13
Aiden
Aiden spent the tripto the Valrais mansion looking at Darren rather than the whizzing early-morning scenery with its vibrant green and blue. Jaw clenched and fingers drumming the steering controls, Darren didn’t glance at him even once, didn’t say a word, seemingly lost in thought. What Aiden had asked was crushing Darren, yet he had agreed to go to the mansion regardless, to entertain such a request even if Aiden hadn’t provided an explanation behind it.
Was it because Darren knew? Could he somehow tell why Aiden wanted to go there? Or had Darren agreed simply because Aiden had asked? Because he couldn’t say no, maybe for the same reason Aiden hadn’t been able to turn down his request to join him on this mission to Earth.
Aiden tried not to think too hard about it, to pretend he didn’t care for the answer. He also tried to convince himself that his own driver for suggesting they visit the mansion was simple curiosity: he wanted to see the place the siblings had called home. But as soon as he’d had the thought, that second reason—the real one that had almost suffocated him at Dr. Batbayar’s lab—piped up, making itself known no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.
He wanted to see a part of Darren he doubted anyone had seen. He wanted to be the one to reconcile it with the Darren from now, to pull it out from whatever recess it occupied, because the sad smiles and the longing and sorrow haunting Darren’s indigo gaze whenever Sara was brought up made Aiden’s heart ache. It was a selfish want perhaps, illogical too, but Darren had never had the chance to say goodbye to the place. He’d not moved on from that night, from the tragedy that had shaped his life and touched Aiden’s, too.
The shuttle veered left a little sharply, jerking Aiden out of his jumbled thoughts. The silvery surface of a lake glimmered below them, while pine trees loomed on the far side where green fields sloped into a hill. From this distance, he could just about make out the black and gray rubble at the top, no doubt the charred remains of the Valrais mansion.
With every ripple in the water, then crown of tree they passed, the muscles in Darren’s jaw grew tenser. His uneasiness seeped into the air, turning it heavy and making Aiden wonder if perhaps he shouldn’t have asked to come here. But it was too late now as the shuttle was already descending, circling around what remained of the beautiful home he had visited in Sara’s VR, and coming to a stop behind the weeds and grass growing all over the skeleton it was in the real world.
Both front doors of the shuttle whooshed up and the early morning chill had Aiden fight off a shiver. Draping a jacket over his shoulders, he wandered toward the cracked concrete platform that marked the place the small gazebo had occupied. From there, he turned around, catching bits of crumbled wall and patches of gray tiles that his brain supplied had been the wide corridor and Sara’s playroom occupying the middle portion of the house.
It was in the middle of that space, right by the purple-thistle-infested metal frame of a round tea table, that Darren stood motionless, his gaze fixated on the direction from which they’d flown in and probably lost in memories of his childhood.
“Howe,” Aiden said, a pang of guilt skittering inside his chest. For bringing Darren here, yes, but also for everything he had been doing since escaping Horizons. For thinking less and less about Claudia. For wanting to know—toreallyknow—the man who’d killed her when, instead, he should be punished for that crime.
A crime he’d committed because Claudia had gone after him. Because she’d known the truth and Aiden hadn’t. Anger flared in his chest, sadness too. He had been lied to by the woman he loved. His life was built upon that untruth, the family he’d been about to join so cruel and heartless. What Marcus had done to Darren… how could she have been okay with it? How could she have been okay with helping her father hunt down the last surviving Valrais and imprison him for the rest of his tragic life?How could Aiden love someone like that?
Darren craned his head, pinning Aiden with unseeing eyes. “Here we are, Kesley. As you wanted. Knock yourself out.”
Aiden didn’t miss the bitterness in Darren’s voice, or the bite. They cut right through him, but so did the tremor they were trying to hide. He stayed silent for a few moments, gathering his jumbled thoughts and trying to compartmentalize them so he could see this through. He was here for Darren, his own darkness secondary. It could wait, it had to, no matter how it roared and demanded to be let out.
“That’s not why I wanted to come here.”
“Then why?” Darren hissed like a beast about to lose it. He was practically vibrating, his breaths coming quick and shallow. “Why didyouwant to come here?”
So you could confront your past. So you could bury the memories from that night here, where they belong. So you could look at Sara’s AI without it shattering your heart every time. So you could hurt less with time. Even if those are things I shouldn’t want for you.
“I wanted you to say goodbye,” Aiden said simply, unable to expose the extent to which he needed this as much as Darren did.
“I said my goodbyes long ago, Kesley. If that’s the only reason you made me fly all the way here, it was a waste.” The rigidness in Darren’s posture made the turmoil within him obvious, even if his voice was carefully regulated to mask it. To cover it up as if it didn’t exist.
“Ren Valrais,” Aiden clipped, shivering as the name left his mouth. He’d not said it until now, had only imagined what saying it would feel like, and it left him a little breathless. It was just a name, like any other, and yet it wasn’t, carrying so much more in it than simple syllables. “That part of you is still stuck here, reliving that night, never moving on,” he continued quietly, almost whispering.
“Ren Valrais died on that night, just like the rest of his family,” Darren spat back, his features clouding over with those dark, sad things Aiden wished he could erase.
“No. You simply deny him because it hurts. Because the pain is too much for you to handle on your own. Because you never got over the loss of your sister. Just like…”I failed to let Claudia go. Just like I let the loss of her consume me along with the thirst for revenge.
Darren exhaled sharply, his body wound tight. “Are we done here?” he ground out and trained his gaze to the left of Aiden.
Following it, Aiden studied the steel remains of a tall rectangular shape half-buried in the ground and rubble. Herecognized it, a full-body tremor threatening to bring him to his knees.Thewardrobe. This was where Darren had been hiding when Sara was caught, crying and mumbling and struggling to keep quiet because he’d promised his sister he would.
Ignoring the question, Aiden ambled over to the remains and stopped an arm’s length away. He ran his fingers over the rough rust-coated frame, conscious of the single-minded focus with which Darren observed him. This was it. Here and now he had to push Darren, to break him. To destroy the fake peace within him that didn’t really exist.
“Is this the room where Sara died? Did you watch her from here?” he said, tipping his chin at the protruding metal. “She didn’t show me the entire memory. Was she shot? Is that how she died?”
Darren’s eyes went wide as they locked on Aiden, anger and pain mixing in equal parts. “Kesley. Stop,” he rumbled in warning, his voice splitting the air like thunder.
Aiden balled his hands into fists. His stomach lurched and clenched at the same time. Pressure built up in his chest, and then moved up his throat, scrambling his voice when he demanded, “Tell me,Ren.”
“Why?” Darren huffed over a wheeze, heartbreak pouring off him.
Slowly, Aiden crossed to where Darren still standing by the tea table. His eyes were bereft of light, oflife, and he was falling deeper and deeper into the dark with every second that passed.
