63. CHAPTER 63
Kira
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
The night that decided everything arrived, and Kira felt covered in blood all over again. Zayne, Brock, and who knew how many others placed themselves in harm's way for her life.
One life.
It wasn't that Kira didn't want to be free—she'd give almost anything to escape this cell. But that was it. Almost anything.
“Will you have to hurt anyone?” Kira asked while Zayne sorted through his bag. He claimed the hardest parts were already over—arranging safe transportation out of Ciondo and taking over the camera system at the prison. Already, she tasted freedom in being off camera, but what was the cost?
She tried to never think of Zayne pulling the trigger on that elder, and especially not about those vacant eyes after, but it never left her mind. Right now, she saw it playing on repeat.
Zayne didn't hesitate to kill that man.
“I've minimized contact as much as possible,” he said.
“So you have to hurt someone.”
He paused and looked at her. “Yes. Hopefully, not badly.”
“Doesn't it bother you?”
“Yes.” He grabbed a small bag and tossed it to her. “Give this to the cat right before we leave.”
Kira picked Pumpkin up. “Can we really take her? It's already so dangerous.”
“We're not leaving your damn cat.”
A slow smile came over her face. She nodded.
“The sedative should keep her asleep until halfway through the flight. She may need another one up there.” Now he offered her a pouch. “This is for you if you want it. It'll calm your nerves. Brock says one or…”
Kira swallowed one dry. She definitely needed it.
He chuckled. “One or two.”
“I'll keep this close.” She waved the pouch and then stuck it in her pocket.
“This is for you too. Please be careful.”
Kira recognized the slim, led-lined tube. Uranium. “Whoa.”
When she slipped it into her bra, Zayne twisted his face. “That’s not the best idea.”
“What else am I going to do with it?” She asked. “I'm not putting it in the bag with the cat. I need quick access, and a pocket is too obvious. If any radiation leaks, the Pixi Dust will eat it up right away.”
He sighed. “Fine. It's supposed to be safe. Just be careful.”
“Obviously, I will be.”
Rolling his shoulders, he looked up at the ceiling like he was thinking.
“There's one more important detail. I'm providing the United with a wealth of intel, but only once you're safe.
My friend will contact you, and you're the only one who can give him permission to share the data.
Tell him the last thing I said to you the night we met.
Otherwise, he'll know you're being coerced.”
“Okay.” Kira rubbed her arms. “Don't say it like you won't be there.”
“It's just in case.”
“I don't want to hear in case.”
“Then how about so I don't have to tell you later.”
“Better. How much time do we have?”
“Fourteen minutes.”
“Do we have to climb buildings this time?”
He smirked and shook his head. “No climbing.”
How did he look so calm? In fact, Zayne seemed less tense than normal. “Aren't you nervous?”
“I don't think about it. You shouldn't either.” He pulled his bag onto his back and then walked closer to her. “I've seen you under pressure. You can do this. Stop thinking.”
“I can't because last time you threw yourself between me and the people shooting at me.”
“I'm a soldier. I'm supposed to be in the line of fire.”
“No human being is supposed to be in the path of a bullet. Not one. That's a lie programmed into you so you'll tear your body apart and die without complaint. Because—”
Zayne cupped the back of her head and leaned in to look her hard in the eyes. “Stop. Thinking. Now.”
The touch was so brief, but it tied her words in her mouth, and she realized she'd been talking so fast. Thinking so fast.
Now he passed a pocketknife to her.
“I don't want you to use this on a person unless I have them. A soldier can disarm a civilian too easily. Emergency only.”
Kira took it, averting her eyes because how embarrassing that he knew the slightest touch would quiet her. “It's not too late to change your mind. I don't want you to regret it.”
“I will never regret this.” He checked his gun, glancing at her. “Now stop.”
“What about your family and Mellie?”
“My father and brother can deal with this. My sister is strong. She'll be okay. And I already broke up with Mellie.”
“What?”
Zayne nodded. “She just doesn't know it yet.”
Kira raised her brows. “What does that even mean?”
“She actually thinks we got married.” Zayne's eyes shifted from hers to the ground and back again. “So you'll probably hear that on the news or something.” And away went that gaze to his stupid gun.
Her mouth stopped working for a second. “Mellie thinks you got married...”
He nodded, jaw tightened enough for her to notice.
“What made Mellie think you got married?”
A shrug.
Yeah, an actual shrug.
“What did you do?” Kira stomped toward him.
“Well,” he said, “There was a ceremony, and I said some words, and signed some papers.”
“Some papers?”
“Just legal documents that don't mean anything to me.”
Her heart slowed. “So, you married Mellie.”
“I pretended to marry Mellie.”
“You literally married her, Zayne.”
“I didn't mean it, so it doesn't count.”
“What, did you cross your fingers?” It physically hurt to swallow down the screaming and force out a quiet enough voice. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking, who gets married the week they plan to betray their country and leave forever? The Phaedra is happy. I avoided suspicion.”
“You did a terrible, terrible thing.” Kira grabbed her pillow to throw at him, but hesitated when she remembered he held his weapon. “How could you do that to her?”
“To her? She got what she wanted. Now she has my name forever. She'll be the beloved grieving widow of the high general's son. She'll be happier in the long run not having me around.”
Barely controlling her voice, Kira seethed. “You're the dumbest man in the empire, Zayne Riven.”
“We can discuss this later.” He holstered his gun. “It's almost time.”
“You waited to tell me so I couldn't yell at you for very long.”
“It didn't come up sooner.”
Or did he marry someone to ensure he'd never let anyone close to him again? Never give her a chance. “You're a married man, and you're letting your wife believe you're dead.”
“The man she married is dead.” A quiet mumble she barely made out now. “One way or another.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I'll legally be declared dead today.” He cleared his throat. “Or I'll actually die.”
Kira reared the pillow back.
He pointed his finger at her. “Do not—”
She hurled it at his face. “You do not! Do not talk to me for however long we have until we leave. And if you try to die on me, I'll kill you first.”
“No, you won't.”
“Just let me say it, you bastard.”
Zayne rolled his eyes. The nerve, when he deserved for every person in the empire to line up and take turns rolling their eyes at him one at a time. That was how infuriating he was.
What was Kira supposed to do with this outrage? “If this is your way of distracting me from my nerves, I don't appreciate it.”
Zayne groaned. “I can't do anything about it now, can I? I can't unmarry her in the few minutes before we leave.”
Her eyes narrowed to such thin slits that she could hardly see him. “You need to find your own jet out of Ciondo.”
A pause, and then Zayne laughed. As hard as she tried to keep quiet, Kira did too, covering her mouth to keep from making too much noise. The fear and anger, the absurdity of what he did, twisted into this laugh.
The first time he brought her into this cell, he refused to say her name, and now they were about to leave it behind forever, laughing together when Kira held back tears and panic all day.
“I could write her a letter of apology,” he said. “It might conflict with the one I already wrote telling her how I could never live my life with her.”
“A letter of apology? I'm so sorry I married you as a distraction. That's a great idea. Your wife will love that.”
He stiffened. “Don't call her my wife.”
“She is your wife, Zayne.”
“No.” He shook his head, no longer laughing. “She's not. Don't pity her. She paints her face with blood and calls it fashion. I am not her husband, and she is not my wife.”
“But she is.”
Her heart quickened when Zayne walked closer. “I don't ever want to hear you call her that again.”
Kira's stomach loosened beneath the intensity of his stare.
Everything that had happened since her return to the prison destroyed her.
She was barely making it, operating in pure survival.
His nearness, the few times he touched her, the other day when he held her, kept her going.
But she was helpless around him now. Desperate for him.
“I'm allowed to leave her,” Zayne said. “Even if I just married her.”
“Then that's it?” The words hurt. “You're done with Mellie. You owe her nothing as her husband?”
The conflicted look in his eye crushed her.
Her breath caught. “That's what I thought.”
What did this mean for him? Was he going to divorce her once he was free? Let her stay married to him forever? Refuse to ever find love and happiness because technically, he had a wife out there? Since he'd be legally dead, and he wrote a farewell letter, was this really over?
How foolish of Kira to believe Zayne might start a new life with no ties to Ciondo and choose freedom. He needed to make his life as complicated as possible.
“I don't love Mellie, and I never have.” Zayne didn't look away from her. “I don't owe her my heart.”
Kira staved off that jealousy lately, but it satisfied a part of her that felt vain and small to hear him say he never wanted her.
“So, what does that really mean?” Had Zayne even considered that yet?
Or was he so bent on breaking her out of prison that he didn't think about the mess he made for the future?
He shook his head. “It doesn't matter.”
But it did. It mattered so much. So much that Kira couldn't get the question to leave her lips. She was too afraid of how much it might hurt to hear the answer.