Page 71 of The Last Hope
It’s muffled at first.
I can’t be sure.
Franny reaches out for my hand and I meet her widened, confused eyes.
I hear it now. A desperate last attempt. A plea.
“ETIAN!”
Heart in throat, I run.
SIXTEEN
Court
“Etian!” he screams again. Gutturally. Pleadingly.
Kinden has found us? Impossible, illogical—and yet, my older brother once believed in the unbelievable. He believed that I could be alive when I was supposed to be dead.
I hear him and his unfailing honesty in my mind, as children.
I see him just before we headed to bed, as he said, “Wake me before you leave.”
Wake me before you leave.
Crushing sadness builds on top of me and somehow my feet carry me ahead. I run.
Kinden can’t die for me, but at StarDust, he committed a crime worth a life sentence in Vorkter, so we could fly off the planet. So I could be free.
There is no bigger sacrifice he could’ve made.
“BROTHER!” His voice is louder, more caustic and urgent.
Kinden.
His name claws tooth-and-nail to reach my lips.
I run faster.
Coming upon the horde of C-Jays, I push through. Swiftly, I slip between armored bodies and create a pathway.
Mykal is wider and bumps into shoulders. Everywhackof muscle on muscle, bone to bone, almost ropes me backward. Like the force is from me, but I blink hard out of the sensation.
Franny shoves her way forward.
We draw suspicion and gazes, but no one gropes for Mykal.No one seizes Franny. No one lays a hand on us, and as we race toward the screams, C-Jays begin to call out, “Knave!”
Stork is the only one allowed to touch us.
A few try to barricade me from the scene. “You shouldn’t be here!” a man yells, puffing his chest out. “These are Saltarians; they want to murder you, mate!”
He won’t.
I’m tall, but their helmets shield my view.
Screams are mangled with curses and threats—and I imagine my brother beneath the tip of a blade. My chest ignites on fire, blazing with more than just my rampant emotion.
Eyes burnt and neck strained, I yell out, “KINDEN!”
