Chapter 26: Terra

“I can't fight you.” I practically fling the words at him.

“You have to,” Jesse says. “It's in the rules.”

I shake my head. “They aren’t my rules.”

“Are you scared?” Jesse asks.

“No,” I lie.

I finally meet my brother, and now I'm supposed to what? Punch him in the face?

“It'll be fine, you'll see.” He leans close and whispers. “Whether you win or lose, I don't care. I'm impressed you've come so far. It's even more amazing, because as far as I can tell, you can't even throw a decent punch.” It’s like he can read my thoughts.

The thought of punching anyone makes me want to curl up in a ball and hide, but the idea of punching Jesse turns my stomach.

I can't shoot the breeze with him while I wait for the match between Beren and Quincey—which hasn’t started yet—to end. I need to get away and think of some kind of solution. I walk to the edge of the courtyard and look out through an arrow slit toward the vast forest below. The air blowing through the gap in the rock is cool and sweet. I close my eyes and inhale deeply.

The sound of a man clearing his throat startles me, and I whirl around.

“I wanted to introduce myself.” His deep voice would be compelling on its own. The tugging feeling around my heart and the stupidly warm glow that surrounds him are horrible overkill.

“I know who you are,” I snap. Apparently being confronted with evidence that I have a soulmate makes my bad mood even worse.

“I’m Kahn Brantley.”

“The Lord of Brantley Castle, I know.”

“Right,” he says. “But—”

I’m not sure how I know he’s going to mention the exordium, but I do, and I can’t handle it. I cannot. “I’m about to have to fight a brother I just met. Could we not do. . .” I gesture between him and me. “. . .this. Whatever this is. Could we please not do it right now?”

He frowns. “I’m not sure it’s something we can choose to ignore.”

“You can ignore anything. Trust me on that.” I need him to stop talking to me. It’s like every word he says makes my stomach flip. And then flop. Why couldn’t he have a high, squeaky voice? Or a snaggle tooth? I could really get behind that. “Look, unless you have some kind of advice for me on how to deal with my current problem, I don’t have much to talk about.”

“It’s simple. Pretend he’s not your brother, because in that ring, he’s not. He’s an opponent, nothing more. Your task is to defeat him, so you do it. You’re actually lucky that you don’t know any of us. Almost every Ascension is like that for the participants—you’re fighting against friends, brothers, or long-time acquaintances at the very least.”

Why can’t he be a jerk? Or say something mean? That would make it easier for me to hang on to my anger around him. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“It’s not personal,” he says. “It’s part of our job. And that’s critical—most of us know the noble families among the Followers of Amun. But we also know that we could be sent to war against them at any point.”

“I think this system is broken,” I say, frankly.

“You weren’t raised in it.”

It hits me then, that my parents’ fear may be the very thing that sets me apart from the system that exists. It may be the reason I don’t worry about ending it. I shake my head.

“Are you alright?” He steps closer, his eyes concerned.

“Back up there, Mr. Eager. I’m perfectly fine as long as you keep your distance.”

“A spitfire,” Kahn says. “That’s what my mother would have called you, if she were alive.”

I square my shoulders. “And would she have wanted you to defend me? Or would she have advocated for attacking me to preserve the status quo?”

“Excuse me?”

“You disliked me so much at first sight that you challenged my father’s position. You were going to fight him and take it away, before you’d let him protect his own daughter.” I don’t realize how angry it made me until this very moment. I have a soulmate, apparently, and he wants me tossed out in the street.

Kahn’s eyes widen. “I hadn’t met you when I said that.”

“But it had already happened.” I cross my arms. “The exordium.” My words hang in the air between us, repelling and compelling.

“I thought it was a lie until yesterday,” he whispers. “I didn’t believe it was real.”

I shake my head. “Betty—a close friend—insisted it was. She experienced it with her husband Abraham.”

“My father said it was a lie for people who wanted to feel special.”

I shrug. “Its reality doesn’t change anything.”

“How can you say that?” He steps toward me again, both his hands clenched at his side. “You must not feel what I—”

“I’m sure it’s the same,” I say. “But it doesn’t change anything. Not for me. I didn’t choose this.”

“I had a fiancée, you know,” he says. “I broke things off with her yesterday, while you slept. I could barely look at her.”

“Well, that was stupid, because I don’t even know you.” I refuse to meet his eyes. “And I won’t let some unexplained, unwelcome, ridiculous feeling—”

“Unexplained? Yes. Ridiculous? Perhaps. But unwelcome?”

I look up at his face. I can’t help it.

His eyes are such a light shade of blue that they’re practically white. “I’d give up everything to feel this way forever.” The muscles in his jaw work soundlessly. “You hate me so much. Why? What did I do?”

My mouth is so dry I can barely breathe, much less speak.

“Do I truly repulse you?” He steps closer still, his chest mere inches from mine, his breath misting across my face.

“No,” I whisper.

He inhales deeply. “Then what?”

“I don’t want to be this stupid Warden. I don’t want to end or begin anything. I didn’t want to lose my mom, or my dad, or my brother. I want. . . I want what everyone else on Terra already has: an acceptable place in this world, and the opportunity to choose my own path. And now—” I shake my head and a single tear rolls down my cheek. “I’m sure you’re wonderful. Jesse seems to like you, and I—I trust him. But I can’t eliminate my ability to Lift. It’s part of me, like my eyes, or my nose, or my hands.” I back up until my back bumps into the cold stone of the wall.

“I like your eyes, and your nose, and your hands.” He’s staring down at me, transfixed. “And like you, I haven’t been able to choose my life’s path. I was trained to take over from my first breaths. I was sent here, and the expectations.” He shakes his head. “All I’m saying is that I understand. If not everything, at least in part.”

His words send chills down my spine that shoot outward to my fingers, to my toes. My hands move to touch him, but I force them to stop. “You can’t possibly understand.” My words come out as barely more than a whisper. I clear my throat and take a deep breath. “I can choose to ignore this, and I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t—” I drop my face into my hands, unable to watch his face as I say the rest. “I can’t have anything else shoved on me and not be angry about it—which is why the more I feel for you, the more I hate you.”

The silence is too much for my shaky resolve. I peek through my fingers.

Kahn’s lips part slightly, and I want, desperately, to close the space between us. I want to touch his mouth with my fingers. I want to press my lips against his, to run my hands down the sharp planes of his chest, and brush against the rough skin on his jaw.

I want my first kiss to be with him.

Right now.

I want to grab the front of his shirt and pull his head down to mine. I want so many, many things. Things I’ve never wanted, never longed for, never even imagined.

Until now.

But even more than all of that, I want these feelings, these desires, to be based on something real, not something shoved upon me. I want to choose what I want, not have it forced like everything else.

I shake my head and spin on my heel. Marching away rips my heart in half and it hurts, Mother Terra it hurts. It’s unfair, it’s miserable, and yes, it’s unwelcome. I glance back over my shoulder, desperate for one last look. Does he understand, even a little bit, what I’m struggling with?

“The exordium isn’t a curse,” Kahn says. “It’s not forcing us into anything.”

Something about his low, urgent voice sends those same jolts down my spine and out to my fingers and toes. The thrill that races through me—I despise how much I enjoy it.

“To me, the way I feel about you, around you, it’s the greatest blessing I could imagine. But I never want anything to hurt you, so if my presence causes you pain.” He pauses. “I’ll do my best to stay away.” His eyelids flutter. “I’ll maintain my distance. Anything you need. If I could rescind my challenge, I would. Ignorance is the most dangerous enemy. I didn’t know you, so I didn’t understand.”

It’s almost impossible to turn away from him, from his fraught eyes, from his impossibly broad shoulders, from his full mouth, twisted into regret. I want to spin back around and race into his arms. I want him to wrap me up and take me home with him—to keep.

Which is exactly the problem.

Every step I take toward the arena is agony. I need to think about something else. Someone else. The sun shines directly overhead now, and a drop of sweat rolls down the back of my neck and slides underneath the collar of my shirt. Duncan signals for me—time for my next fight. At least my struggle in being around Kahn helped me forget one thing.

I’m facing off against my brother.