Before Beasts, There Was Light--Book 9

A Sacrifice is Not Always Good

Perhaps if Kai had been paying more attention to his surroundings rather than his damn girly feelings, he would have noticed the state Ayah had been when she'd crashed into him in the stairwell.

The girl had gone from simply white and pale to a gray color. Everything from her hair to her wings had taken on a drained, washed out shade, and the circles under her eyes and grown to engulf them, highlighting the edges of her eye sockets to give her a sunken, haunted look. Her lips had become cracked and dry, and even as she stood before Kai in the control room with the patched-up Max beside her, she shook and one of her feathers fell to the floor.

Even with her glassy stick of a brother passed out in the corner on the communal patch of mattresses, whatever emotional agony he had fled was suddenly the last thing on his mind.

"How did you let yourself get like this?" he asked, sick with himself. It took everything he had not to rush forward and scoop her up or start punching things.

"She spent the past day and half vibrating warmth and who knows what else into her brother," said Ray, his mouth thin and tight. "She hasn't been eating, let alone sleeping."

"He would have died," she said wearily, as though she had said it a dozen times before.

"You still could have left the keeping him warm to one of us," said Kai tersely.

"That's what I said," said Max, whose expression wasn't much different than Ray's. The usually bubbly boy looked ready to tie the poor girl down to a bed and force feed her—or slap her.

"You aren't allowed to get on my case about not taking care of myself after this," said Kai.

"Yeah, whatever, will you at least let me check on him?" And as her eyes darted to her sleeping brother in the corner, Kai felt a renewed surge of the ugly, painful burning-ice of before. Except this time, in the face of the death-like gray she had taken on, it took the form of rage rather than fear.

"I'm ready to let him die if you do," the words tasted of flame on his tongue.

Even Ray and Max, who must have felt the same way as him, looked startled at that.

Ayah just stared. The effect of her surprise was marred by her wobbling into Max, who caught her with his good arm. Any restraint Kai had on himself broke and he ate up the distance between them and had Ayah swept up into his arms, wings and all, before Max had the chance to react.

"Wait—I won't do anything, I just want to see—"

"Ray, Max, keep him alive, will you?" he forced himself to say.

Without waiting for their reply, he kicked open the door and carried her outside. He hadn't let her get on a coat, so he huffed out puffs of hot hair from his nose (which wasn't hard as his fire had flared at his anger) as he took her down from the control room and to the first free cabin he could reach.

There, he unceremoniously dropped her shivering form on the half-made bed.

"What is wrong with you?" she cried.

"What is wrong with you?" and before he could stop himself, it all came pouring out. "You were so hung up on—on whether I would stay with you and kids and then you nearly kill yourself trying to warm up your old fiancé—you know you didn't have to do that, and yet you did anyways!"

"You don't know that!"

"Then tell me what exactly you needed to do that some food and heat couldn't? It isn't like you've had some secret power to heal disease or starvation before—"

"You're just mad because I can't heal Max."

"If that were all I really would be just mad. But now I'm furious," He took a step back as sparks fell from his mouth and the smell of burnt cotton filled the air. Ayah flinched, poor bruised eyes wide, and it was that momentary show of fear that snapped him back to his right mind.

His initial step turned into a full out retreat till his wings were pressed against the wall within his coat.

Why'd he get up today? Why didn't he just stay in the room with Tyson?

"I don't care that you can't heal Max," he said softly. Some part of him was desperately scrambling for salvation. "I just...I can't handle you doing this to yourself."

"You can't handle that I'm doing it for my brother," she said in that super soft tone that had previously proceeded her screeching them out cold. "Even after all I've said, all I've done, you don't trust me to know what I want."

He knew he should deny that and say something to the contrary, but he knew it to be a lie. He could say the other excuse, that it was because he couldn't see how she could want someone like him—that he wasn't secure in his own ability to make her happy, case and point with what was happening right now—but the ability to make excuses had been beaten out of him years ago by the Abbey and his own harsh self-discipline.

But even though he knew he had nothing to say to save himself, he also knew fleeing now, as he did in the stairwell, wouldn't fix it. He had already allowed himself to be cowardly once. He couldn't do it again. He wouldn't. Even though he suddenly felt sick with dread and that horrid, burning pain that couldn't just be jealousy.

He expected her to dismiss him. He even wouldn't put it pass her to stand up and slap him, at least verbally if not physically. When he heard the creak of the mattress as she stood, he braced himself for the impact. His heart trembled. He had, after all, screwed up. He wasn't sure how, but somehow it seemed that just by feeling jealousy in the first place he had lost the game.

When her soft, icy hands touched his face, however, they were gentle. Her thumbs caressed along his cheek bones.

"I'm sorry," she said, soft and gentle enough to make his breath waver. "I've never had to...I didn't even think it might..."

Her voice trailed off, and so did her strength. He caught her just in time. A new alarm went off in his head as he registered just how cold she had become. Cursing, he lifted her up again and laid her out on the bed once more, this time more gently.

"If you could only see what you look like right now," he started, just to stop at how strained the words had come.

"I know, I look like death," and now he recognized the softness to her voice as exhaustion, not gentleness.

He took in a shaky breath and turned his gaze away. "Did you really have to go so far?"

"...probably not. I was just so scared...Kai, I thought...I thought they were all dead."

And Kai knew he should have understood that from the beginning, even if the only family he had was an egomaniacal grandfather. It wasn't rocket science. So feeling a new depth of self-shame, he wordlessly slipped out of his coat, laid beside her, and wrapped himself, wings and all, as tight as he could about her, breathing out as much warmth as he dared without burning. His mind kicked into work mode: first to warm her up. Then fetch her some food and drink. He'd have to get someone to keep the string cheese warm else she might try to get up and do it herself again.

It was a few minutes before Kai realized, by her steady, low breathing, that she had fallen asleep with her hands twisted up in his shirt. His first thought was to close his eyes and go to sleep with her, but old habits and his character squirmed in discomfort at the idea of doing nothing while death still followed and safety still to be found. He should be up in the cabin, seeing where the nearest city was, planning how next to evade their pursuers and avoid being tracked.

And as he thought that, he suddenly remembered.

Kenny. Dranzer had told him to find Kenny. Kenny was the key to getting out of all this, to contacting wherever the others of their kind had fled. And Kai hadn't even told anyone yet.

He scanned about for a blanket. This was the room Ray had bunked up in when after he had found out about Kai and Ayah, if he wasn't mistaken. There was an unzipped sleeping bag and a comforter on the floor. Ayah cringed and whimpered when he pulled back his wings, and he nearly gave up on it all to curl back around her. But, biting his lip, he grabbed the unzipped sleeping bag and comforter and set to work tucking her in tight. He hunted down the room's lone space heater and cranked it up to high before giving her hair a last brush of his fingers, tucking his wings back into his coat, and slipping out.