33. CHAPTER 33
Zayne
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
Burning ate deeper into Zayne's muscles with each pull-up, and he relished the quiet spreading over his mind from the strain of his workout.
The ache in his leg hardly registered these days.
Such relief to return to his normal morning routine.
To fall back into this silence when he needed it.
Though battered ribs replaced that previous distraction, it wasn't enough to slow him down.
“Babe. Did you hear me?”
He clenched his teeth, trying to maintain his focus and not allow the world to rip him back to all that awaited him. “What?”
Mellie flinched at the word. He didn't mean to sound snappy. “Sorry. I was just saying bye and that I'll see you at your mom's.”
Pity ripped away that perfect trance, and Zayne dropped to the ground. “Have a good day, Mel.”
She smiled brightly, but her look lingered on him. “I love you.”
Grabbing the towel from the dresser, he wiped his face and leaned down to kiss her. “Love you too.”
“It's good to see you back to normal in the morning, even if it would be nice to sleep in together every once in a while.”
Sleeping in required sleeping, not staring at the ceiling, waiting for Mellie to wake so he could work out without rousing her. Soon, he'd start running at night again, and he'd manage a few good nights of sleep.
Zayne looked back up at the pull-up bar while Mellie walked out the front door.
Damn it.
The break was too long, and now Kira was here, swirling around the edges of his thoughts, working her way closer to the center of his mind.
The United tried to kill her.
His fist trembled with the drive to punch the wall, so he dropped to the ground and drowned it out with pushups. Even once his leg and ribs clawed for his attention, Zayne kept seeing that soldier draw his gun. Seeing Kira hit the ground.
At the time, he didn't know whether she'd been shot or not. She only survived because Brock caught the attack in time and pushed her out of the way.
Zayne beat his forearm into the ground hard enough to shake the room and splinter pain through his bones.
Those fucking idiots.
The United hadn't even sent their own soldiers. They contracted with sources in Ciondo to kill her once they'd traveled far enough from the Riven Estate. Zayne rushed the mission and missed the betrayal like an amateur.
He wanted to slam his arm into the ground again, but fracturing a bone only hindered him from protecting Kira. He slid a hand behind his back and doubled his usual set of one-handed pushups, desperate to find his way back to the quiet.
By the time Zayne's alarm sounded, and he could no longer escape the day, pain and exhaustion twisted through his body.
The ride to the base didn't offer adequate distraction, nor did the debriefing with his father, brother, and a handful of high-ranking officials.
Nothing, not even the bloody end of the war, erased the look in Kira's eyes from his mind.
Not the look when he pulled his mask off, but before that, when she already saw through him, insisting he stop hiding from her.
When had she recognized him?
Was it when he held her on the rough ground, covering her while he emptied his clip into their enemies? That closeness sparked it. Must have.
Or did seeing him at all after spending time around him unmasked give him away?
“The United agreed to let Becka Rogers and our prisoner talk.”
Zayne's focus snapped to his father at this.
“There will be a delay on each end so we can sever communication if we need to,” the High General said. “It's unlikely we'll gather important information from the talk, but it would help for Kira Stiles to encourage her mother and the United to provide information.”
His insides twisted. Kira would refuse. So stubborn. And Zayne understood that really said something coming from him.
“Will the United allow the message through?” Zayne asked.
“Likely not, but it'll be a good opportunity for the prisoner to prove her cooperation.”
The first test of many. Kira should be out in the territories this morning, not trapped at his parents' house. Everything had gone so wrong. So incredibly wrong.
If being Becka Roger's daughter made life dangerous for Kira, then being the woman Zayne spent three years protecting promised a long, miserable death for her. Should the Phaedra ever discover his duplicity and his connection to Kira…
He couldn't imagine it. He'd lived through that nightmare with his comrades in the north. If the Phaedra hurt Kira the way the militia hurt his comrades, Zayne wouldn't control himself.
He blinked away the flickers of gray fingers and cut off thought. Spiraling didn't help Kira, just like breaking his forearm on the floor didn't.
Control. Like when he worked out. That was what he needed.
“Once the channel is open in a few days, we hope to receive intel from Ms. Rogers,” the High General said. “If she resists, seeing her daughter will encourage her. Especially if we use the footage of the tank.”
Bristling, Zayne caught his father's eyes. “We'll pretend the recording is a consequence of not sending information?”
“Yes. You're establishing trust with Kira, as is Adelle. There's no reason to hurt that budding relationship when we have a video to send to the mother.”
How much time did this buy Zayne? He nodded. “Smart plan.”
“We'll meet again after we establish contact.”
Once the meeting ended, Zayne left the room before anyone else and logged hours at the shooting range.
A few days ago, a physician cleared him for light duty, removing him from injured reserve, and he welcomed the distraction of the daily mandatory training while awaiting reassignment.
His father offered to exempt him due to this mission, but Zayne thought and planned best when moving.
That was what he needed to do more than anything right now. Plan.
But it was too bad he couldn’t use the excuse to skip the classes he’d soon enroll in to continue his officer’s training. No one would ever let him out of leadership courses. He’d spent his life in neverending preparation for High General when not at war.
Bypassing the simple targets, Zayne climbed the stairs to the second floor, where he chose an advanced training room. This one was a replica of a city block, one that looked like so many in the territories. Like Bluehaven.
Drawing his weapon in a war-torn street swept his mind back to the massacre, but it also forced his body into war, where instinct cut off everything except survival. No matter how dire a problem, it stopped existing when soldiers fired from all sides.
A buzz sounded, and he pivoted in a slow circle, scanning the perimeter for a target. Seconds passed in silence until the cut-out of a United soldier popped out of a window.
He aimed and fired, splintering the wooden head as the target withdrew back into the building.
Good.
The more targets he shot, the quieter his mind became, even if his mind came alive with snippets of memory.
A dozen times he replayed shooting the soldier closest to Kira right as Brock pushed her to the ground. It comforted him knowing she was safe, but that she spent a second beside the man Zayne killed haunted him.
Soon, Miya would make contact with Becka Rogers.
She'd leave her with an inhaler for her asthma that hid a microphone and a location tracker.
But Ashantae tampered with the device, working with Reinard to intercept the communication and relay it back to Ciondo on a two-minute delay.
If Becka gave up the Follower's location, then Ashantae or Reinard would block it from transmitting.
But the Phaedra would quickly lose patience when Becka didn't send information to him.
This was a disaster. There wasn't time for failure.
Rage flushed through his heart as he shot a target in the head three times before it disappeared.
Zayne wouldn't trust anyone else this time. He'd extricate Kira from the capital personally and travel as far as he could with her and Brock. Getting her out of the city wasn't a problem for him. The rest of the journey, especially the mountains, required help.
Even if the United couldn't have gotten Kira out immediately, they could have hidden her in the meantime.
They preferred the easiest solution, so Zayne wasn't working with them again.
The Followers had the best pipeline out of Ciondo.
It may take longer with them than with the United, but they might be able to get Kira out.
People rarely escaped Ciondo because of the intense security—facial recognition, drones, checkpoints, untamed mountain ranges.
The Followers survived those traps every day, though.
Sure, they were partnering with the United, but Zayne could make deals of his own.
Deals that he knew the churches trapped within this country would want to take.
This time, he'd only work with people his mother personally vetted within the Followers' network.
Two hours of shooting passed before Zayne's watch buzzed with an alarm reminding him of the daily briefing on security at his parents' house. The entire time, his mind raced with plans for how to do this better, safer, next time.
Zayne returned to his parents' estate as evening approached and entered the living room to see Kira reading beside the floor-length windows.
The cat sat on her lap while she reclined against the bookshelf, sitting on the ground despite the furniture in the room.
Her fingers absently ran through Pumpkin's fur while her focused eyes moved along the page she read. Dusky light fell upon her hair.
One look at her undid all the distance he spent the day fighting for while in training. He relived each painful heartbeat that separated the moment the soldier reached for his gun and the one when he pulled Kira into his arms, realizing she wasn't dead.