My brows shot up. “My permission? Bring him home! If he’s scared, there’s a reason. I don’t want to lose him.”
Aries gave a single nod and closed his eyes, muttering something under his breath.
A moment later, Kes appeared on the balcony, panting and clutching his side. “Thank you,” he wheezed, falling to his knees.
I rushed to him and fell to my knees beside him. “What happened?”
Kes looked like he’d been through a war. His delicate features seemed more angular. His clothes were wet and muddy.
“Libra wasn’t happy to discover me in her territory,” he laughed.
“Does she know about Mom?”
“Nope. It took me forever to find her, though. And Libra never caught me. I just… led her away from Mom into Canada and then stopped to take in the scenery. It’s beautiful up there. I just happened across a Grizzly who’d just had cubs. She was angrier than Libra,” he laughed.
“This isn’t funny! You could’ve been killed.”
“I’m fine. Honestly. Though I’d kill for a shower right about now.” He blew out a tense breath. Aries looked at me, one side of his mouth tipped up in half a smile.
“A bath can be arranged,” he told his Guardian. “You can thank Larken and your obsession with television for inspiring the facilities.”
My brother’s eyes grew wide. “Seriously?” He looked from Aries to me.
I nodded. Kes turned to Aries with a serious expression. “They know about everything – about what you did, Larken and the pledge – everything.”
Aries let out a low, rumbling growl.
Kes tried to calm him down. “Aries,” he said gently, “you knew they’d figure everything out.”
Aries lowered his head and braced his hands on his hips. “Everything is happening faster than I imagined it would.”
“Then we’ll have to be faster. We need to anticipate their next moves and be ready for them.” Kes sounded like a different person than the brother I knew. Someone wiser. Someone who’d been to hell and back and came out stronger. Surer.
Aries pursed his lips and clapped Kes on the back. “We will talk after you bathe.”
Kes smiled in return. “I can’t wait.”
“What about your ribs?” I waved in the general direction of his side.
He straightened, forgetting whatever afflicted him, and rubbed his hands together quickly. “Already healed. Now, where’s the bathroom?”
Aries offered to show him to the facilities and then stared at me as if asking if I was coming with them, but I turned back to the stone balustrade, bracing my hands on it. I needed a minute to breathe.
I stared at the stars for a long while after they left, thanking God or whatever was up there for sparing Kes, and prayed Mom and Dad could hang in there until we found a way to free them or kill these creatures.
The thought of Aries lying on the ground broken and bloody sent a shiver down my spine. He said none of them were kind, but there was kindness in Aries. There was also something in him that terrified me, and something else that made me want to know everything about him. Something that made me want to ask him to press his head to mine and show me every moment of his existence. And to show him every moment of mine in return.
ARIES
I stood on the balcony directly beneath hers and listened. She let out a shuddering breath and the sound cleaved me in two. As did the scent of her tears.
Kes, her beloved brother, was back. She should have rejoiced at the sight of him, but Larken never responded as I imagined she would. Having him back was not enough. She loved her mother and father. She wanted them back, as well. But it wasn’t possible.
In time, Larken would accept it, but it would not be easy.
She was stubborn.
And sad.
I imagined her tears collecting into a small river, flowing down the balcony’s edge and splashing onto me. I imagined drowning in them. Because if she survived long enough, this life would elicit oceans of tears and I would be responsible for each one that fell.
She was born into an easy life, a happy life full of possibilities, and it was erased in seconds.
I gripped the balcony rail and gritted my teeth against the sound of her taking deep, calming breaths, the sound of her ribcage seizing despite her trying her hardest not to cry.
The pledge was making me soft. I needed to be hard, stronger than I had ever been. Because now that they knew what I did, they would come. And they would target Larken first.
If they killed her, they would also kill a part of me. Perhaps the only part left that was worth anything at all. And stars help them if they did.
9
The air was cold and my breath plumed, but I needed the stars as intensely as I needed the air in my lungs. To see them. To watch them slowly wheel across the night sky.
Footsteps came from the narrow staircase and Aries appeared in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. “I didn’t show you what happened with the man. Do you still want to see it?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to see or experience it, but I needed to know why he did it, and I wasn’t sure words could explain in the same way his visions could.
If I was going to support Aries and trust him to keep me alive, I needed to see the good in him. Part of me wanted to know he wasn’t entirely a monster. “I’d like to know.”
“It won’t be easy to watch,” he warned, quietly approaching.
I watched the fluid way he moved. He clutched my face the way Kes did when he healed me of a migraine, but Aries didn’t feel like Kes. His fingers were longer, the claws gently raking my skin and making a shiver crawl up my spine.
Could he feel how nervous he made me? Hear the hitch in my breath? Feel how my heart pounded when he touched me, even innocently?
His face was so youthful, but beneath the smooth surface was something harder. Something that had stood for millennia and never let anything weather it.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
I nodded, unable to form words.
His soft, pink eyes met mine as he brought his forehead down. His skin was cool and smooth, his breath steady and even. I closed my eyes and a vision appeared in my mind.
An elderly Asian man held the arms of a middle-aged man behind his back. The one in custody thrashed, trying to break the older man’s hold. His white shirt was stained with splotches of blood, some of them drying at the edges, the stains setting in, and had eyes as hard as flint. His stringy, long hair hung in lifeless, greasy strands over his shoulders. His belt and jeans were undone.
Someone was crying in the corner of the room.
A girl was huddled there. Blood trickled from her bottom lip, one side of which was swollen. Her eyes were red from crying. Her shirt was torn, and she grasped at the edges to hold it closed. She was around my age. Her eyes were dark brown and wide, where mine were blue. Her face was square shaped, where mine formed a heart, but our hair… our hair was exactly the same.
The same length. The same texture. The same natural mixture of light brown and blonde.
I felt it the moment Aries saw her, the fear that coursed through him. The adrenaline and rage. The power.
“Did he hurt you?” he asked.
The girl shook her head rapidly. “He tried, before that man stopped him.” She looked gratefully at the elderly man still holding the one who assaulted her.
Aries glanced at his Guardian and nodded in recognition of a job well done. Then he turned to the disgusting piece of trash his Guardian held. Blurred thoughts raced through Aries’s mind; when he looked at her, he saw me. The man hurt the young woman. Maybe the assault was thwarted, but she was emotionally injured all the same. Aries was enraged that the man could have hurt me just as easily. He was consumed by the belief that the man didn’t deserve a chance to do it to someone else.
/> He should burn. Beg. Die.
His thoughts grew red around the edges. He wanted blood. Payment for what he’d done or was about to do. Retribution. Justice.
To prevent any further crimes he might commit; to stop thinking about the man hunting me, trapping me, hurting me; to stop imagining his hands in my hair. On my skin. His rancid breath mixing with my sweet scent…
Almost faster than I could see, Aries threaded his claws into the man’s hair and with one swift tug, an almost effortless move, tore his head off.
I felt his panic, his instant worry for how I would react to what he’d done, followed by a different kind of worry that I’d been harmed because he left me unattended. When he saw me still waiting on the platform, I sensed his relief. I felt the tension fade as he sagged from the turmoil of the experience.
When he pulled away, I was holding onto his wrists. He took his forehead off mine, but only by inches. His eyes locked on my hands clamped onto his skin. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly, letting go of him.
“For what?”
“Touching you.”
He leaned in and brushed his nose against mine. “Do not ever apologize for that. Never for that.”
Goosebumps spread over my skin at the tenderness in his tone and the feeling of such an intimate gesture. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts and another to form coherent words.
“Aries?”
His pink irises pulsed with an emotion I wasn’t sure I wanted to explore. “Yes?”
“Is it the pledge? Is that why you seem to feel… intensely toward me?” I had no idea of the depth of his emotion until he let me feel what he’d felt for the man he killed. The emotions that roiled through him were as violent as a twister scalping the land and stripping away everything on it.
And when he said Never for that… it made my knees weak. But something in the back of my mind told me not to lose myself in him. I was reminded of how dangerous he was.
He swallowed thickly.
“I’m sorry it’s so hard for you to deal with,” I told him.
He shook his head. “No harder than it would be to allow Taurus to claim you.”
“You barely know me.”
He smiled. “I am learning you every second. And for the first time since I was breathed into existence, I’m enjoying each one.”
My breath caught in my chest and I wasn’t sure what to say. What he felt was so strong, it scared me. It had to be the pledge. He couldn’t feel anything for me so quickly.
“Kes said ‘they knew what you did’… What did you do? What do the other Zodia know?”
His lips pressed into a tight line and he stepped away, turning to look out over the balcony at the quiet village he’d made below. “It’s nothing you should concern yourself about this evening.”
“But I am concerned,” I pushed, leaning my hip against the balustrade and crossing my arms. “You literally just told me about Virgo’s pledge being torn apart. I have a right to know what’s happening.”
“What right is that?” he asked.
I could feel him closing himself off to me. “Kes kept me in the dark about so much, and I get why, now that you’re here. But now that you’re pledged to protect me, why don’t you tell me what you’re protecting me against?”
“I showed you Taurus’s court. I showed you Libra. What more do you want?”
“Honesty!” I threw my hands up, exasperated. “A little honesty and openness would go a long way at this point, Aries. There are things you’re not opening up to me about and I need to know what you’re hiding. I don’t want your Zodia friends taking it out on me.”
His upper lip curled as he strode and walked toward the door. “Come with me,” he ordered in a clipped tone. “Our dinner is ready,” he said with finality.
“I’m not hungry,” I lied.
“Come, Larken,” he growled, waiting by the door.
“I’m good, thanks.” I turned my back on him and knew he was drilling holes at the back of my head. I’d rather starve than eat dinner with him. If he wanted to be secretive about something I knew deep down was important, he could eat alone.
Aries didn’t make a sound. I waited several long moments before turning and finding that he’d left.
ARIES
Seated alone in the dining room, I called Kes to me to ask him to guard her. She didn’t want to eat with me. She didn’t want to look at me. But there were things I had to keep to myself. Secrets that weren’t only to protect my people, but to protect her. Things she didn’t know or understand.
Kes appeared, my star sign threaded over his chest, and stood near the table. No matter what body he took on, he still looked every bit the friend I remembered. The one who didn’t care what I was, but told me how he honestly felt at all times. Told me what I needed to hear but didn’t want to. I’d missed him.
He took one look at me and glowered. “What did you do?”
I braced my hands on the table’s edge. “What did I do? She’s upset that I wouldn’t explain certain things to her. I think that we can both agree that revealing everything she needs to know would be unwise right now. You are the one who asked me to remain quiet on the matter.”
Kes swallowed thickly. “Thank you for that. We have to tell her eventually, but…”
“Eventually,” I agreed. “But not tonight.”
His demeanor turned cold again, his muscles went rigid. “I need to go to her, but want to say something to you first,” he said sternly.
My brows furrowed. “About what?”
“About Larken.”
My curiosity piqued. “What about her?”
He leveled me with a glare. “The pledge is making you protective.”
I knew that.
“The pledge. And nothing more,” he asserted.
“Is this the big brother talk, Kes?” I asked with a slight grin. Kes did not smile with me.
The hardness of his expression made mine melt away. “She is my sister. I wear her brother’s skin, bones, and am sustained by his blood. Beyond that, she is my sister because she chooses to be. And she chooses me as her family, as her brother, but also as her friend. You were the first person I called my true friend. I’ve lived thousands of lifetimes since you preserved my soul that day and made me your eternal Guardian, but in all those years, in all those lives, I’ve never once called someone family, or friend. Only you. And only her. That’s how important she is to me.”
I cleared my throat. “I see.”
“She is not someone I would have you trifle with. Her feelings for you are growing. Stop feeding them, Aries. If you hurt her…”
Leaving his words hanging in the air, he disappeared, a look of warning in his eyes.
Kes had never threatened me before.
10
Kes appeared on the balcony where I stood shortly after that. In his hands was a steaming bowl of some sort of stew. It smelled amazing. Not gonna lie. “Are you insane?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
He shoved the bowl toward me, the spoon singing around the edge. Luckily, he didn’t spill any as the thick broth sloshed and finally settled.
“Aries is furious with you.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “I know.”
Kes raked a hand through his hair, which I noticed with a start was shot through with thick swaths of gray. “Do you want to tell me what you did to make him so angry?”
My brows popped up. “What I did? Why do you assume I did something? Clearly, he has anger issues.”
“Only when it comes to you,” he said pointedly.
I shook my head. “Not just me. He tore someone’s head off today.”
“Someone who deserved far worse,” Kes insisted. He was right, of course. “And he did it for you. He said he showed you.”
“What is happening, Kes? W
hy is he so…”
“Protective of you? Oh, maybe because I used my one right to ask him to be. I’ve asked him to protect you above all others. That means above all of them,” he said, thrusting a hand toward the village. “That means above each and every Guardian. Above the Zodia who might still favor him. Above everything, Larken.”
My breath caught in my chest. I hadn’t realized what the pledge truly meant until then.
I just thought it was making him feel things I was sure he otherwise wouldn’t, and that maybe the marks on my skin were making me feel something similar. But to put me above his Guardians, above my own brother, and above each and every man, woman, and child in his territory? That was crazy. They needed him to survive. He gave them food and shelter. They would die without him. They would starve. I couldn’t live knowing that I was responsible for anyone else’s death.
“I should just wipe the marks off and let Taurus come for me. I don’t want him to protect me before all of them, or all of you.”
Kes cursed. “I didn’t mean it like that, and I didn’t mean to upset you. I knew what the pledge meant when I asked him to make it, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Because you deserve a chance to live your life, Larken. You deserve the best life has to offer…” His voice broke, but he recovered. “I just need you to know why he’s so… intense.”
“Because he has to be, I get it.” I’d be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed that his feelings toward me, the intensity, wasn’t real. I was also a little scared that I felt that way. I couldn’t let my feelings get away from me. Aries was not human. I had to remember that. I needed to forget the way I wanted to put my hand in his when he reached for me. How I wanted him not to let go. How I wanted to hear him speak in every language and know what made him smile. What made him truly happy.
Kes shook his head. “There’s so much you don’t understand.”
Things That Should Stay Buried Page 9
