Page 139 of Seasons of War
“Did it mean anything to you?” Kira asked it quietly. Fearfully.
Those tears still glimmered in her eyes. Aches tore into his arms from holding back and not wiping away the trail dampening her cheeks. He'd rather pluck his eyes out than make her cry again.
A strand of her red hair curled over her soft cheek. Crying always paled her face, but reddened the bridge of her nose and set fire to her eyes. How did she look so vulnerable and so unconquerable at the same time?
Zayne had forgotten all the reasons he shouldn't remember, only that he must not, but now reality flooded him in a rush. The horrible game the Phaedra ordered him to play with her heart. The fiancée who dressed Kira up for another man, thinking she was Zayne's cousin. Her vulnerable position as his prisoner.
That he never would have kissed her like that if he thought they'd see each other again, because the day Nadia left, he vowed to run from any pull. Especially one like this.
Mellie didn't deserve for Zayne to lie to her about who Kira was and then remember their night together. And she was his prisoner. This was wrong.
What was he doing?
Kira waited for an answer to a question that Zayne was certain she knew not to ask. They were both weakened in here, thinking things they shouldn't.
“I can't,” he said.
And she didn't ask again. Didn't speak again. The silence felt tenuous and too easy to break. Too dangerous to break.
Their fight against the Phaedra and their families wound them together. He couldn't escape. So, he needed to rewritethe past.
All this time, he worked so hard to banish that night from his memory and deny it ever happened, only to awaken it for them both.
“I'll stay alive.” Her broken whisper crushed his chest.
Relief sapped the strength from his muscles, and his arms fell, shoulders slackening. “Yeah?”
Kira nodded. “If you do the same. You'll fail if you keep going on like this. Then all these people died for nothing.” Pleading strengthened her voice. “Find an ounce of joy in your life and protect it at all costs because that's what wins wars. That's what keeps you alive and human.”
He didn't deserve to live when better people died. The names carved into the hidden place of the tree, into his hidden place, came alive with whispers and with shadows and with judgment as real as the air he breathed.
What Kira demanded of him clashed with all he owed the dead. His comrades in the North never escaped their final, miserable days, while Zayne sat there saying nothing, so how dare he escape? But that old vow rang hollow, looking into Kira's eyes now and knowing that if he didn't do better, he'd sentence her to their same deadly fate. The debt he'd never repay and the future he owed Kira severed his mind in two.
Protecting her honored all these fallen. Torturing himself didn't. But damn it, he wasn't sure he was strong enough to stop.
“It's time to leave that tank,” she said softly. “You found the strength to survive the death and torture by holding yourself in the icy water. If you stay there, you'll never be free, and you'll never beat them. You have to live and tear this empire apart one piece at a time until nothing remains of the Phaedra's reign. Otherwise, all we've sacrificed will be for nothing.”
The fire of the sun still burned in Kira's eyes, but not in wild, violent flames. In enough kindness and mercy to warm an entire frozen world.
“We have a deal,” Zayne said.
CHAPTER 34
Kira
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
833 P.C. [Post-Collapse]
Kira slid down the wall of Zayne's personal monument. Quiet tethered them together in his refuge, a quiet erupting with the suffering he kept hidden. Of course, it could never feel like anything else in here.
Telling Zayne to take her life hurt more than when she refused to speak while trapped in the tank. But no matter how hard he fought, he might not be able to save everyone from an emperor who held them in a stranglehold.
Standing against Zayne when he fought her or threatened her was hard enough, but when he pleaded with her?
Impossible.
