53. CHAPTER 53
Zayne
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
The empire never stopped for death, and neither did Zayne, until the day of Mom's private memorial.
He resented the sun rising in the morning, the shops opening their doors, the children leaving for school.
Mom's world no longer spun, and it felt wrong for it to continue for everyone else without hesitation.
Only close family knew about Mom. He still didn't believe it was real, and he didn't think that would change when it made headlines. It didn't seem possible for her to just be gone, or for them to spend the rest of their lives never seeing her again.
While waiting for a public funeral, they planned one for immediate family at his parents' home.
But the only person Zayne found in the house was his sister, Andi.
His shoulders fell when he saw her standing before a picture of the family, her eyes on Mom.
She'd cut her hair short since the last time Zayne saw her, the little swoop of her blonde bangs the longest part left.
“Hey, sis.”
When she turned, her eyes looked dry like the desert, like she needed to cry but couldn't. Lips pinched, she slipped beneath Zayne's arm, squeezing him. “I don't understand how this happened.” Andi pulled back with a pained sigh. “Mom knew how aggressively the Phaedra pursued that church.”
Luke's voice came from behind Zayne. “The prisoner proselytized her. It's no coincidence Mom suddenly went to a church after living with Kira.”
“Kira's not even a Follower,” Zayne said.
“Look at who her mother is.” His brother stepped beside him, opening his arms for Andi. Their little sister closed her eyes when she hugged Luke, and he kissed the top of her head. “It's good to have you home, darling.”
Andi looked up, still holding onto him. “Don't argue today.” Then a nod at Zayne. “Mom hated when you two fought.”
Their sister usually ignored their feud. While Zayne remembered how angry she'd been at Luke after the affair, she stayed close with him. Luke was almost twelve years old when she was born. He'd always doted on her like he now did with his daughters.
Even if Andi tried to pick a side, Zayne didn't want her to. Their problems need not involve anyone else, especially on a day meant to honor Mom.
Pumpkin walked between the three of them and circled Andi's ankles. Their sister knelt to scratch behind her ears. “It's been a while, little miss.”
“She's been hiding for days,” Zayne said.
Luke stalked to the other side of the room, placing his hand on the wall.
“We miss her too.” Andi picked up the cat.
Military academy changed a person. When Andi first left home at five for her schooling, Luke neared graduation, and Zayne prepared for his shadowing. They both fretted over her, terrified their baby sister, who loved to sing and play, might disappear forever.
That child grew with Andi, channeled into a strength that Zayne lost during reprogramming and Luke never saw any reason to hold onto.
When Andi spoke, Zayne listened.
Losing Mom could break her unwavering spirit, especially being so young at eighteen.
It didn't surprise him to see her keep her composure, but it did make him sad for her.
Words would never capture what they lost when Mom died, and none of them accepted their grief.
He'd hoped Andi would be whole enough to fall apart, at least for a few hours.
But Father forced her to be so resilient.
A woman had never served as High General.
By the time Andi was born, the Phaedra and their father had already spent years priming Zayne and Luke to compete for the position.
Given that she was a girl, Father wasn't simply apathetic about her future prospects in the family business.
He actively opposed any consideration of Andi for High General, continuing to fixate on his sons.
Father only enrolled Andi in the military academy because a better education didn't exist in Ciondo.
Even government positions required training there until the early teen years.
When it came time for Andi to begin field service, their father tried to transfer her to a different school and force her onto the track of becoming a politician.
So, Andi had to fight even harder than her brothers to break through their father's impressive will and climb ranks that had only been closed to her.
She enrolled in all the extra training and classes that Zayne and Luke had, dedicating herself to the rigorous regimen of a future High General.
All while father praised the sons for the same behavior and chastised her.
Father blamed this discrepant treatment on Andi being the youngest, but that wasn't why he feared her going to war or one day leading their military. Andi was half a foot shorter than her brothers and plenty slimmer, and their father only saw that. Not her speed, her wit, her expert marksmanship.
Mom believed in her and fought for her to live the life she wanted.
He looked over at his sister holding the cat with reddened, dry eyes. Would she do what the Riven men before her failed to do? While Zayne fought the Phaedra in the territories, would she take their father's place and use the position for good?
But what did it mean to stand on the opposite side of the war as his baby sister? While she didn't share Luke's calculating coldness, she never showed signs of Mom's rebellious compassion. Zayne didn't actually know what went through Andi's mind.
Her blue eyes met his. “I should have come home more,” she said.
Zayne squeezed her arm. “No. Mom was proud of you, and she knew you loved her. She wanted you to be first in your class. You're doing what you need to get there.”
Andi's head lowered. “She means more than first in the class.”
“She does. You can't be High General without being first, though, and Mom believed in you.”
Her eyes widened.
“You're becoming stiff competition for us,” Zayne said.
Andi smiled and looked over at Luke. “Hear that?”
No humor filled Luke's tone. “Father will be here soon. He's already discussed pulling you from the Academy. Be careful what you say.”
“That's not fair.” Andi set the cat down. “I'm a year from graduating.”
“Mom is dead.”
“I'm not.”
Shit. Zayne didn't know Father said any of that.
Luke crossed his arms. “Don't worry. I'm dealing with him.”
“Zayne gets cut up in the north, and they give him double seals and a year-long tour. My mom dies, and I'm kicked out of school.” A shocked look came over Andi's face, and she wheeled around to face him. “I'm sorry. I—”
“Don't be,” Zayne said. “You're right. It's not fair.”
Seeing Andi lose her composure encouraged him. He didn't want her to be broken like the rest of them.
“Listen to Luke,” Zayne said. “He knows how to manage Father.” As much as he hated complimenting Luke, it was true, and he didn't want to see Andi hurting more than she already was.
They fell quiet long enough for the grief to fester between them. While Luke and Zayne would never share their pain with one another, it wasn't like that with Andi. They loved her. So after a few minutes, their older brother looked at her. “Mom would be cooking bacon right now for you.”
Andi laughed at that, her eyes not quite as dry. “She always cooks more than I can eat.”
“Because you never outgrow being bacon girl.” Zayne smiled, eyes on the tree outside.
Even Luke smiled at that. Andi loved bacon so much as a little girl that she stole slices off everyone's plate when they weren't looking and made herself sick with it.
“Do you remember that one summer…” Zayne chuckled, thinking about it. “Mom was so happy we all had a break at the same time that year.”
“Oh yeah,” Andi said. “The good summer.”
Luke nodded. “She made bacon every single morning for three weeks. I felt sick from the smell of bacon for the next year.”
“I didn't get tired of it.” Andi covered her mouth, giggling at herself. “I only pretended to because I was embarrassed after you all teased me.”
Their brother wiped his eyes. “She loved us all so much. I would be the worst father if she didn't teach me to be a good parent.”
Andi's lips pinched together. “She taught us how to be everything we are.”
Zayne's eyes burned looking around a room that felt empty without her. “She didn't deserve this.”
Footsteps stilled all three of them, and they turned at once when their father entered the room.
The High General looked at each of his children, and then at a picture of Mom hanging on the wall.
He sighed heavily, walking to Andi first. She looked up at the father whose adoration she captured, but whose respect she craved more than anything else.
He clasped her shoulders. “Andi. Your mom looked at you the day you were born and said she was complete now.” An embrace followed, and a kiss on the cheek.
When Zayne's father came to him, he wasn't sure what to expect after their altercation. The other man clasped the back of his neck, gaze soft. “She always said when she didn't know what to do, she looked to you.”
A swell of sorrow gripped him, his breath catching. Mom was the one he followed when he was lost. What did she find when she looked to him? Zayne didn't know what to do without her.
His father hugged him, hand firm between his shoulder blades.
His body didn't know what to do. He had the urge to shove his father, to swell his face with bruises.
But his arms also wanted to come around him and ease his pain.
For him to be his dad, and not his High General.
Before he could figure out what to do with himself, the other man slipped away.
If one of them were to die today, would Zayne regret not embracing him back?
Finally, he walked to Luke and held his stare for several seconds. “She said watching you become a father was the highlight of her life.”
Their father wrapped his arms around the oldest brother, and Luke lowered his head against his shoulder, hands gripping him.
It hurt too much. All of it.
And soon, very soon, Zayne planned to stomp all over these broken hearts by betraying his country, his family, and abandoning them to carry Mom's death alone.
How could he do this to them?
In the evening, when Zayne left his family to see Kira, he felt so drained and detached that he struggled to think. Every hour mattered right now though.
He didn't know what his mom was doing in that church, but the timing lined up with Kira returning to prison. Mom must have been trying to save her. If Zayne had listened to her when she told him to leave with Kira, would she be alive today? Would she still have gone to the church if Zayne hadn’t let her down so many times?
He'd chipped away at her faith in him with his repeated failures and shortsightedness.
Mom would disagree, but he didn't see how that wasn't true.
The initial negotiations with Major Tyndale and his superiors left Zayne with the same problem of the mountains.
The United refused to supply any jets, saying invading Ciondian airspace, especially close to the Phaedra's tower, placed the territories in too much danger.
The Phaedra would retaliate against that severe act of aggression, and they were already in a difficult place due to losing more ground in Antor every day and Caspador's vulnerable position.
If Zayne didn't find a way to take Kira safely to the territories, she'd face worse horrors in the coming days and weeks. The Phaedra already schemed to get the next locations from Becka Rogers. Father spoke of bringing her friends to the prison. There was little time.
When Zayne entered Kira's room, she lay in bed, her hair tangled enough that he didn't think she had brushed it today.
“Did you eat?” He knelt down beside her, searching her eyes to make sure she didn't fall back into that awful trance.
“I'm eating again. Don't worry.”
Hard not to worry when she spent the two days after he cleaned the blood off her drifting in and out of non-responsiveness.
“None of this is your fault,” he said. “You need to remember that.”
Her eyes closed, legs curling up beneath the blankets. “You said you stayed silent before, when they killed your comrades.”
He steeled himself. “Yes.”
“So what did you say when you were told none of this was your fault?”
“You don't want to be like me, Kira.” She couldn't do this to herself. “The Phaedra was going to order the elder dead no matter what you said.”
“You always avoid my questions.”
Zayne wanted to scream. The impulse came on fast, breaking through the numbness. “I killed him, not you. I did.”
“We both killed him.”
Falling back to the wall, he settled his arms against his knees. He was too exhausted to fight her, but he also couldn't leave her with that guilt. “You're being unreasonable. You haven't lashed out at me when I'm the one who literally killed him. I did that.”
“I don't blame you.”
“But you blame yourself.”
She pulled the blankets over her head, sounding nothing like herself when she spoke. “I don't know. It hurts.”
Yeah. It did.
They stayed like that for a long time. Whenever she finally emerged from the blankets, her worried eyes lingered on him. “Did something bad happen?”
“You were there for the bad thing.”
“No.” Her stare cut through him. “Something else is wrong.”
It was sick hiding this from her. What would the Phaedra do if he told her? He couldn't risk his wrath given the existing danger, but this was particularly cruel. “Nothing else is wrong. Just rest.”
Kira knew how to read him too well now. She saw through his mask.
Some days in the territories, sleep deprivation and physical exertion made taking a single step feel impossible. And yet, he'd had to continue. That same heaviness constantly pulled on him without a break since Mom died. Zayne couldn't do this, but he had to.
The suspicion remained while she stared at him, and Zayne wanted to destroy everything in the room thinking about having to tell her about Mom.