Chapter 35 Zaria
ZARIA
ZARIA CRINGED AS LIGHT STREAKED THROUGH HER WORKSHOP.
She turned away from the scene before her, knowing she wouldn’t be able to stomach watching Fletcher die.
It would be her fault if Ward killed him.
She’d been willing to take the risk, horrible person that she was, but having to see it was something else entirely.
She’d never imagined being here to watch it happen.
She was supposed to be long gone by now.
But it wasn’t Fletcher whom the magic ripped apart.
It was Ward.
Her back was pressed into the wooden chair so firmly that it was beginning to ache, though Zaria barely felt it.
An acrid scent filled the air. She found herself unable to move as Ward gasped, a hand snapping to clutch his chest as blood spilled from the wound.
His widened eyes fixed on Kane, betrayal and disbelief etched into every line of his face.
For the barest slip of a moment, Zaria could almost imagine he was a father staring at his son.
A father who hadn’t known how to love and now was forced to confront what he’d created.
His expression was one Zaria would never forget.
Then he collapsed to the floor. Crimson pooled around him, leaking toward the place where Zaria stood. She stared over his body into a wholly different face—one she no longer recognized.
Kane’s jaw was taut, the veins in his neck stark and bruise-like. There was something cadaverous about him in the candlelight. It coaxed flames into his black, black eyes and contoured his body in furious orange. He still held the gun out before him, though his hand no longer shook.
Zaria was struck by the sudden realization that she was going to be next.
“Kane, no.” No sooner had acceptance replaced the fear than Fletcher’s voice cut through the oppressive silence.
He shoved Kane aside, moving to stand in front of Zaria.
Kane stumbled slightly, but his expression didn’t change.
It was as if a mask of impassivity had been painted onto his face. He still hadn’t looked down at Ward.
Zaria straightened, heart pounding. She couldn’t understand why Fletcher was stopping Kane from shooting her, and she didn’t ask.
Because it was Fletcher, though, Kane faltered.
She watched as he crouched down, his gaze roving over his adoptive father’s motionless form. Watched as his fingers curved clawlike toward the kingpin’s neck.
He snatched the pendant away, knuckles straining as he clenched it tightly in a fist. Then he straightened and pointed the revolver in her direction once more. “Get out.”
The words were deadly, leaving no room for argument. Zaria crept to Fletcher’s side, trying to make herself small. Desperate to leave this place before Kane changed his mind. There was no hope of getting the primateria source—not now.
She couldn’t reconcile this terrifying man with the boy who had kissed her. That evening, in twin candlelight, he’d grasped her hips and pressed his mouth to her neck.
What was it you called me?
She had told him he was a coward. It wasn’t true, though.
He was a monster.
“Kane,” she said hoarsely, a last-ditch attempt.
She hated the expression on his face. Hated that this was all her fault, even if she knew she wouldn’t have done it differently.
It shouldn’t have ended this way. When it came right down to it, all she’d wanted was to take the necklace from Kane.
Instead, she’d taken everything from him.
She stepped around Fletcher, pushing past the hand he thrust out to dissuade her. Kane was motionless as he watched her approach. But his throat worked, a muscle leaping in his jaw. He let her come to him, a cruel sort of tilt to his mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Zaria whispered. “You might deserve this, but that doesn’t make what I did any less terrible. I never intended for any of it to happen like this.”
His face slackened, and for a single, fleeting moment, Zaria thought she’d gotten through to him. The next moment, however, she realized the truth: Her words hadn’t calmed him. They’d only made him shut down entirely. A final nail in the coffin of his fraying composure. Now he was about to explode.
“OUT!” Kane roared the word, swiping a hand across the surface of the worktable.
The items there clattered to the ground, metal clanging and glass spraying.
The candle, too, fell with a crash. It rolled over to where Zaria stood, the tiny column of orange fire undulating wildly, igniting the parchment that already littered the floor.
She had left them there, Zaria realized, as she always did.
Discarded designs for the parautoptic key that, in the end, hadn’t even worked.
The edges blackened and curled, the evidence of her sleepless nights shrinking down to ash.
The rest of the notes were her father’s: fragments of his life’s work, his passion, and everything she had to remember him by.
She watched in disbelieving horror as they, too, were consumed by fire.
A scream built in her throat. She lunged for the nearest pages, hands clawed in desperation, but she recoiled just as quickly when the overwhelming heat touched her skin.
Her vision blurred. She tried to stamp out the flames closest to her, but it was futile.
The old pawnshop never stood a chance. The fire spread quickly, licking across the floor.
Smoke pressed in, searing Zaria’s nostrils, and light flared.
Flames crept up the walls in columns of impossible heat.
Resignation washed over her alongside the panic, and finally she ran.
Ran like the devil was on her heels, dragging Fletcher with her, because he’d frozen as if he might never move again.
He bellowed Kane’s name in a ragged voice, and she shrieked for Jules, eyes streaming from smoke or anguish or both.
She had no idea if either of them would hear.
All other sounds were swallowed by the snap of rapidly burning wood.
Kane did not run.
They left him there, surrounded by the flames, in a hell of his own making.
Jules was already outside when Zaria burst into the street, heaving labored breaths.
He was at her side in an instant, smelling of smoke—or perhaps that was her—and taking her firmly by the shoulders.
To anyone else, it might have seemed rough, but Zaria was desperate for the familiar, grounding contact.
She leaned into him, blinking tears from her eyes.
Tears from the smoke, nothing more. She would not cry for the place she’d wanted so desperately to leave or for the pieces of her father that had littered the space. She would not cry for her half-finished commissions, her sketches and lists, her tools and materials.
She would not cry for Kane Durante, even as her heart seemed to rend itself in two.
“Your father,” she gasped to Jules through lungs that felt scorched. It wasn’t quite a question, but he understood. The muscles of his neck tautened, his grip on her arms becoming painful.
“I don’t know.”
“What—”
“I don’t know, Zaria. I haven’t seen him. We were arguing about… well, you know, and then…” Jules’s voice cracked. “I have to go find him.”
He started forward, but Zaria dragged him back again, her heels skidding on the dusty ground. “Don’t you dare, Jules! You might not come back out again.”
“What even happened?”
“It was Ward,” she told him, low enough that no one else save Fletcher would hear. “He was here, waiting for me in my workshop. He wanted the necklace. He threatened to shoot Fletcher, and Kane… Kane shot him first.”
Jules started, blinking at Fletcher as if noticing him for the first time. Wariness crossed his features. “I’m not even going to ask. Not yet anyway.” He leveled an unsteady finger at the other boy. “Zaria did what she had to do.”
Fletcher said nothing. He wasn’t looking at either of them.
His mouth was a firm line, his eyes dim.
Zaria recognized that look—he was retreating deep within himself.
She wondered if he was in shock. He hadn’t said a word since emerging from the pawnshop, his gaze fixed on something in the middle distance.
“Fletcher,” she said, and he turned to face her without much interest.
“What?” A single hollow word.
“I’m so sorry.”
Fletcher shrugged, staring back into the flames. A large crowd had begun to gather, and the air around them was rent with shrieks and urgent chatter, but neither of them paid it any mind. “He’s not dead. He will have escaped.”
Kane, he must have meant. Zaria frowned, realizing she’d subconsciously come to the same conclusion. She peeled Jules’s hand away from her bicep, lacing her fingers through his and squeezing. His mouth was a tense line as his gaze bored into Fletcher.
“Kane’s like a cat that can’t help but land on its feet,” Fletcher continued, “even when he wants to let himself break.”
Zaria followed his bleak stare, watching the flames lick up what remained of the pawnshop. At some point, the golden orbs had detached from the entrance, and one of them rolled across the street to settle a short distance from where they stood.
“I just don’t understand,” she said. “Ward didn’t need a primateria source. He’s already powerful. There has to be more to it, especially given what he was willing to do. I mean, I thought he favored Kane. Why would he hurt him by threatening your life?”
“Ward may have thought he loved Kane,” Fletcher said sharply, “but his love was toxic. He used pain and threats to get what he wanted. Kane loved Ward, too, even though he shouldn’t have.
I don’t think he could help it. This… this will destroy him, Zaria.
He’ll self-destruct, and he’ll try to take everyone and everything else down with him.
Kane, when he’s angry, is dangerous, but Kane when he’s grieving? That’s a catastrophe.”