31. CHAPTER 31
Kira
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
The mind worked in strange ways in the face of death. Thoughts both slowed and sped. Fixated and blocked out. Looking at her stranger with the crisis waning, all those thoughts and feelings that only managed to scratch at Kira's mind flooded her.
The feel of his scar burned on her fingers, and she saw him clearly.
Every confounding piece of him slid into place. Every single piece.
Seeing him standing before her in this mask and uniform, those memories of the past sharpened in her mind and collided with the present, overlaying the sharp cut of his shoulders, the way he moved and spoke, that stubborn refusal of kindness.
Coming into his heat, she finally allowed herself to feel that electric air and impossible tug. Her body knowing, remembering, what her mind couldn't grasp. Not just tonight, but every single time she’d ever seen him.
His goggles reflected her eyes back at her, the hot tears lining them spilling over.
She spoke resolutely. “Take off your mask.”
During the fight, he couldn't have been closer, but right now, he felt far away, even though he stood within reach, like he never truly returned to her after that night.
No response from him. No movement.
Kira didn't need to feel beneath his collarbone to confirm what she felt with her entire body.
A plea tightened her every muscle. Frustration.
Her voice hitched—broken and desperate and demanding. “Zayne.”
A beat of silence. Of their heavy breathing in the dark.
She barely heard her own whisper. “Take it off.”
Zayne just stared at her, hidden by that mask he'd worn every time he'd ever seen her, even when she saw his face just fine.
For years she burned for this man to return to her, and he'd been with her in captivity every day, refusing to touch her or say her name.
Refusing to look at her when he knew who she was from the beginning.
When he knew he had kissed her and protected her for three years.
Zayne had done far more than intervene with Dr. Cooper to protect her.
Far more than pretend to hate her to thwart the manipulation.
And he'd never been indifferent to her. He'd watched over her and protected her since the night he found her hiding in the cabinet.
In a dance of pulling her close to save her and pushing her far, far away for the same reasons.
Oh, she saw it all so clearly now.
Every lie. Every act of protection. Every time he donned his mask.
Behind them, his friend turned away, giving them privacy.
His friend, the one who always came when Zayne didn't want to, who warned her last year, who carried her to the medical room after the tank, who whisked her into the night to escape.
Brock. Faithful, kind Brock.
Had Zayne even been away at war last year when he sent Brock to her?
Maybe he'd been close, watching like tonight, while they escaped.
Or like at Dr. Cooper's when Zayne dropped her in Brock's arms after she nearly drowned, letting her think he'd never been there. That he ordered the torture himself.
Weeks of fury bloomed into years of longing and devastated her so much that her voice sounded as broken as the man Zayne brutalized. “Please.”
Even with the tears blurring his form, she saw him more clearly than she ever had. The scars and the hardness and secrets.
His head lowered, sharp shoulders looser than normal.
The hands that didn't hesitate to take life clasped his helmet and paused for a moment before pulling it free.
Finally, Kira looked into the eyes of the masked man who saved her, with nothing hiding her from him. Darkness shadowed the glacier blue eyes that met hers with such reticence. Zayne Riven wore her stranger's uniform and didn't avert his stare.
“Thank you,” she said.
For everything. For that night, for this one. For not hiding any longer. Her mind spun, imagining how he felt these last few weeks, especially when Dr. Cooper entrapped them.
Should Kira have seen it before?
“It's not safe to answer all the questions you have.” He said it so gently she didn't recognize his voice. “I don't know if Dr. Cooper will interrogate you again.”
“It's okay. I understand now.” A smile worked onto her face even as a tear fell into the corner of her mouth. “I have to go back, don't I?”
His nostrils flared, and he held her gaze even though she sensed him wanting to look away. “Yes. We can't get you out tonight. Not anymore.”
“You tried.” Kira shifted her stare to Brock. “You both tried, and that's too much to ask for.”
“It's not.” There was that gruff voice she knew so well. Zayne frowned. “I never should have allowed this to happen.”
She took a step closer, and he shifted one back, but she didn't react to the distance, only kept her voice soft. “You told me not to put any hope in you.”
“That's because this is the one place where I'm not sure I can protect you.”
The words melted her heart, knowing he always planned to put her above the Phaedra's orders. Her mind turned through their conversation from three years ago. “You plan to keep fighting from the inside.”
He'd never looked so conflicted as he did now. “When I become High General, I'll have the power to destroy his regime.”
“It's killing you to serve him while you wait for the day you can put an end to this.” All that pain she felt inside of him now had a name. Something she understood. “Promise me you'll try to take care of yourself.”
“Don't worry about me.” Exacerbation tinged his words. “Think about yourself. If the Phaedra orders me to hurt you—”
“You have no choice but to do it. Defy him, and this is over. Everything you've spent your life fighting for. That's why you worked so hard to convince me I can't trust you. So I wouldn't see the good in you and think it'll help me. You haven't accepted what failing meant, have you?”
So much shame shadowed his eyes, darkening his face more than the night as he looked down.
Kira reached for him, needing him to let her close one time so she could say this. When he didn't move, she settled her hand against the long scar on his chest. His muscles tensed but he didn't back away. He honored her, let her close for this moment.
Tilting her head to see his downturned face, she spoke. “Fight this war, Zayne Riven. I don't need you to save me. It's my war too.”
That boy in the tank grew up into a man who learned how to destroy the Phaedra.
Incredible.
“Kira.” Pain etched itself into his voice and face. Desperate eyes found hers. “What happened at Dr. Cooper's is a taste. I'm not leaving you here. I just need to find another way.”
“Shh… Let's go.” Her nails scratched into his skin. “In this moment, I'm safe. Leave tomorrow for tomorrow.” Drifting toward Brock, she clasped his hand on her way past. “Thank you. Be safe.”
He squeezed hers. “This isn't over.”
She didn't respond. These men put themselves in too much danger every day. They may not be able to get her out, and she wouldn't stand for either of them getting killed trying.
Zayne caught up with her, holding his helmet under one arm.
In the strangest way, this all made sense.
Who else, other than Zayne, could get away with betraying the Phaedra right below his tower?
Who had the resources and power to survive fighting against him in his capital this long?
This was how her masked stranger always found a way to reach her.
Always knew what she was doing no matter how well she hid it. He wasn't just any soldier.
Zayne hated himself for all he'd done to make it here, for all he'd do to keep his power. Might not have found the right way to fight yet. But that boy inside of him did not die. Did not give up.
Kira wouldn't either.
Though neither of them talked on the way back to his parents' house, things between them felt anything but quiet.
Every step of the way, her skin burned, and her insides ached with the space between them, so much distance that she knew better than to try to overcome.
No matter how much she looked at him, she couldn't believe what she saw.
Her mind stitched together the memories of her stranger and those of Zayne into one and the same.
Zayne's tongue had danced along hers.
His.
Heat burned at her core, and she couldn't let herself imagine it. Not right now. It was too much.
“I know you don't ever want to talk about it.” Kira did him the favor of not looking at him while she said it. “You owe it to me though.”
“I know.”
“You don't let people close. So why did you do it?” Whether he answered or not, she might never get to ask him again, and she needed to know what he'd say. If he'd face her or turn away. “Why did you kiss me?”
When his gaze found hers, it stripped the breath from her lungs.
She expected him to stare off into the distance and refuse to answer, not look directly at her.
“You wrote in the sky over the Phaedra's tower.” That was a new look he gave her, one brimming with more than suffering and tension.
One full of something else entirely. Maybe admiration.
And he didn't say anything else, as if that was answer enough.
Respect was not something he gave out easily, and while feeling his appreciation and respect filled her with warmth, there was a sting too.
Kira thought about him too much over the years. It meant more to her than mutual respect.
What did that matter? That man she longed for was marrying another woman and hardly looked at her. He'd never been hers. He promised to never see her again, and when he'd been forced to, he still tried to look beyond her.
“You knew this whole time it was me, but I had no idea it was you,” Kira said. “It's been three years, and I never stopped hoping I'd meet you again.”
He sighed as they walked, expression unreadable. “There's nothing here.” It was the closest Zayne had ever come to stammering. The tension in his voice was clear. “Nothing between us.”
“Thank you for informing me of that.”
“You're my prisoner. The past is the past.”
She stopped, but he continued. “I wasn't your prisoner then.”