Page 94 of The Ruler
“You fucking moron.” Magni pushed Boulder back.
Finn started laughing. “Boulder, my friend, I swear somewhere a village is missing their idiot.”
“Fuck you,” Boulder sneered at them both and pushed his hands through his hair.
“Let’s go,” I said and ran to Magni’s sleek red drone, which was as fast as Boulder’s. “Maybe we can catch up to them.”
They all followed and Magni had us in the air before Finn had even closed his door.
“Christina isn’t aggressive in her flying. She won’t go fast,” Boulder assured us and held on when Magni pushed the accelerator button to the max.
Come on, come on,I chanted in my mind, willing Boulder’s black drone to slow down so we could catch it.Why would Pearl do something this shitty? Why not talk to me?
The border was only around twenty minutes from the Gray Manor at high speed, and after ten tense minutes a black dot became visible in the horizon. “I see them,” Magni muttered through gritted teeth and we all zoomed in on the small dot in the distance.
“Told you she wasn’t a fast pilot,” Boulder said and sounded relieved.
“Why are they changing direction?” I asked when the black dot took a swing to the left.
“Maybe they spotted us?” Finn suggested. “Can’t this thing go any faster?”
“I’m going more than two hundred miles an hour,” Magni shot back. “If you wanna go faster, we have to go higher.”
“It’s fine, we’re almost there,” I said with my heart hammering fast. I’d been so fucking close to losing Pearl and suffering the same fate as Magni. She and I had some serious talking to do.
“Wait, is that even your drone?” Finn asked Boulder.
Complete silence filled the cabin as we came close enough to see that the black drone wasn’t Boulder’s.
Without a word, Magni pulled his drone back in the direction of the border and lifted it higher to accelerate.
We remained quiet and tense until we arrived at the border and spotted Boulder’s drone parked on the hilltop less than two hundred feet from the wall.
I jumped out and ran to the black drone as soon as I could, my eyes searching for Pearl but finding no one.
The drone was empty, and Boulder roared out at the same time I sank down in a squat feeling a thousand pounds weigh down on my shoulders.
Shit!
Boulder was hammering his hands down on his drone with his face twisted in pain. “This isn’t fucking happening again.”
I couldn’t help him even if I wanted to. My insides were cramping up making me feel like vomiting, and with a hateful glance I looked at the border between me and Pearl. She had sacrificed herself, again, but what she failed to understand was that there was no “herself” anymore. We were bonded and the greatest pain was to be torn apart.
She hadn’t sacrificed just her happiness, but mine too.
Finn stood quietly with a hand on Boulder’s shoulder and a despondent expression on his face. “I’m sorry, man,” he muttered. “That’s so twisted even I can’t think of anything funny to say.”
Boulder kept his head down while I looked away, falling from my squat down on my ass and just sitting there, with eyes not focusing on anything.
Empty, I felt fucking empty, like the best part of me had just been ripped out through my throat and left me hollow, sore, and speechless.
“Hey, are you okay?” I heard Magni’s question but mentally I’d retreated to my inner room where I was crawling on the walls, clawing at old wounds to keep my focus on anger instead of heartbreak.
You think anyone will follow you? You’re so small you’re the last one to know when it rains.My father’s hoarse laughter centered me and the pain from my childhood spread over me again.You might be my oldest son, but Magni is my pride. Look at my boy; now that’s what I call a real man.
“Hey, Khan, talk to me, man,” Magni was snapping his fingers in front of me and I blinked a few times to get my vision to clear, from blurred to sharp, and pushed him away.
“I’m fine,” I lied and pushed off from the ground to see Boulder still leaning against his drone with his forehead resting on it.
