CHAPTER 47
DAVINA
Now
“CRUSHING ME TO DEATH WAS RUTHLESS EVEN FOR YOU,” Zephyr drawls. The edge in his voice unsettles me, further triggering my nerves.
The glare I aim at him could melt ice. “You shot me.” His only response is a long, stern stare.
“And you’d have done the same, had our roles been reversed.
” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I hear the lie in them.
Zephyr has had the chance to leave me to my own demise on several occasions.
He could have gotten rid of me so easily. Instead, he saved me, time and again.
Guilt flutters in my stomach at the unbidden recollection of everything he did for me, when he should have left me to die.
It was different, I tell myself, ignoring the strain in my chest.
Back then, we still were two mere pawns dancing around the board, oblivious to the checkmate that was rushing towards us.
But oblivious wasn’t the right term, was it? We had recklessly chosen to forget it.
We had allowed for the wall that should have existed between us to crumble, heedlessly ignoring every sign and hint pointing towards our inevitable downfall. Every time Zephyr had thrown a hand into the darkness, I’d reached for it.
He saved me, yes, but it went further than that. He’d made me feel things I had long given up on—
I squash the thought, and the memory of heat it threatens to bring along.
In the end, none of it mattered. Despite it all, I almost killed him.
I could blame it on survival or instinct, but the fact remains that he’d saved me repeatedly, and I repaid the favor by bringing that crater down on him. Perhaps fate isn’t as much of a hellion as I’ve always believed, and I’ve earned my demise all on my own.
If only he were less loyal. The thought springs, unbidden. But there’s no Zephyr without the captain, and vice versa.
The tingle of tears caresses the back of my throat, both familiar and foreign. I can’t remember the last time I cried. When I feel the pressure in the corners of my eyes, I snap them shut. I cannot afford to show weakness.
He isn’t any less loyal, I scold myself. And that lab was far more important than either of us.
I pull sharply on the band around my wrists. The pain flaring in my raw skin quenches any and all lingering feelings I might hold for the man in front of me, burying them under the stark, fresh memory of these past two days.
He’s my enemy.
He always was, and as much as we might have pretended otherwise in the past weeks, he’s more than proven it since I was brought here.
Only once the threat of tears has been banished do I let my eyes scan him. I take my time, coldly etching every inch of his ruthless lines into my mind. “If only it had worked.”
His jaw shifts, making the lines of his face utterly devastating. “And what then?” The green of his eyes becomes that of a roiling sea. “What would you have done, had I not survived?”
Ignoring the twinge in my chest, I take a deep breath.
“Answer me!”
“I’d have run!”
A dark, bitter laugh. “Of course you would.” His thumb traces his lower lip where it’s pulled into a cold, cynical smile. “You would turn your back on everything to save your skin, wouldn’t you?” He stands, the move so sudden that I bristle on instinct.
When the hit doesn’t come, I look up to him, finding scorching anger in his gaze. A trickle of fear makes it past my unyielding hold.
“Why am I even surprised.” It’s not a question.
He walks around his chair, brushing the side of his burly companion.
Slowly, he turns, letting his large palms rest on the back of his chair and leaning over it.
“If you’d turn your back on the man that raised you, how could the movement you feigned to care about hold a chance? ”
I freeze, and the leash I have on my fear shatters into a million pieces.
Instinct has my lips parting to argue that I didn’t feign it, defensiveness nearly getting the best of me. But then I’d give him exactly what he wants. With the truth-teller still in the room, he would get a valid reason to execute me without intercontinental repercussion.
I’d declare myself a traitor.
My mouth snaps shut, cheeks blazing in outrage. But his eyes gleam with a cold, calculating glint over my prolonged silence, a glint that softens into what looks like . . . relief?
No. Victory.
Of course it is. I steel my spine, meeting his gaze with a glare of my own. He won’t have it. He cannot know about my involvement with Kaelthorn’s cell.
Rebuttal would only make me look guilty, so I keep my lips sealed. A whole minute passes. No one moves or speaks. Zephyr’s gaze is unyielding, but so is mine. The air pulsates with the furious waves of this battle of wills that can only end one way, even if I refuse to make it easy.
I might be the prisoner, but I will never again be a pawn.
Zephyr—ever-watching Zephyr Kentar—must realize this as well. His shoulders slump slightly. It’s just a heartbeat, tension returning to his towering frame as he once again leans forward. The chair protests his weight with a squawk.
“Well, my dear Davina, I’m afraid your reckoning has been coming for a while now.” His eyes flick to somewhere beyond me, lips curving in a way that has my fists clenching at my back. “Why don’t you come in and salute our common friend?”
Common friend? What is he—
At the sound of footsteps, I tense. There’s someone else here. I suspected it, heard the rumble of voices when Zephyr left the room but . . .
Terror clogs my windpipe as I realize this person must know me, for Zephyr to make such a statement.
How can it be? Who can—
I fight the urge to wince when their shadow is cast on me. Tall, with strong, broad shoulders, wheat blond hair softly curling around his neck . . .
My lungs stop working.
At once, every single piece of the puzzle inside my head, every single thing I thought I knew, shatters. Splinters and broken edges fly in every direction as I fight to draw a breath that doesn’t come.
Oblivious to my crumbling sanity, the newcomer takes a seat in front of Zephyr, the latter still holding onto the backrest of the chair with a pleased, cunning glint in his eyes.
I try and fail to get air into my lungs, to snap out of it.
No.
“Good to see you again, Miss Sircelen.” The taunt in his voice tells me all I need to know.
He didn’t for a second believe I was who I told him to be. He was entertaining me all along. And Zephyr . . .
So many things make sense all of a sudden, and yet so many more do not.
Because somehow, impossibly so, Leonidas Alkaterre is sitting right in front of Captain Zephyr Kentar.
And it doesn’t look like there’s the lifetime of animosity that characterizes being on opposite sides of a war between them, no.
As I absorb the sight of the smirk painting Kairis’ foreman, an almost exact copy of one I’ve seen so many times on my captor’s face, I realize my miscalculations are far greater than I could have ever imagined.
And it’s going to cost me deeply.