Page 93 of The Last Dragon
She shakes her head. “Nope. Only during Assessment Year. Newcomers talked about you, or, well” —she looks at me, scrunching her nose— “they talked about a soldier, pale as snow, who killed dragons with daggers. They knew about you because of posters plastered all over the Middle. Only ghost stories in the Front. Not even your name reached there.” She rests her chin on her arms, pulling her knees closer to her chest. I almost forgothow differently everyone is treated in front of versus behind the Stronghold walls. It’s like two entirely different words.
“I wasn’t sure it was you until the day I was allowed inside the Third. They never said your name, as if…” She trails off. “As if they were afraid of saying it.” Her voice is lower, softer. Like she wants to take those words back. She must’ve spent an entire year wondering if it was me. And I can’t help but wonder, if she had known I was alive years ago, would she still have joined the Corps?
She straightens up, forcing me to look at her again, and leans against her wrists, tossing her head high.
“The stars look beautiful,” she says.
I blink. “What?” I furrow a brow and raise my chin up, squinting at the looming dark, full of tiny flickering lights.
I rarely come out here at night. Probably because I never thought there was anything worthwhile. Sitting on the rooftop in broad daylight helps me see everything across the dead land. But it forces me to forget the beauty that’s right above me.
She lies down, her hair brushing against the coarse tiles of the rooftop, and I soon follow. The wind carries her scent, weaving the illusion that she’s closer than I thought. Another flutter in my chest.
Stop it.
I command my mind to ignore this feeling. But there’s no use. It’s as if I’m giving instructions to the wrong part of me.
“Have you ever wondered how many there are?” Her voice is soft, mixing in with the sound of the quiet night.
I shrug. “Thousands? Could be more.”
She raises her arm, slightly curving her finger in an attempt to count them.
“Never mind,” she says with a chuckle. “I’d have to spend several nights counting them.”
I laugh. Really laugh. The kind of laugh that doesn’t stop, no matter how much I try to command it.
“What?” she says, lifting herself up, brows furrowed.
I don’t stop laughing, coughing out the words. “Did you honestly think you’d be able to count them? There’s thousands of them! Some of them are so small you can’t even see.”
She puffs her cheeks. Then, she bursts into laughter too. It makes me think of those carefree childhood days. Running around the fields of our home and getting yelled at by scrawny old men for disturbing their crops. I almost forgot what it was like to laugh. And how good it feels.
She lies down again, watching the stars glimmer in the night sky. It’s quiet. It rarely is these days. I never had the chance to enjoy it like this before. Enjoy it with her.
A bright light slashes through the night sky, like a sharp knife leaving an open wound in the darkness.
“A shooting star!” Nida exclaims, pointing her finger toward the fading light.
“A what?”
She chuckles. “I’ve heard from old stories that people used to whisper their true desires to a falling star, in hopes it would guide them to it.”
I raise a brow. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know.” She smiles, her arm falling back onto her chest. I turn to face her, observe her as she slowly closes her eyes.
“I desire peace,” she murmurs to the stars. Then she faces me, her amber eyes glimmering. “You try it!”
“Uh,” I stutter, facing the night sky once more. What in the soil do I do?
“What do you desire, Zel?” she whispers.
I simply shrug, the numbness in my legs reminding me that my desires are wasted upon a falling star. I know it will nevercome true. Why would they guide someone who has barely anything to live for, aside from the safety of others?
“What if you lived?” she says carefully. “Forget about now and everything.”
I never thought about that—never let my mind wander past the edges of survival. Never wondered what life would be like if I didn’t have this venom coursing through me—taking away what’s left of me from the inside out. But maybe that’s the point. I desire to live. Not just to breathe and wait for the end. Not just to endure the pain and guilt that comes with it. I want to tear this curse out of me, claw it free, and feel what it’s like to exist without it once more. To wake up one day and not feel the weight of something rotting beneath my skin and pretend that it isn’t. Just because others expect me to be stoic. A soldier. Inhuman.
