Page 293 of Seasons of War
Clinging to hope, she pushed on until she found Brock jogging toward her. Blood covered his face and dripped from the tips of his fingers on his right hand. When he saw her, sobbing and covered once more in blood, the knowing look overcame him. Broke him too.
“Nadia is trying to save him,” she said. “He won't survive the trip.”
Brock nodded, silent, baring his gritted teeth while he cried.
“If I can convince Zayne Riven to let me in, then I can convince the United to tear down the capital to find him.” Kira grabbed Brock's hand, both of theirs sticky. “We'll bring him home.”
Pained eyes looked past her toward Zayne and Nadia. And then Brock took Kira beneath his arm, holding her close, to help her through the hardest steps of her life.
The steps leading her away from the man she loved.
Leaving him with their worst nightmare.
CHAPTER 69
Miya
The Territories
The Palace, Caspador
833 P.C. [Post-Collapse]
Miya sat cross-legged on the purple rug in her old room at the palace and twisted the loose threads between her thumb and finger as she had as a kid.
Her father had left the room the same way she had it decorated as a teenager. The oversized bed with a canopy and lavender bedding, her favorite color back then, belonged to someone she didn't recognize anymore. Her closet, which was the size of most people's bedrooms, still had all her old dresses hanging there. It was a strange, dusty museum of her past, full of comfortable blankets, reclining couches, and all the instruments her mom taught her how to play. A piano in the corner, her violins beside it, a harp on the far side of the room, and the guitar she'd loved so much.
Where did she fit into this world? Definitely not in this room.
Miya looked up to see Lance already looking at her. They’d hardly seen each other over the week they had stayed in hiding at the United’s base, giving enough time for a team to investigate the two of them. To know for certain that Miya waswho she said she was and to make preparations with her father. Enough time for them to heal a bit.
The bruising along both sides of Lance’s face faded to yellow, and the cuts to the reddish-pink of new scars. She’d heard it would be another few weeks for his ribs not to hurt so badly and more after that to fully heal. Her own hurt just thinking about it.
Her burns had been mild, fortunately, and her knee was only bruised. The smoke inhalation had been the worst. She still struggled with her cough.
“You really feel okay?” Miya asked.
“Yeah.” Lance smiled, looking tired. “You?”
“Fine. None of it feels real.”
“Anything new about the captain?”
She ripped a thread loose. “He’s in United custody still. Ciondo won’t fight for his release after word got out about him killing his men. And he looks like he’s straight out of a horror story now. I saw a picture.” The melted plastic on his face required surgery to remove, and a skin graft stretched over his eyelid, nose, and left cheek. Burns mottled his hands, neck, and head. “They don't know if he'll survive. A lot of burn victims don't make it.”
Miya had to let everything go. She felt like she sat in a glass display case. A strange mystery the world would study for ages, trying to understand how she’d become this person and why she chose to stay at Rafferty when she could have gone back home.
She looked down at her black gloves that cut off at the knuckles below her mark. The United had salvaged everything she’d owned from Rafferty after rounding up the boss and Aiden and the other men that she’d like to forget existed. She wore her hair in a messy bun piled on top of her head without make-up or jewelry, always a treat after a job that required looking her best all the time.
Everything she owned belonged to the lives she'd left behind, and she didn't know who she'd need to become next to survive this palace and the war.
Miya chewed the inside of her cheek. “The Phaedra has taken the north, and the United is struggling to hold them back. I've made everything worse.”
“You tried to stop them from doing something horrible to your family and kingdom. It was only one battle in a much bigger war, but you won it.”
She bit her lip. What about the next battle? “I’m just nervous about today. It's making me feel hopeless.”
“Have you thought of what you’ll say?”
