Today marked the first day that she wore human skin but desperately wanted to strip out of it.
A group of Airs turned the corner and entered the square, a low mumble of voices preceding their appearance. Aaron marched at the head, talking and gesturing to Nancy, who walked closely beside him.
Aya rose as Aaron stopped at the foot of the stairs.
“It’s me.” He set one foot on the second step. “I’m officially the Air Senatus delegate. I may have jumped the gun a bit when I told Griffin by phone earlier that a new premier wouldn’t be voted upon until he returned, but it’s what the premier—” He cleared his throat and paused, glancing at his shoes. “It’s what Charles would’ve wanted. He was coming around, with regard to Griffin, you know.”
At least there was that, that Aaron would wait to see what happened with Griffin before making a motion to vote on the new premier.
She nodded to cover her despair and loss. “May I go now? There’s a matter with my people I need to attend to.”
He regarded her for a long moment. “That Son of Earth who went after Keko? Charles told me about it. Yes, you need to take care of that.” He waved off Nancy, who started to come forward. “I’ll take Aya to the gate myself.”
As they approached the gate it opened for her again, this time onto a brilliantly sunlit field. Aya faced her new equal on the Senatus. “I’m so sorry about what’s happened here.”
Aaron pursed his lips, enhancing the wrinkles that radiated out from them. “And I’m sorry you had to witness it. But it concerns my people alone and you shouldn’t think about it. The traitor will be dealt with. He’s a repeat offender, and that is that.”
Aya peered into the angular shadows lying down between the labyrinth of tightly knit buildings. Killers deserved their punishments, she told herself, and this was a Secondary matter dealing with an issue within a single race. It had nothing to do with humans, who were her utmost priority. Aaron was right; she shouldn’t think on it anymore.
Yet as she bowed her head to Aaron and finally stalked out into the open field, striding for the tree in the distance whose bare, clacking branches whipped in the swift wind, she did think about Jason. How she’d apparently gotten him all wrong, and how disturbing that was to a human mind. How she’d been so terribly mistaken when she’d thought she’d seen personal pain and a deep regret in his troubled eyes when she’d first met him, and then his enraged defiance, vehement denial, and total confusion as he’d been shoved down the stairs in custody.
The frozen cornfield seemed to elongate with every step, so she took to running to erase the space quicker. When she finally crested the small rise before the dirt road that stretched one way to nowhere and the other way to nothing, her legs were tired and her lungs burned from inhaling so much cold air. Normally she would have reveled in such human sensations, but now all she wanted was to merge with the crust, tap into the great web of the earth, and locate Nem.
Coming down the small hill to the patch of untouched ground between two of the tree’s major roots, she froze—as suddenly and with as much terror as the moment when Griffin had destroyed half that Chimeran warrior’s arm. For there, wedged underneath a layer of bark starting to peel itself away from the tree, flapped a tattered yellow sunflower petal.
She fell to her knees. The strength in her body just gave out and the earth shot up to meet her. To cradle her. Almost instantly, the smooth, pliable magic grass garment that had protected her body started to merge back with the dirt. She let it, because she could not focus on anything but the fact that Nem had been here.
He’d followed her again.
And she knew, without a doubt, that Nem had been the one to slit the premier’s throat. Not Jason.
Days ago on the Aran Islands she’d witnessed a murderous intent cross Nem’s face. Back then it had been directed at Keko, his duty as Source guardian sewn into his Children’s blood. Even though he’d given his word, Nem had gone after Keko anyway. And he’d failed.
So he’d switched his focus and gone after the premier, whom Nem believed had given the no-kill order. The fact that Jason had been there—the very air elemental Nem had accused Aya of wanting more than him—had given him the perfect opportunity to escape. The perfect person to frame.
Aya shuddered. The cold wind of the great Canadian prairie finally seeped into the grass that was trying desperately to make root again around her. She started to shiver.
No, not from the cold. It was the fact that Nem, a Son of Earth, had chosen humanity for her, and humanity had turned on him. Twisted his mind. Disagreed with his choice. His descent was ugly and irreversible and she had to stop him before he hurt someone else. Before something even bigger and more devastating happened.
There was only punishment left for him, a lifetime of sunless days and gasping for thin air Within. She needed to find him. She needed to tell the Father what he’d done.
She needed to tell Aaron that Jason was innocent.
Ill and desperate, Aya yanked herself free from the restraining ground and pulled protective magic around her again. Coming to stand on wobbling legs, she started back up the rise, the expanse of field stretching far, far back to the white walls.
A terrible realization stopped her dead, erecting an invisible barricade that prevented her from taking another step.
The truth about the former premier’s murder would bring war.
How could she run back into the compound and admit that one of her own people had somehow snuck beyond the walls and killed the air elemental leader?
Conversely, how could she let Jason take the fall for something she had had a distant hand in causing?
The earth reached up and grabbed her. Pulled her down and tried to embrace her. To tell her exactly what she had to do. Where her true loyalties lay.
It hurt so much, this choice. How could anyone live with this? Live through this and come out alive when it was over? It was a physical pain that inhabited the entire place where her organs should be. Her body curled into itself, but the position did nothing other than remind her how small she was, and how she had to fit so much into that little, evolving heart and mind.
A rumble started in the distance—the insistent whir of a car’s engine getting louder and louder as it came down the dirt road. Aya had to reach deep for the earth’s magic to camouflage her body where it lay on its side atop the rise. She was weak. Too far away from the untouched spot on the earth. And too human. But she managed to assume the disguise as the car rolled by, appearing as just another bump on the half-frozen, snow-dusted ground.
She lay there for a long time, watching the car become smaller and smaller until it finally disappeared. Though she did not believe in signs or omens, the appearance of the human’s vehicle had seemed to make her choice, and it left her as lonely and empty as this very spot in the world.
If she told Aaron about Nem, the Children’s position in the Senatus—carefully planned and positioned over centuries and centuries—would be annihilated. All the jockeying they’d done to keep the Secondaries together and under the Children’s watch would disappear.
If she told Aaron about Nem, war between the Secondaries would seep into the human world. It would destroy parts of their planet and it would endanger innocents. In the end, everything had to come down to her sister race. Humanity’s existence relied on peace.
With a dreadful tremor that shimmied from her crown to her toes, she let the earth take her back in. Swallow her. The rock and dirt and clay ground her up. She felt no better in tinier pieces.
She would hunt Nem, she decided. But the secret truth behind the murder would have to remain her own.