Seasons of War (The Unbroken Saga #1)

Prologue

Kira

Three Years Ago

The Capital

Kallum, Ciondo

830 P.C. [Post-Collapse]

Kira first met him in the before-times. Before she went from a fruit vendor at a cheap market to the centerpiece of the emperor's plot to annihilate the rebels.

Before she lost everything and everyone she'd ever known.

Before she proved to the most powerful people in the world that even though they'd broken her, she'd never surrender a single innocent life to them.

She met him in the time before she knew his face, voice, or name. Or all the maddening and wonderful and conflicting facets of the most tortured man she'd ever met.

That night, he'd been a stranger to her, with all that made him human hidden beneath a mask and uniform as dark and cold as the night.

They'd sat on dormant winter grass together on a hill outside the manufacturing district, watching the dawn break over distant mountains.

Quiet and waiting to see if her riskiest gambit yet had worked.

For years, Kira newspapered alleyways with forbidden truths, but that night, she did something every person in the capital of Ciondo would see.

And in the process, she'd gotten herself trapped in restricted offices late at night, ones crawling with ruthless soldiers ready to imprison her and everyone she loved.

That was until this masked soldier ripped open the door of her hiding place and helped her escape without explaining himself.

How did he know to look for her when she had no connections with the military?

The chillingly familiar special-ops uniform rendered the emperor's soldiers faceless, with the slim helmet and goggles masking their humanity.

The dark shadows of these lethal operatives haunted her worst memories, their presence a promise of death.

And yet one of these men betrayed their emperor—the Phaedra—to help her.

Kira, who kept her head down, stayed quiet during the day, and snuck out at night to make trouble for the regime. A nobody by all accounts.

This stranger risked so much to help her, and she didn't know why.

They'd spent hours climbing roofs to escape the offices, too exhausted to speak.

At that time, nothing mattered except for staying silent, staying agile, staying alive.

She hadn't cared that he'd hardly spoken a word to her, or that he spent half the night holding her close to keep her from falling.

Not even that when he'd pressed her back against a window, carefully balancing on the ledge with her, she knew nothing about him except the feel of his hard chest. That the draw to him ripped at her with the same force that was fighting to suck her fifty feet to the ground.

But those details mattered now that they were safe.

It mattered that his warmth and closeness radiated against her, his pull tugging in her gut, desperate to unravel her.

She dared a glance at where his black sleeves hugged his shoulders just enough to make out the definition beneath, and then at the goggles she needed to peer beyond.

“We'll never see each other again, will we?” she asked.

He didn't look at her. The voice changer in his mask deepened his to the low hum she'd spent her life fearing. “No.”

“I can't know anything about you, so give me this. Make whatever you say the truth. The real truth.”

A pause. “Fine.”

Kira smiled and turned her eyes back to the skyline of the capital.

To the rise and fall of apartments and businesses hugged by a sleepy sky and mountains outlined in the pink of dawn.

The tall black steel of the Phaedra's tower rose far higher than any other structure, piercing the backdrop of the mountains in a pointed tip as a reminder of the emperor's power.

Red lights streaked its angular edges in a hazy crimson cloud by night, in honor of all those killed in war.

By day, the emperor's tower gleamed with the sun’s light, casting its golden beams upon the city below.

The transition of daybreak gradually shifted the deep red into gold.

Soldiers called the mixing of the colors ‘the bloody glory’.

And today, for fleeting hours, something else shone from the navy sky over the emperor's tower.

Something no one in the empire except for Kira ever managed to do.

For hundreds of years, the world believed the power left behind by the Old Ones belonged to the Phaedras alone, but Kira used it today to write rebellion into the sky.

Her hazy red letters burned like fire over that grand tower.

HE LIES

SEIZE YOUR LIFE

Her masked stranger scarcely tore his stare from the words.

As the city awoke, every single person would lift their eyes to the message, far more than the scattered few who found her newspaper in the alley.

They'd not simply see the writing, but proof the Phaedra didn't possess any special powers.

Kira stole his myth of divinity and blew it up for all to see.

Long ago, when the Old World collapsed, little remained for the survivors.

The legends said the Old Ones escaped from the dying world and left them a mystical gift to safeguard them from certain doom.

Of course, the emperors claimed they alone controlled it.

The elusive power rarely showed itself, but when it did, it danced through the air in swirls of blood-red haze—destroying pollution, rendering nuclear weapons inert, protecting them from the worst of humanity's weapons.

Slowing and eventually reversing the damage to the Earth that caused oceans to swell over the land, reshaping continents.

Everyone called it Pixi Dust, like the magic in fairytales. It fascinated Kira so much as a child that she learned to manipulate the forbidden power despite the threat of death.

Now Kira's Pixi Dust burned against the darkness of the capital.

And she was not dead.

“Was this worth your life?” The unnaturally deep murmur from under his mask sounded softer than before. Sincerity defied the mechanical voice.

When he leaned against his knees, the collar of his shirt slid enough to show a slit of skin, like a smile he tried to hold back.

Black covered him from head to toe, intertwining him with the night.

But the darkness which dawn failed to vanquish ate into the vulnerable skin at the nape of his neck, creeping into his uniform.

What did he look like beneath all that darkness?

“Was saving me worth yours?” she asked instead of answering, sitting back against the oak tree towering behind her.

“I'm not a good man. The rare chance to do good—that's worth everything.”

Seemed about right for a soldier in the heart of Ciondo, and yet Kira didn't believe him. “Maybe you aren't as bad as you think.”

He let out a chuckle that sounded terrifying through the voice changer.

“It was worth mine,” Kira answered finally. “I did what I had the power to do.”

His faceless mask turned her direction, and she glimpsed her own morphed image in the lens of his goggles. The glow of the Pixi Dust set her red hair aflame in the reflection. “Why not tell people to fight?”

“Revolution is won in our spirit.” Her heart quickened beneath his unshifting stare, especially because she couldn't see his eyes. “We all grew up in war. We know fighting and survival. We need to learn to live.”

Beats of quiet pulsed between them. Then came a low noise that could have been a groan or an affirmation. “What if you can't live?”

Such straight shoulders. Did he ever allow himself to relax? “Find someone to learn from. Train for life like you do war.”

Now she easily parsed the next noise. A chuckle that burned heat into her cheeks.

“It's true,” she whispered.

“You did this.” His head lifted to her words again. “No one has ever done this. You could be right.”

Sorrow emanated from him with the same strength as that attraction she felt. The heaviness of it tied a knot in her stomach. “You seem sad.”

He didn't speak for several seconds, and she didn't expect him to answer.

He didn't strike her as the type to reveal anything personal.

But maybe that mask of his and the fact that they'd never see each other again lent him honesty, because after a few seconds, he spoke in a flat tone. “I lost someone… You seem happy.”

“I fight for my joy.” Kira stared at the word 'life', etching it into her memory forever. “I'm sorry for whoever you lost.”

“We all lose people.”

“You can't accept sympathy.”

A hesitation. “Not really. No.”

“And you're a bad man. Bad men deserve no sympathy. No life.”

He twisted her way, and she needed to rip the helmet free to see his expression. To know him.

“You can't help trying to save people, can you?” he asked.

“You can't either. You're the one who came for me tonight when you don't know me. Why?”

“You were brave enough to steal uranium fifteen minutes from the Phaedra's tower. You seemed worth saving.”

She bit her cheek and stopped herself before saying he did as well, not wanting to antagonize him when he resisted her care.

“You need to leave soon,” he said. “You shouldn't be late for the market, or it'll raise suspicion.”

He knew where she worked?

Pushing to his feet, he extended his hand to her, and she accepted, if only to stay near him a little longer.

“It feels abrupt.” She clung to him a second too long. “After all we went through tonight.” Her heart ached thinking of never seeing him again after what they went through together.

“It's best this way. I leave for the territories in a few days. I can't help you again.” He shifted backward.

“Wait.” Fear crept over her at the thought of him in the chaos of war. It only strengthened the desperation to tug on this connection to him.

Mercifully, he stayed.