61. CHAPTER 61
Zayne
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
Zayne checked his phone on the way to Kira's cell, worried that Ashantae hadn't updated in a few hours. The delay from communicating through Reinard slowed the process, but he expected to hear back from her by now.
By the time Zayne heard that Christopher had discovered the king's long-lost daughter, they'd disappeared from the safe house before the helicopter arrived.
No one, not even the Phaedra, knew where they went.
His tracker wasn't even working. And his squad was discovered dead.
Both Christopher and Miya were assumed captured by either the United or another enemy.
But Zayne knew the United didn't do this.
Major Tyndale was working with Ashantae to locate them.
It didn't make sense why anyone would poison the entire squad except for Christopher.
The reports that his father received showed Miya as having gotten involved with him only a few days before at Bale's village.
He claimed to have quickly discovered who Miya was.
Zayne knew that wasn't true. So did Christopher's squad.
Did the fool think that if he killed his own people and staged a kidnapping, he could rewrite the story to come out on top?
Zayne had sabotaged him twice recently and placed his career in jeopardy.
If this was his asinine way of trying to save himself, then he was even more foolish than Zayne thought.
But then Christopher was a man on the verge of losing everything. A man scorned by a woman he abused.
If Zayne could find any excuse to leave for the territories, he'd travel to help Miya. But it wasn't possible right now. This scenario was even worse than what he imagined when he first wanted her to flee Christopher. Zayne didn't think he'd go off the grid with her.
Ashantae would find them, though. He just hoped it was soon.
He opened the door to Kira, putting it from his mind, because the situation was just as dire for her. Guilt plagued him from compartmentalizing so many crises. It felt wrong to be able to function when much of his world ended with Mom, and when it ended for so many people in Caspador right now.
The only relief in this empire was seeing Kira and that cat she loved. But once Zayne looked up at her, everything slowed.
Pain tensed the fine muscles of Kira's face when she always smiled at him. And her face was swollen.
Swollen?
Fucking swollen?
His vision tunneled on the cut splitting the side of her lip. His mind split with it, ripping the mask he lived with across the seams. Body primed for a fight, he shot swiftly to her side.
Kira's eyes widened with panic.
Wild, uncontrollable flames shot through his veins, but his hand remained steady when he lifted it to her face.
Her voice faltered. “It's okay—”
“Who?” Tenderly, terrified to hurt her, he slid his fingers beneath her chin to lift her face to him, and the sight of her bruised cheek struck him in the gut. Every single muscle in his body snapped rigid and coiled.
Someone hurt her. Kira never hurt a person in her life, but they hurt her. She was gentle and sweet and ferociously good.
Instead of answering him, she shook her head no.
“Tell me. Now.” Rage warred for control of his voice, but the need to be gentle with her quieted his words. His thumb traced her swollen cheek so softly he barely felt her smooth skin. “Who did this to you?”
A throbbing, endless moment swelled and burst between them.
“You can't,” she whispered. “He's dangerous.”
He knew then. Just knew by the look in her eye. Just knowing that motherfucker.
Luke.
“I will not—” he wielded each word like the cut of a surgical scalpel “—let anyone hurt you.” His head lowered to separate her light from the darkness coursing through him—the darkness he now craved—his eyes locked on her hurt face. His growl vibrated in his chest. “Especially not him.”
He ripped away from her, and she fell on her hands with a gasp.
“Zayne!” She yelled it at a door that was already slamming shut, cutting off whatever else she said.
The Phaedra promised her life to Zayne, and yet his brother hit her in the face hard enough to swell like that.
Why did he do it? Luke had never raised a hand against a civilian in his life that Zayne recalled, and most definitely never a woman.
Never someone in captivity and utterly defenseless. Never someone smaller than him.
He didn't want to imagine his brother hitting her in the face, but he kept seeing all the ways it might have happened.
Kira collapsing, or hitting the wall, or her body bouncing off the floor.
The violence he knew too well painted nightmarish portraits in his mind of how his brother might have hurt her, and it conjured images he'd evaded for years now.
Luke's hand smacking into Kira's face blurred into his palm cupping Nadia's bare skin.
If Luke wanted to fuck Nadia, he could do it all he wanted. She looked so incredibly willing. But his brother would never touch Kira again.
Never.
Or he was actually dead this time.
Those hands haunted Zayne's mind until he froze at the Rail station, realizing he had left Kira alone while injured. Struggling for breath, he looked back at the security entrance of the prison, eyes rising to the top of the building where that tiny square light offered her so little warmth.
The pull demanding that he return to her warred with the primal need to rip his brother's face off. What protected her in the long run? Wasn't she right when she warned him about the danger?
Luke said he'd be watching. He promised that from the very beginning of this ordeal.
A scream—no, a roar—pounded against his chest and throat, hisses of it creeping out from his tight jaw. Breath coming fast and hard, he closed his eyes, grasping at the ripped seams of his mask. But that only unraveled it all more and more every second.
Control. Control. He needed—
Zayne jammed his fist against the tender wound where his brother unknowingly stabbed him. After the nightly doses of pure PXI, he healed so well that he trained without hindrance, but a direct impact hurt.
There wasn't a single step he took back to Kira that didn't feel like he needed to saw his legs off to keep going.
Everything inside of him drove him to find Luke and teach him what happened when he put his hands on her.
Kira begged him that awful night, though.
“No more blood.”
When he opened the door to her cell, he stared at the ground, because if he looked at her and saw her pain again, he'd lose his tenuous hold on this desperation.
“You're back,” Kira said. The words sounded so painful. What did the inside of her cheek look like?
“Can you open your jaw fully?” he asked. “Move it from side to side?”
“I can. I'm just sore.”
Just.
The fire climbed again, and he needed air before he exploded. “Outside.” He kept the gruff word quiet, not wanting to scare her. But Zayne lacked the ability to soften anything he said right now.
They walked in that tense silence and stepped out into the sun together.
His head throbbed from the episode of rage.
Walking to the fence, he stared out over the green field below, clasping the rungs so hard the metal groaned and cut into his palms. Gray prison walls with tall guard towers mocked him, reminding him that they were trapped in the Phaedra's prison.
“I really am okay,” Kira said, easing beside him.
“Don't take care of me.” His hold tightened even more. “You're hurt.”
“So are you.”
He unleashed a mix of sigh and groan that rattled from his chest. “Kira.”
She sighed too. “I'm glad you came back.”
His eyes shifted in her direction, but he didn't turn his head to see her. “I shouldn't have left in the first place.”
“It's hard for you not to fight.”
“It's hard to do absolutely nothing.”
Soft fingers slid up the bottom of his palm and forced his grip on the fence to loosen. “Then do something.” Kira tugged on his hand, and he relented, watching her drag it to the other side of her head. “Make me feel safe.”
Pain cut through his chest and loosened his shoulders. His eyes met hers now, seeing how much she hurt. How tired and fearful she looked.
She slid her back against the fence and worked between his arms.
“Don't let anything near me,” she said. “I need a few minutes to let my guard down.”
Zayne held the fence on either side of her, his mask fully unraveled now. Her softness spread through his body and relaxed his muscles. “You don't need to calm me down.”
“Did you not hear me say I need this? Keep your arms right there and don't let anyone near me, no matter who it is. Give me five minutes where I'm untouchable.”
“Okay.” His throat burned. “You're untouchable. I don't care who comes right now. I'll kill them.”
Oh, he meant those words.
He meant them enough to scare him.
The closeness of her body only heated the flames consuming him, but having her near also forced gentleness into him. It was the kind of conflicting feeling only she could evoke.
“Do you feel safe now?” He asked it as tenderly as he'd touched her injured face.
She held his stare. “Yes.”
Her tears fell.
His gaze traced their path helplessly, and rapid flashes of her lips and tongue and sweet taste flitted unbidden through his mind.
How softly and deeply she kissed at the same time.
All her contradictions. But those were the fleeting memories.
The ones pounding in his chest, refusing to leave, ripped wide every wound inside him.
He remembered her every act of kindness and courage.
Every time she'd ever cried. Her words painting all those skies.
Kira wanted desperately to live, but she kept sacrificing herself to save the innocent people the Phaedra used her to hunt and threaten.
She sacrificed herself to help Zayne use his position to tear apart the empire from within.
How badly must that have hurt? Abandoning all her hopes for the future for people she didn't know.