Page 172 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

Others soon fed the blaze with their own written words, Ezra one of the last as he balled up his piece of paper and sent it flying into the bonfire, the first scorch marks appearing moments before it landed between two pieces of firewood. “May your soul sail the stars.”

Zion extended his folded letter and a tiny flame caught its corner, eating it away, inch by inch, almost singing his fingers before he carefully dropped it into the fire. “May your soul sail the stars, Ayla.”

Reaching over Kali’s back, I squeezed his shoulder. Goodbyes never became easier, no matter how much time had passed since your sibling’s suicide.

“You’re not writing?” she asked me, quickly flipping her letter to hide the text from my perusal.

“I will not read it. Not unless you want me to,” I assured, keeping an eye on Zion, who stared at the spot where his goodbye had gone up in smoke. “I said what I had to. I don’t need to write it.”

Kali folded her scribbled sheet of paper twice over. “What now?”

“Burn it. If you wish, you can also say the accompanying words most of us speak. But it’s up to you.”

Leaning forward, she carefully dropped whatever she had written into the blaze. “May your soul sail the stars, Alora. I’ll pay you with my life in the next one. I promise you.”

A brutal gust of wind lashed at the fire, and the flames retreated to the embers for support. Soon they recovered and rose once more, welcoming the current of air and allowing it to pick up the glowing ashes. It carried the flurry of gray and black cinders, their edges painted red, orange, and yellow, into the night sky now peppered in white, where Kali’s letter’s remains disintegrated into invisible particles that were supposed to reach the final resting place of Alora.

She lowered her head from observing her goodbye’s journey, and swiped under her eyes. “Thank you.” Kali cleared her throat. “For everything.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Ryder inclined his head, and everyone rose, dusting their clothes. “We’re going to go. We’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

As they left the training rings, the gravel being crushed by their boots emitted different sounds, not similar to the rattle of bullets, but to the rustle of foliage in summer, hypnotizing and soothing. Like the ground could identify who was walking and would switch its melody to match the person, bringing out what resided in the deepest and darkest crevices of their being into the light.

Kali tucked her hair behind her ears. “Can we stay here a little longer?”

“As long as you wish.” Zion pulled her hand into his lap. “We’ll go home when you feel ready to.”

“Home.” She looked up at him and then at me. “I never thought it would hold meaning to me.”

“Neither did I.” Because I had not had a home for twelve years. You could call a room, an apartment, a house, a street, a neighborhood, or any of the other endless locations a home. Nobody would object you.

Except none of the places were mine.

Mine consisted of two living halves, both of whom were currently kneeling beside me.

I had destroyed one with my foolish request to inflict scars on himself, and the other a few weeks ago by giving her the freedom she had asked for instead of protection.

And now both of them demanded war in which they were most likely to die. War which we were unprepared for. The war which, if not given to them, they were going to launch themselves. Or die inside trying and not succeeding.

On silent feet,I stalked to the window, the glass thin as a hair a barrier between the warmth inside and the winter outside, and leaned on the windowsill.

They lay tangled in her bed, the duvet scrunched up around their waists, Kali’s covered in Zion’s t-shirt and his toned torso bare. The bruises on her neck and upper arm had healed, but invisible wounds had embedded themselves deep inside her. She had spent the last two weeks since the funeral in our training rings, repeating the exercises Zion had instructed her with until she would collapse. Whenever we tried to get her to stop, she would force herself back up and into another position.

Zion rolled onto his side, reaching to where I had been sleeping but not finding anything. Grumbling sleepily, he shuffled closer to her as she slept on her back, her arms resting on the pillow above her head.

I clutched the windowsill harder. If we intensified our training regimes, if we maxed out our supply chains in getting what we lacked from the city, if our contacts rallied enough city dwellers in Ilasall to rebel, if we infiltrated their systems and exposed their weaknesses, if we gained support from the other two compounds while allowing them to remain independent in their own stands against Ardaton and Coriattus, if we timed our first wave of attacks just right, if we had enough fighters willing to see their families, loved or close ones die while remaining sober enough to push through the battles, we could launch the war.

So manyifsthat had to go right.

So manyifsthat, gone wrong, would cause a multitude of useless deaths and the destruction of our compound.

The truth was, rising to the top had been easy. But holding on to that power, wielding it, was incomparably harder. Day by day, it ate away your morals as you controlled your people’s lives like a puppeteer, with the ability to cut their threads at your wish.

But the willingness of the puppets to execute your commands and bend to your laws never remained steady. They were like snakes eating their tails, hurting themselves if you did not direct them toward what should have been their prey in the first place.

And the simplest thought of marching the people you had led for more than a decade, including the two who craved it with their mad minds and broken hearts, to war without being able to ensure a remotely positive outcome was crushing.

I loadedthe magazine into Ilasall’s standard-issue rifle that could function both in a semi- and fully automatic manner. Disengaging the safety, I aimed at the dummies positioned at the far side of our shooting range. The bullets flew to ten different targets, striking each one in their heads.