Chapter 22 Zaria
ZARIA
ZARIA SCARCELY HAD TIME TO PROCESS FLETCHER’S WORDS before Kane was on his feet, extinguishing the candle between two fingers.
The last image she had of his face was alarming: eyes hard, jaw soldered in a taut angle.
She had the abrupt impression that this was how Kane Durante looked right before he killed somebody.
“Get up,” he snapped, one hand already viselike around her arm as he assisted her to her feet.
The next moment he had pushed her up against the exterior wall, out of view of anyone who might be looking in.
Indignant at the impropriety of it all, Zaria shoved against him, but she was far too aware of the light pressure of his hand at her waist. The surprisingly nice scent of him and the twist of his lips as her eyes adjusted.
“Anyone could be out there,” she hissed, trying to ignore the uneven cadence of her heart. “You don’t live on a private street, you know.”
“They were masked,” Fletcher said solemnly, drawing a revolver from his waistband. “They must have followed us back from the warehouse.”
Kane cursed. “They know she’s here.”
Ice shot through Zaria’s veins. Her irritation evaporated, replaced by fear. At the same time, though, part of her was relieved that whoever it was had come here instead of to the pawnshop. When would this end?
Fletcher shook his head at Kane, who had withdrawn his gun as well. “I’m going alone.”
“Like hell you are,” Kane snarled, and his friend shot him an aggrieved look.
“We can’t very well leave her by herself.”
At that, Kane faltered, gaze flicking toward Zaria. She crossed her arms, feeling her face heat. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
They both ignored her. Fletcher was squinting out the window again. “I think they’re gone anyway. They must have realized they were seen.”
“How many?” Kane said.
“Two.”
“Then let’s find them.”
“And risk them coming back for her while she’s alone?”
Kane appeared to be fighting some internal battle with himself, his jaw working. Eventually, he said, “Fine. If you don’t see anyone, come right back. Don’t go looking for them without me.”
“I don’t think—” Zaria began, but something about his expression had her biting off what she’d been about to say. She didn’t want Fletcher going out there alone, she realized, and not only because it would drive Kane mad. She was so very tired of putting other people at risk.
“I’ll be careful,” Fletcher assured Kane, then shot Zaria a crooked grin. “You really have a way of pissing people off, Miss Mendoza.”
She rolled her eyes, but her stomach was in knots as he slipped out into the dark, the door latching shut behind him.
Kane’s face was stony as he swiped a hand through his hair.
Zaria braced herself for his resentment, but it didn’t come.
He merely sighed, looking as tired as she’d seen him thus far.
“Come on, then. You can have my room—I’ll bunk with Fletcher. ”
She blanched. “What?”
“You’re not going home, even with an escort. It’s late, and whoever’s after you clearly has instructions not to give up until you’re dead.” His lowered brow dared her to argue.
“But Jules—”
“Will be fine. No one’s after him.”
“He’ll wonder where I am. I can’t just stay here.
” The objection sounded weak even to her own ears.
The reality was, she was terrified. Could this truly be about the faulty explosive device?
Was that enough to make an attempt on her life?
She could have made it work flawlessly if they’d only given her more time.
But perhaps that was the problem. She’d been given time, just like her father before her, and now she was out of it.
“Come on,” Kane said again, this time with a touch of impatience, and Zaria realized he was standing at the bottom of a stairwell she hadn’t noticed before.
It was narrow, set back in the corner of the room, a distinct nod to the building’s former purpose.
She followed him to the next level. It looked more like a regular home than she’d anticipated, lacking the high ceilings and industrial beams of the ground floor.
Former offices, if she had to guess, though the space into which Kane led her had been converted into a bedroom.
This was evidenced only by the bed in the middle of the space—otherwise, it was simply…
bare, save for a wardrobe pushed up against the wall opposite the door.
It could have been anyone’s room. It could have been no one’s.
“It’s very clean.” She was abruptly conscious of what Kane must have thought of the dingy, cluttered workspace that doubled as her sleeping area.
“I like things tidy” was his curt reply.
Zaria couldn’t decide whether that fit with what she knew of him. Rather than meet his gaze, she kept her eyes on the bed, her cheeks warm. It felt inappropriate to be standing here with him, though of course that was absurd. “Will Fletcher be okay?”
Kane’s face shuttered. “He’d better be.”
Zaria thought of what Fletcher had told her earlier. “Do you think you worry about him too much?”
“Do you worry about Master Zhao too much?” Kane countered, a snide note to his voice. “I assume that’s why you didn’t bring him tonight.”
She stiffened. “That isn’t why.”
“Oh?”
“If you must know, I finally told him the truth. About everything.”
“I take it that didn’t go splendidly.”
“Insightful of you.” Zaria went to sit on the edge of the bed, trying and failing to ignore the searing press of Kane’s attention. “He’s desperate to help me. He wants me to teach him alchemology.”
Kane shrugged. “So do it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not? You need help, and he wants to help. Seems sensible to me.”
“First of all, you know full well it’s horribly difficult to teach, not to mention learn. And second, I don’t want him to suffer.”
“But it’s fine if you suffer.”
“Yes,” she snapped.
Kane leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, brow quirked. “Sounds like you’re being an idiot.”
“You are such a hypocrite.”
“No good could possibly come from my telling Fletcher about Ward’s threats. But you—you would benefit from letting Julian help you. You’re just being difficult about it.”
“You don’t understand,” Zaria retorted. Kane couldn’t fathom how much study went into alchemology.
How many years it took to become even the slightest bit proficient and how it drained so much from a person.
“Jules would feel the same if our situations were reversed. He worries about me, too—that’s why he offered in the first place.
In fact, he’s probably worried about me now, seeing as I haven’t arrived home. ”
It wasn’t until she said it aloud that she realized how stressed her friend must be. Guilt surged through her. Their fight aside, she had just told Jules about the attempts on her life, and when she didn’t return to the pawnshop tonight, he would surely assume the worst.
“I can get a message to him,” Kane said, infuriatingly blasé.
“How?”
“Some of the younger guys are always running around on Ward’s behalf, and they listen to me. I’ll track one down when Fletch returns.”
“Okay,” Zaria said. “Thank you.”
But she couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice, and Kane let his arms fall to his sides, continuing to watch her far too closely for comfort.
She was about to snap at him to stop staring but held her tongue.
She’d already snapped at him too many times tonight, which was a fool’s maneuver considering she needed him to trust her.
However, Zaria reasoned, he would undoubtedly know something was amiss if her demeanor toward him shifted with no explanation.
She could see that now-familiar vulnerability in his face—maybe, if she could get him to open up like he had the other night, he might continue lowering his guard around her.
That was something she needed. Not something she wanted.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Kane said, pushing away from the doorframe. In his white button-down, lit only by the moonlight filtering in through the narrow window, he looked more like a memory than a real flesh-and-blood person.
“Wait.” Zaria leapt to her feet as if to physically stop him, heart beating faster for no discernible reason. She felt the need to keep him talking, to crush this unbearable tension between them. “I… Fletcher said you’re Ward’s favorite. Why is that?”
The question appeared to knock Kane off-kilter. He recoiled, a scowl taking hold of his delicate features. “Because I’m the best he’s got. What does it matter to you?”
“I’m only curious. We should probably start trusting each other a little more, shouldn’t we?”
Kane’s expression turned cold. Unfathomable. Then he seemed to get hold of himself, his shoulders lifting as he gave a single hard, silent laugh. “Seems I’d have a better chance of bringing you the moon than I do getting you to trust me.”
“It doesn’t seem as though you trust me much either,” Zaria pointed out. “If you did, you’d tell me the truth.”
“I’m trusting you to help me pull this off, aren’t I? And you’re trusting me to make sure we don’t fail.”
“I also trusted you when you told me that church was safe.”
Kane tilted his head, mouth tightening. His hair wasn’t quite as slick as usual: A lock had escaped to brush his temple, and something about it made him look younger. “That was before I knew just how invested someone was in ensuring your untimely death.”
She fought to conceal her flinch. “Forget it.”
“You want trust?” He stepped fully into the room, approaching her until they were a mere handbreadth apart. Agitation seemed to radiate from his body. “I’m Ward’s favorite because when he killed my parents, he made himself my father.”
Silence stretched between them. The air was suddenly too heavy, too hard to breathe.
When Zaria spoke again, the words scraped the back of her throat. “What do you mean?”
“I was a child,” Kane said very quietly.
“So I let him. Pretty fucked-up, isn’t it?
I dream of killing him, you know, but I’m not sure I could ever truly go through with it.
So sometimes, when I watch other people die, I imagine they wear his face.
” He leaned back, mouth a frozen, twisted grin. “Do you feel trusted now, Zaria?”
She didn’t know what to say. She feared him this way, with that smile like a blade—sharp edged and dangerous. He’d been made into a terror of a boy, Kane Durante had, his past so slick with blood he now wore it like a victory shroud.
And then, completely unbidden, Zaria’s head was full of Cecile’s voice. What the woman had said to her in the belly of the crypt.
Then I saw them, lying on the floor of his office. A man. A woman. And—and a little boy.
A whole family slaughtered, Cecile had thought, but a wave of clarity swept through Zaria as the two stories fit together.
The little boy hadn’t been dead, had he? He stood before her now, dark lashes casting crescent shadows on his cheekbones in the dim light. How was it that he managed to look at everything like a god surveying his kingdom?
A vengeful god. A crumbling kingdom.
“You don’t have to be what Ward made you,” Zaria said hoarsely. She had no idea how long she’d let the silence between them persist. She almost resented Kane for this—these feelings she didn’t want—and yet she ought to have known all along that his story was a tragedy.
He turned unsmiling, unblinking, a shadow settling between his brows. “Ah, Miss Mendoza. It’s far too late for that.”
And though he walked out the door then, shutting it behind him, Zaria stood in his empty room feeling as if he’d never truly left.