Things That Should Stay Buried - Casey L. Bond Page 0,37
his head. “There’s so much you don’t understand.”
“Then help me understand, Kes! I’m in way over my head here, and frankly, I’m drowning. I don’t know how all this works. I know I have a bullseye painted on my chest, but not who’s aiming for me. I have no idea how to defend myself or… my God. Mom and Dad… I just want to get them and go somewhere none of the Zodia can reach us.”
He shook his head. “There is nowhere they can’t find you.”
I looked to the stars, a tear leaking from my eye.
“I’ll tell you everything, but not out here,” he relented, intuiting my thoughts. “You never know who’s listening.”
Bringing my bowl of stew inside and placing it on a small table, Kes and I went to my room and sat on the bed the way we did when we were kids. Legs crossed, facing one another, hands on our knees. It’s how I knew he was going to tell me the truth – finally. “Aries gave me permission to speak freely with you.”
“Why couldn’t he just tell me?”
“He isn’t sure what to do with you,” Kes admitted on a sigh.
“I’m not that difficult, Kes. I just want honesty.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that. He worries what you’ll think of him. He worries you will break the pledge he made. And everything hinges on you not doing that, Larken, so keep that in mind as I speak.”
He stared at me until I nodded, then the tension melted from his shoulders. “The Zodia ruled the earth long before humans began to keep written histories. Some of the oral traditions were passed down, but over time, they turned into stories and myths, and then those became nothing more than star clusters used for navigation.
“The Zodia were made to rule equally. Those born under their sign provide energy for the Zodia they honor. And since humans are born and die so regularly, no Zodia was ever more powerful than the rest. There were still those who clamored for power, but because of the inherent balance, they weren’t able to grasp it over the rest. That is, until Virgo pledged herself to a human man whom she loved more than anything. More than power. More than herself. More than her people.”
I stiffened, thinking of how many human lives that meant.
“Aries doesn’t love me, Kes.”
“No, but what he feels because of the pledge isn’t so different.”
Why did you do it? I wanted to scream. Why ask him to pledge to me when it was guaranteed to screw so much up?
He continued, “She became more powerful than the others. The pledge heightened her senses, made her stronger, bolstered her hunger for more than just love. Though she never turned on any of them, she was changing. The pledge changed her.”
In his eyes floated worry.
“Are you afraid the pledge is changing Aries?”
He nodded. “The change in Virgo happened over time in a thousand small ways. First, it was showing her prowess and skill in a tournament the twelve competed in. At the time it seemed fun and none of the others minded enough to do anything drastic about the difference in her. But soon she began to taunt them, to injure them for sport and watch the others struggle to heal themselves.”
“It sounds like she became thirsty for more power, but Aries doesn’t seem like that at all,” I argued.
“And I hope he doesn’t devolve into the monster that Virgo could have been. She threatened them. She cautioned that if they didn’t do as she said, she would kill them, hunting them down one by one until she was the only one left. So they banded against her. Or most of them did. Aries and a few others refused to take part in it.”
“I know what they did to her lover,” I admitted, cringing.
Kes nodded grimly. “But do you know that the other Zodia nearly destroyed her? When her lover died, she weakened and shriveled into a husk of herself. If Aries and a few others hadn’t stepped in to defend her, things would have turned out differently. As she weakened, her people began to die. By the hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. And if she had died…”
I felt sick, covering my mouth and eyes for a moment and taking a deep, cleansing breath to steady myself. “All her people would have died,” I finished for him. “Do they draw strength from their people? Is that why they won’t let anyone