Broken Skies

Then my breath catches in my throat and I pull away. “You’re doing it. The emotion thing.”

His eyes widen and he averts his gaze. “You know then.”

I smack his shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why hide it from me?”

“I wasn’t even sure that I was doing anything for a while. It just seemed to help you when I was nearby. Then there was one time with Flint and—”

“With Flint? I thought it was an E’rikon thing. It works with humans too?”

“Of course it works with humans.” His brow furrows and then I can almost see the realization hit him. “Wait a second. Too? Who the hell have you been spending time with that…isn’t human?”

“How do you think I got here? Just waltzed up to the dome and said please?”

Jace’s body goes rigid. “You’re here, actually here. In the city.”

“Yes.”

He stands and runs one hand down his face. “For God’s sake, Jax, why?” His hands shake as he takes two steps back and his expression morphs into utter despair. “Why?” He repeats in a whisper so soft I can hardly hear it and then my brother, my rock, the strong one collapses to his knees with his head in his hands. And all I can do is sit there with my mouth open and watch him fall apart. Finally, a deep breath shudders through him and he raises his head to look at me. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“Did you think I was just going to leave you here?” Each word rises in volume until I’m nearly shouting the last one. Everything I’ve gone through to get here and he tells me I should have stayed away?

“I hoped you would.” He flinches. “I knew… after everything, I deserve to be here, but this is not what I wanted for you. I wanted you safe and being here is anything but safe.”

“What about what I want? Don’t you think you’ve made enough decisions for me?”

“I was trying to protect you. I—”

“No. If you were so worried about trying to protect me, you should have spent a little more time thinking about how I would handle life without you,” I say.

“I did. I made Flint promise to do whatever was necessary to keep you safe.”

“Flint? Your boyfriend was your master plan?” I slide closer to Jace and throw my hands up. “You knew about the emotional link, so obviously you’ve been calming me for a while, keeping me whole, chasing the nightmares away. Was Flint going to do that for me too? If it wasn’t for Lir…” My hand comes up over my mouth as the thought completes. If it wasn’t for Lir I would have fallen apart.

Jace wasn’t the only one to feed me emotions. Whether Lir had used it to manipulate me or not, the link with him had kept me together in a way I could not have done for myself. It’s also the only way I could have ever made it here.

“Who’s Lir?” My attention snaps back to Jace who seems to have regained some of his bearings.

Good question actually. Who exactly is Lir? I struggle to find the right answer before landing on simply saying, “He’s my friend, the one who brought me here.”

“And he’s E’rikon.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t trust them, any of them.” He paces, ru

“The human initiative.” My stomach drops.

“Yeah. I’m pretty good at playing a vegetable at this point, so they talk sometimes when they think I’m not listening. There’s a general guy or something—”

“Vitrad.”

He shoots me a quizzical look. “Yeah. He heads up their military division, but there’s this other group—”

“The Council.”

A pause. “The Council and it’s run by this one guy—”

“Stellan.”

Jace stops his pacing and crosses his arms. “Do you want to tell this story? How do you know all that anyway?”

I shake my head mutely and he continues. “This is important information you’ll need to get to Flint once you leave. So the Stellan guy, it’s his family the Vastras, the Vantras…something like that…they are kinda like royalty or something and they’re related to Vitrad somehow. There’s some sort of power struggle going on with the Council against Vitrad, but the kicker is that Stellan’s son has sided with Vitrad in the whole thing because he has a vendetta….well, against me.” His shoulders droop. “I’ve done horrible things, Jax. Dane used me, my abilities, that non-human half of me, just as much as these aliens would like to do.” He curls his hands into fists and closes his eyes. “But that’s not the big picture here. The Council has been staying Vitrad’s hand, but it’s only a matter of time before the balance shifts. It’s already happening. And when the E’rikon make their move, it will be the end of us. They have things we couldn’t even dream up…”

The fire in his eyes bores into me, vehemence lacing his words. “As much as they’ve…studied… me, they still have no idea what I’m capable of, what you’re capable of if you put your mind to it. You and I, Jax, we’re the only weapons, the only hope the humans have against the E’rikon. I’m not sure exactly what it is we’re supposed to be able to do, but the aliens ca

He jolts and cocks his head to the side. “They’re coming. I have to get out of here. Whatever happens, remember I love you.” He pulls me in for a hug and kisses the top of my head.

“But they already know…” My protest too late, his shape has already dissipated and I’m left alone in my dreamscape. Getting out of here just became even more important. I’d always thought the E’rikon hadn’t attacked before because we were at least evenly armed or they just didn’t care. That illusion has shattered with my brother’s revelations.

What would Jace think of me if he knew that I gave Flint the key to his own destruction and set him on a path directly here? And if he knew that all his pain and screams were for nothing, that they had me anyway, that I’d delivered myself here based on the promises of the very boy who was the catalyst for what could be the end to the human race? He’d hate me. My only hope to redeem myself is to get us both out of here before the sky falls down around us.

TWENTY SIX

When my eyes open the thing I most want to do is close them again. I’m still in the white room and I want more than anything for it to just go away. I raise a stiff arm to push my hair out of my face and realize that I’m no longer restrained and I’m dressed in a simple gray gown. A nervous feeling, a smaller, lesser cousin to hope, crawls into my stomach. They aren’t going to bring the light back, at least not right now. My sigh of relief puffs my lips out and I close my eyes again.

The hiss of the door brings me to full alertness and my limbs tense in preparation. Preparation for what I have no idea, my legs are much too shaky to even hold me up much less allow me any sort of defensive position.

The smell of bread wafts into the room and my stomach clenches and growls. Aching hunger brings me up to a sitting position and I curl over my still rumbling stomach. How long has it been since I’ve eaten? Is this a new form of torture, letting me smell the food? But no, a loaf of bread lands on my cot and I snatch it up with greedy hands. I don’t even bother looking up until the bread is gone and I am searching out the crumbs on my blanket with a wet finger. A disgusted snort brings my head up and my eyes narrow on Vitrad’ face.