Once We Were Starlight

His wild eyes moved over me once, and then again, and apparently satisfied with my condition for the moment, he reached down, swiping up the sharp piece of the broken jar and raising his hand over Cody Rutland’s throat.

“No!” I whispered harshly, rushing to Zakai and grabbing his arm before he could begin to lower it. “He never touched me!” I said as loud as I dared.

Zakai was trembling all over, a low guttural hum coming from his throat. He attempted to shake me off, but I wouldn’t let him, clinging to his body so he couldn’t swipe the man lying unconscious on the floor. “He pretended,” I said. “He never touched me.”

Zakai shook his head once as though to stay conscious himself, but dropped the piece of pottery, grabbing my hand instead. “Come,” he said, pulling me toward the door. When we ducked through the curtain, he pressed his body against the wall and indicated I do the same, holding his finger up to his blood-caked lips. I followed him around the corner, my breath trapped in my throat as my heart thundered in fear. I thought of Cody Rutland lying injured on the floor and confusion overwhelmed me. He had not harmed me nor Zakai. He’d said others were coming. But who? Who was coming? The soldiers? Men like the ones Doren had described? The ones who’d killed his family and left him for dead?

I gripped Zakai’s hand tighter. I didn’t know if I could trust Cody Rutland. But I trusted Zakai. I trusted him with my very soul. As we passed the guards, empty bottles beside them, their snores rumbling heavily into the quiet night, I noticed the chains on the ground, the rock crumbled where large hooks had once been drilled. Zakai had literally moved the earth to answer my cries.

We ran soundlessly down the stairs, fleeing into the desert as fast as Zakai could move with a broken and battered body, running toward the plane. A bright light suddenly lit the sky, the whirring sound of a thousand birds moving overhead and I screamed, ducking my head, not understanding what it might be, nor the sudden nature of its arrival. It sounded like the plane, only different, and when I raised my head, I saw what looked like men swinging from a rope.

“This way!” Zakai said, pulling me with him as he changed course, running through the soft sand, heedless to what might lie below, focused only on the foreign light above and the descending figures. But even though we ran as fast as we could, the light tracked us effortlessly, the men moving downward even while in motion.

They were right above us, and when I dared look up, one of them was close enough that I saw the dark round glasses on his eyes and the beard on his jaw. He reached out his hand to me, and Zakai yelled, pulling me down to the ground and laying himself over me, shielding me with his injured body.

When the man dropped to the sand and Zakai stood to fight, the man raised his arm, and a tiny zap of lightning came from his hand. Zakai made a strangled sound of pain, his body stiffening as he fell to the ground and my horrified scream pierced the night.

CHAPTER NINE

The lights were bright and the room was cold. All the things were beige. Everything was strange. The smells and the sounds, the floor and the windows and the sparse furniture that shared the space. I sat huddled in a hard chair by the window, the scratchy gray blanket still wrapped around me, my thoughts flying in every direction, fear sitting heavy upon my chest. Where am I? Are they going to hurt me? I startled when the door opened suddenly, sitting upright as Cody Rutland walked in. “Zakai,” I breathed, my voice shaky. Where is Zakai?

He gave me a small smile, setting a tablet of paper on the table in the middle of the room. “He’s fine. He’s in the hospital.”

“The man, he zapped him with lightning.”

“He tased him—which, after the beating he’d endured, rendered him temporarily unconscious—so he could lift you both onto the helicopter.” He sighed, running his hand through his sand-colored hair. “Zakai’s a fighter, I’ll give him that. And I know what I’m talking about on that front.” He paused. “I promised him I’d take you to him just as soon as the doctors are done patching him up, even though he bashed me over the head with a piece of pottery.” He rubbed at the back of his scalp, wincing. “I’m sure I’ll never hear the end of it,” he muttered.

My throat felt clogged. I didn’t know whether to trust this man, this Cody Rutland, but he hadn’t harmed me when he’d had the chance, and if what he was saying was true, he hadn’t harmed Zakai. “Can I go to him now?” I asked.