shane of the last little while was gone and her sweet, funny, adorable Shane was back.
But at the next one, his smile was completely gone. “This is the third worst day of my life.”
It was Ari, in a car. She could tell by the wild squiggles that were her hair. And she was being kissed by a boy who was not Shane. She could tell because Shane’s stick figure had black spikes on his head and he was standing outside the car. She looked at him sadly.
“And on to the very worst day of my entire life.” Ari expected to see her with x’s over her eyes because she was dead. But instead, it was her, lying on the ground with her hands clasped in front of her like Sleeping Beauty, and Shane, with a big broken heart on his chest and big tears covering his entire face. Her mother and Christian were next to her. Given the pain in Shane’s eyes, she decided not to point out that neither Ada nor Christian had legs.
The day he’d killed her. The day neither of them could forget.
“I’m sorry, Ari.”
She shook her head. “You saved me, Shane. You saved us all.”
One side of his lip quirked as he sighed. She decided to move them along. She knew this story well. It got better from here. “Next?”
“This one is—”
“When I woke up. After I listened to you asking me to come back for two days.”
His smile was back. “Yes.”
The next was three stick figures staring into a bunch of gray shading, like he’d done it with the side of a crayon. In the middle of the shading was a big question mark. One stick figure had red and black spikes, one had black spikes, and one had yellow scribbles. The day she’d taken her flames back from Richard. The day she’d driven him mad.
The next board was two stick figures surrounded by stick flowers. “Are we in a field of flowers? I don’t remember this.” She was pretty positive she’d remember something like that.
“Well.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepishly at the ground. “I sorta ran out of poster board. So, this is us being happy for a year and a half.”
Ari giggled. When Shane took her hand this last time, his was shaking again. But his smile was still there. He hadn’t reverted to angry Shane again.
They’d reached the end of the road and now faced the cul-de-sac. In the middle was one last easel, surrounded by whatever weird spell Shane had made up to keep his flames alive but not spreading or sparking. Convenient spell, Ari thought.
He pulled her to the front of the easel. The poster board was turned around, so she couldn’t see the drawings. She frowned, turning to Shane. “I think this one—”
He knelt on one knee in front of her.
Her words died in her throat.
“Ari, I said at the beginning, I know we’re young. I’m twenty and you’re only nineteen. But we’ve been through so much. So much. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that it has to have you in it.”
The tears that had been threatening for their entire trip down the road, spilled, and Ari put her hands, shaking as badly as Shane now, to her face and sobbed.
He held up a ring, the diamond catching the firelight and throwing rainbows everywhere. “Arianna Delacour, will you marry me and be my best friend and my soul mate for the rest of forever?”
“Yes, Shane,” Ari sobbed. “Yes, I will marry you.”
Between their two shaking hands, it took him two tries to slide the ring onto her finger. And then he rose to his feet and turned the poster board around. Ari laughed through her tears at the little stick figures — one on his knee and one with an empty bubble over her head. Shane still had hold of her hand with his right, so he picked up the pencil awkwardly in his left hand and wrote “yes” in the bubble. Then he dropped the pencil in the dirt and pulled her tight against him, claiming her mouth with his own.
****
Shane knew he had a wedding to go to the next day. He knew he needed sleep. But he couldn’t say good night to Ari. He didn’t want to say good night to her ever again. “Will?” Ari asked, peering into Will’s living room from where she stood on the outside stairs.
“Did he do it? Did you say yes?” Will bounded into the room, wide awake like it wasn’t three a.m.
Ari laughed and held out her hand, the ring sparkling, even in the dark, like somehow her flames had wrapped their way into the diamond. Will grabbed her and swung her around. “He was so worried! I told him you are meant to be together.” Will stopped spinning and set her down. Shane raised an eyebrow. “Or, ya know, something more manly about just dealing with it or something.”
Ari laughed and Will finally saw him standing in the shadows. For the first time ever, he wrapped Shane in a hug, clapping him on the back. “I’ve always wanted a brother.” Shane grinned.
“Yeah, yeah. Mean sister and all that.” Ari tried to frown but couldn’t quite seem to. H
er eyes sparkled and that made Shane’s heart start pounding all over again. “And, big brother, this mean sister is sending you to bed. You have a long day tomorrow.” She took Will’s shoulders and steered him down the hall.
“Awww. Do I have to?” Will joked as they faded into the darkness.
She said yes. She said yes! He knew Ari loved him. But she didn’t exactly seem to be the settle-down-and-get-married type. Charity had told him that one day, they would be assassins for the military, saving the world just like the old days. He wasn’t sure if it was a real vision or if she was making fun of him.
She said yes! Ari was his. Forever.
Suddenly his legs felt decidedly like they might give out on him. He stumbled to the couch and collapsed, trying to convince his hands to stop shaking. When she came back, Shane was sitting on the couch. He pulled her down to sit on his lap, and she laid her forehead against his neck. They stayed that way for several long minutes, and his shaking finally, finally stopped. “We have to get up soon,” he murmured.
“I know.”
“I should let you go to bed.”
She raised her head and slid off his lap. “Stay with me tonight, Shane.”
Shane glanced down the hall toward where Will should be sleeping. He was pretty positive Will was not. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I might die.”
Ari laughed. “We’ll just sleep. Will trusts you.”
Shane thought back to all the times Will had threatened him. He doubted Ari’s words very much. But he didn’t want to leave her. In fact, he wasn’t sure he could leave her even if he tried. So he nodded. “But we warn him first so he doesn’t come in and kill me in my sleep.”
Ari grinned triumphantly and led him down the hall to her bedroom. “Will,” she said, knocking on his door.
“Sleeping, baby sister. Go away.” Will’s voice sounded like he was talking through his pillow.
“Shane’s staying the night. We’ll leave the door open.”
“Tomorrow, remind me to give you a firm lecture.”
