The Ballad of Aramei by J. A. Redmerski Read Free Book Online Page B

his protection so you have to know that no one else would.”
    I hope I’m convincing enough. If I don’t do this, this might not end well for Isaac and I can’t let that happen.
    “You take care of business here,” Trajan says from behind, “let her and Aramei be alone for a time and then you can join her.”
    “For how long?” Isaac says, his voice still heavily laced with disdain.
    “That will be for me to decide when I am ready.”
    Isaac doesn’t move or speak for several long, tense seconds, but I feel his entire body harden like stone against mine. The air around the three of us is rife with hostility, barely contained by Isaac. I’m surprised that his eyes haven’t shifted black.
    He hates his father right now. I know that he loves him, but this is a different sort of hate and I can only tell what it’s fueled by, not what outcome it will inevitably cause.
    Somehow, this realization worries me more than where I’m going….
    I step carefully away from Isaac and his hand falls away from my wrist, his fingers lingering until they reach the tips of my own. As I make my way to the back passenger’s side door where I had been sitting before with Trajan, I hope that Isaac will contain his anger until we’re gone. Every muscle in my body is stiff with trepidation. And I try not to make eye contact with anyone; not Isaac or Trajan or even Harry who still stands at the top of the porch steps watching me from afar and I know holding back his own dire sense of urgency to accompany me. But Harry knows more about what will happen than Isaac could ever know. Because Harry knows my future. And everything that is happening right now is certainly part of the design, that road my life must follow in order to fulfill my destiny as a Praverian Charge.
    If I was in any danger, Harry would know it.
    What he’s doing right now is an act. I’m sure of it. Because he still must do everything he can to make those around us believe he is only human, my overprotective human best friend that knows nothing of destinies or futures or wars to be made.
    I am destined to start a war. And it’s Harry’s job to make sure that I do it.
    When I think of this, I’m sure to close my mind off to Harry because…I don’t want to be the cause of any war.
    And I refuse to be.
     
     
    ~~~
     
     
    The first half of the drive is completely suffocating. No one speaks, which means there’s nothing to distract my keen senses from all of the petty sounds and smells around me. The stench of gasoline burns my nostrils and my lungs. I can even smell the blood on the driver’s teeth from whatever animal…or man that he ate during last night’s full moon. I can’t seem to block out the constant grating and humming of the tires burning across the highway or the roar of the engine and the thunder rumbling in some distant thunderstorm. But worst of all, I feel suffocated because I’m trapped in this tin can with Trajan sitting next to me and every now and then I hear Aramei in my mind, struggling with whatever kind of life she is living inside that lost and lonely head of hers.
    I don’t know what Trajan expects me to get out of her. More than that though, I’m afraid of what I might see. If I see anything at all.
    “You’re hearing her now mostly through me,” Trajan says, facing forward.
    I look over carefully. “Aramei?” I know he meant Aramei, but really I’m so nervous sitting here with less than three feet between us that I’m not confident in my own voice around him yet.
    Trajan nods subtly.
    “You’ll be able to connect with her fully on your own once you get there,” he says.
    “Well, how am I doing it now?”
    He glances over at me. “Her link is very powerful,” he says. “I believe you’re hearing her through me.”
    “But I thought you said I was connected to her ?”
    “You are,” he says looking back in front of him again, “but so am I and I believe she’s using me as a bridge. I imagine once you are standing