She didn’t say anything.
“If that’s the badge you want to wear, fine. Embrace it. But, while you’re doing that, go ahead and take a look around you. I’m here, too, in the exact same position as you.” My lip curled up like a snarl. “The hated child and the worshiped child are both damned. All that shame got you no where, huh?”
She outwardly bristled.
I didn’t give her the chance to respond, because I honestly didn’t care what she had to say. Despite everything we’d been through—bombs and brutality and death—she still only measured herself against the way our father saw her. The man was dead. And she was still living in his shadow.
“Okay, well, you enjoy the memories of people you don’t even know.” I waved my hand at the photo album. “I need fresh air.”
She tiled her head down toward the album. “Do you want to know how much radiation is in the atmosphere out there?”
“Only if you can go fuck yourself with the percentage.” I didn’t wait for her to respond. I stormed out of the bedroom and through the living room, past the knick knacks like a copper tea pot, a bust of Jesus Christ, and a mouse perched on a church pulpit. Throwing open the front door, I stepped down from the threshold and took the four, cement stairs to the ground two at a time.
No company was better than her company.
The sun was sliding down in the west, leaving the majority of the landscape cloaked in dark, velvety shadow. I took several steps backwards, reeling back to the trailer steps. There was something about the night sky, of the inky black that cloaked the landscape, that made me nervous.
Retreating back onto the porch, I sank down onto my ass and drew my knees to my chin. Of everything in the world to inherit, I’d gotten my sister. Perfect, sweet Soleil, with her perfect complexion and her understanding of everything in the natural world. She was light. She was the key. And God damn it, she was also the most exasperating, waste of oxygen I’d ever met. She wasn’t going to make some kind of impact—she was going to drive me to drink. Or homicide. I wasn’t sure which yet.
“That’s not the face of someone happy to be one of The Living.”
Avi.
“Oh, I’m thrilled. It’s better to be living than lost, yeah?” I casually dragged my hand over my head, using my fingers to discreetly comb down my hair. “I’m just tired of running.”
He glanced over his shoulder into the darkness and for a moment, his shoulders relaxed. Built up tension seemed to dissipate…a little. “Why run? You seem more like the girl who’s going to plant herself in the middle of the road and fight.”
I managed to laugh. “Well, yeah, I guess. But Soleil and I have been running for a long time. Running with brief interludes of sitting around waiting for things to happen.”
“From what?”
I swallowed hard, again running my hand through my hair. I didn’t know this guy, not really. And I wasn’t going to be his target. “The Division changed a lot of things…and my parents decided running was better than being subjected to whatever they thought was coming. I don’t know if the bombs were what they anticipated, but, one day Soleil and I walked away. This is the first time we’ve stopped since.”
“Where are you parents now?”
“Dead.”
“Is that why you walked away?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Is it?”
I sighed. That impish grin and intoxicating eyes were charming, but enough for me to drop my cynicism. “No. I’m sure if we’d stayed, we’d be dead too. But my father, in his infinite wisdom, sent me on an errand the morning the first bomb hit. Coincidentally, he sent me straight to the depression village of Distant, which was a few miles away from the drop zone.”
He said, “Do you think he sent you there to die?”
“I haven’t ruled it out. I don’t think he planned on he and my mother getting murdered—and they certainly didn’t know my sister tagged along.” I smirked. “I’ve never been the favored child.”
He fell silent, studying me with dark eyes and a serious, almost stoic expression. Finally, he said, “Do you want to see something?”
“Vague. I can teach you a lot about asking questions.”
He chuckled. “No, I want to show you something. If you trust me, that is.”
I wasn’t sure I actually did. An image—a vision of sorts—flashed through my mind and in that moment, I saw him smiling at me. I felt my hand safely tucked in his.
My Little Bird.
I sucked in a sharp breath, clenching and unclenching my fists. Energy was prickling beneath my skin. “It’s better than sitting here with Soleil, looking through the photo albums of the dead. Let me get my boots.”
“I’ll wait.”
And he did. I was only in the trailer for a few moments—mostly ignoring my sister’s interrogation—and when I stepped back on the porch, he smiled. “It’s not far.”
“Good. It’s dark.”
“You’re pretty perceptive, Little Bird.”
“Once upon a time, I took a semester of college. So, you know.” I shrugged. “Educated.”
He matched his stride to mine. “What did you want to major in?”
“Art history, actually.” I managed to smile; the memory of art and sculpture and color was bittersweet. All that beauty was probably gone. “God, it made my Pa mad. He said there was no future in art, no money. He wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer, but didn’t think I was smart enough. Not like Soleil.”
“Not smart?” He snorted. “You’re brilliant. I mean, fuck, you found water. None of us could do that.”
My cheeks heated up. “Uh…thanks.”
“Wait, here. This is the best spot.” He pressed his hand to my low back, guiding me in front of him. “Do you see it? There, you have to kind of look up and out. It’s behind cloud cover right now, but they’ll pass.”
I squinted. I wasn’t actually sure what I was supposed to be looking at, but after several minutes the clouds dissipated enough to see a faint pink and blueish-green glow. “What is that? Radiation?”
“No, it’s the aurora borealis. The Northern Lights?” His smile was hard to see in the dim light, but it was there. I didn’t know he had the capacity to look so happy. “They were brighter before. I think the radiation has affected the way the gas particles collide with each others in the atmosphere. Someday they might be gone. I’m just glad I can say that I was alive when they were.”
My eyes adjusted to the dark and, with the light from above, I could see his features. His head was tilted up to the stars, his lips parted in an almost childlike smile. He looked…breathtaking.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “I’ve never seen someone look at the sky with such interest.”
“I love the stars. It’s what I was going to school for; I’d just started my doctorate in Astrophysics.”
“That’s…uh…that’s not what I expected.”
“You didn’t think that some long haired bully could be brilliant?” He playfully elbowed me. “Maybe I was, once. I lived and breathed the solar system and the universe; interstellar matter and the way stars are formed. It was my life. I taught, I wrote. I sat on the roof of our science building with my telescope and a thermos of coffee so I could watch a meteor shower.”
I elbowed him back. “So, you were a nerd.”
“You could say that.” He grabbed my hand and lifted my arm into the sky. “Do you see that bright star, right where I’m pointing your finger? That’s Venus. Next to it is Mar and over here,” he gently turned me to the side, “is Jupiter.”
His hand at my waist felt surprisingly natural and when he moved, I was somewhat crestfallen. “I didn’t know you could see the planets just by looking up.”
“You can see more than you think. You can see the past.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really now.”
“Some of these stars burned out a thousand years before we were born. Most of them are still active and will be
long after we’re gone. But it takes a long time for light to travel twenty quadrillion miles.” He smiled sheepishly. “And they don’t twinkle. Well, I mean, they look like they do,but it’s actually changes in the earth’s atmosphere—in space they don’t look like that. Actually…now, it’s like they twinkle more than ever.”
I followed his gaze upward. The stars visible around the Northern Lights seemed as if they were twinkling like a sea of glass underneath a spotlight. They faded in and out behind the curtain of pinks and soft greens. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before; it was like staring up into another universe. “It’s beautiful.”
He was quiet for a moment. Looking away from the starts, he turned his attention to me. “Thank you for coming out here with me. No one…ah…the others aren’t as interested. I come out here by myself.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you for asking me. I’ve never seen anything like this; before the Division, we lived in the suburbs. The stars never looked like this.”
He glanced upward again and then, just as quickly, looked back at me. “Do you want stay? Longer, I mean, I think the lights will get a little brighter. If you want to stay. With me.”
I nodded. A feeling inside me, a strange sense of coming home after a long trip or inhaling a scent associated with childhood, washed over my body. “I’d stay forever.”
Twelve
“Okay, no. This is all wrong.”
I dropped my gaze downward, inwardly groaning. Soleil had been outside for less than a minute and she was already an irritant.
Peter coughed; Lyta jammed her hands onto her hips and stared at my sister. “What do you mean, it’s all wrong? This isn’t wrong. You put a fucking seed in the fucking ground and water it. And the earth gives life. A bird could do it; just who do you think you are?”
Avi shifted beside me, dipping his head close to mine. “I understand now why you said this was a bad idea.”
I choked back a laugh. We’d sat together in the dark for hours the night before, mostly in silence, and I felt an attachment to him stronger than I had for anyone. More than my family. More than my desire for Vaughn. He was smart, he was shy and funny—I wanted to know more about him. I craved his friendship; fuck, I craved him. His attention, his attraction. Everything. “She’s very…strong willed.”
“I’m not sure I’d call it that.”
“I mean, I’m not saying she’s not right.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not an expert by any means, but…okay, look at your soil. It’s cracked, so, I’m guessing there isn’t a lot of rainfall out here.”
Lyta shifted her glare to me. “So?”
“So, you should make little furrows or ditches near your plants to help conserve moisture. Pull weeds as soon as you see them because they’ll steal water from your crops.”
“You’ve got the right things planted here—beans, corn, tomatoes, pumpkins—because they survive well in dry climates.” Soleil pulled her hair back and knotted it at her neck. “But, what is this mess over here?”
Lyta’s lips puckered into a terse pout. “How do you know that’s what we planted?”
I stiffened. Great, Soleil had probably had a conversation with the plants and could map out their root system based on their feelings and their temperatures. I tried to catch her attention, widening my eyes and casually jerking my head to the side.
But my sister didn’t flinch. “It’s pretty obvious. Look, I’m not saying that you need a huge change or anything, you just need to get some shade over them. They’re hot.”
Lyta gawked at her.
“Well, if you’re hot, a plant that’s not even an inch tall is going to feel the heat. I’m just saying: you really should have put your garden over there, at the base of the hill, so any excess water would flow down and get to the plants. But, since you didn’t, we’re going to fix this and give them a change. Shade. There has to be an awning or at least some poles and an extra sheet. Let’s do this.”
Avi chuckled, briefly resting his hand against my back. “And I thought you were the only tenacious one, Little Bird.”
“We don’t have a lot in common, but being headstrong is probably the only thing that binds us.” I watched her order Peter and Lyta around; I was actually proud of her. Of course, she was only doing it because she wanted to save the young plants, but that was far more than I’d have ever given her credit for. “It’s not that bad of a garden. Really.”
Soleil snapped her attention to me. “It’s pretty bad.”
Avi laughed again and then guided me away from the plot of upturned soil. “Come on, help me with the water collecting.”
“I thought Tone went to get water.” I followed him to the nearest trailer. “We all could have gone, you know, and dragged enough back for the whole day.”
“There’s other things to do first. We have a system here.” He draped his arm across my shoulders and pulled me close. “It’s not a good one, but we’ve lasted a long time. It works to some extent.”
Electricity shot down my spine. Being close to him made the blood rush to my cheeks; it made my pulse pound harder. “We’ve lived in a shack in the woods for over a year with no electricity or running water. Let’s compare notes and see how we can make things better.”
“Better is good.” He hesitated. “Better is having you here.”
My cheeks got hotter; so much for playing it cool. I probably looked like a stop sign. “Now that you aren’t planning on killing me.”
“Now that I know you, I swear I’ll protect you with my life.” He dipped his head forward, touching his forehead to my temple. “I swear.”
I smiled at him, but as the muscles in my face moved, a stab of pain jolted my brain. I felt it radiate above my ears and into the bridge of my nose, as if someone tied a rope around my skull and pulled it as tight as they could.
He noticed. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, wincing at each movement of my head. “I just get these headaches sometimes. It’s a pain in the ass.”
“Headaches?” He stopped walking and clamped his hand on my chin, turning my head first to one side and then the other. “How long have you gotten them?”
I shrugged. “Not long.”
“Since the Division?”
“No. More like since the bomb hit Vale.” I studied his reaction: just a slight twitch in his jaw. His eyes narrowed. I said, “You think I’m radioactive or something?”
He cradled my face in his hands. “Maybe, but it’s pretty unlikely. Do you get any other symptoms with it? Auditory or visual hallucinations? Floaters?”
“I think this is just an excuse to hold me like this.”
His cheeks flushed. “You caught me. It is. But I’m concerned too, Little Bird. You were fairly near two atomic blasts. I’m sure the fallout in Vale is awful.”
“Soleil said it was fine.” I clamped my teeth down on my tongue until I tasted blood. “I’m sure it was fine.”
No sooner did I spit out the words, did I see them. In my mind—feet clad in boots, men marching towards us. I could see snarled faces and the palpable desire for land. For security and belongings and warmth, water and food. Women. Burn them out, all of them. But don’t kill them until I can look them over.
“Wren.”
His voice brought me back to reality. Bile bubbled in my stomach and for a moment, my knees went slack. I was going to pass out or throw up. On him; fuck, this one somewhat perfect moment and I was going to puke.
I gripped his arm and took a deep breath, trying to regain some semblance of composure. “When you told us a lot of people had disappeared, you failed to mention the last time you’d had people pass through here. Survivors. People just stopping to rest and move on.”
“It happens on occasion.”
I started tapping my foot, energy and panic coursing through my body like an out of control locomotive. “But not to the point you let them stay.”
“Little Bird, I don’t see how—“
&nbs
p; “I feel like it’s important, like there’s a reason I need to know.” I sucked in a sharp breath. “Do you get attacked?”
His eyes widened. “I mean, yeah, it’s happened. We live in a trailer park. There’s twenty buildings that are standing whole, another fifteen would be considered condemned. It’s a sprawling mess and we’ve got nothing to keep people out. These are the outlands, Wren, it’s not like we can go the a hardware store and scrounge up fencing and concertina wire.”
“Your guns don’t have bullets.”
“It usually doesn’t come to that.”
“Usually?”
He shifted his stands and then he fumbled, quickly recovering and lifting his hands to my face. Cradling my cheeks, he stared into my eyes. “You’re one of us now. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. We’re a family. We protect each other and we stay alive together. Together, Little Bird; I’m going to keep you safe.”
“Avi.”
“No, I’m serious. That water you found? It’s what’s going to save us. Maybe you don’t believe in fate, but I do, and I damn well believe you were sent here for a reason. Your life has been shit for the last few years and, look, it’s not easy out here. But I want you stay. Always.” His lower lip quivered, his eyes were at an intensity I’d never seen in a man before—not even with Vaughn. “You don’t have to be scared anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say. But I nodded, I smiled at him. He was a rock—he was safety. I wanted to hold on to him and, for once, not feel like I was an outcast. I wanted love and respect and happiness and pleasure. All of it.
But something still felt wrong. It was like a pebble stuck in the bottom tread of your shoe. You could still walk and climb, but it didn’t feel right. Something was off in your stride.
“I’ll try.” I flashed my sweetest smile and reached up, gently cupping my hands over his. “But fear is a hard emotion to break.”
He slid his hands from my cheeks to my waist, again pulling me to him. Together we started walking again, my body tucked next to his, towards what looked like a gully cutting across the barren terrain. It was a hike from the trailer park.
Claimed: Faction 3: The Isa Fae Collection Page 10
