Page 35 of Seasons of War
Shit, shit, shit.
Fuck him, the entire world, and every last fucking person in it.
Zayne ground his teeth when he returned to the observation room with his brother. He'd prepared for this contingency, but he hoped to avoid it. And she picked the hint he most wanted to avoid.
“What the hell was that?” Luke's accusing stare bore into him.
“I gained her trust. That's what.”
“She was hiding something.”
Zayne waved a dismissive hand at his brother. “Only what I told her to hide.”
“Do you think I'm an idiot?” Luke snarled.
“I do actually, but that's irrelevant to this.”
Luke continued staring at him, but Zayne watched Kira, hoping she recovered because he wouldn't get away with that again.
“What I told the prisoner is true,” his brother said. “I'm watching, even whenyou think I'm not.”
“I hope you enjoy every second of your voyeurism,” Zayne muttered. He didn't have time to deal with this right now. Kira fought for her life in there. Any question may destroy her.
With a curse, Luke stalked across the room, ripping out his phone, surely to cry home to Father about how terrible Zayne was for this job.
And he was right. Zayne might not have figured out how to save Kira yet, but he and his most trusted friends worked tirelessly on plans to break her out of prison. Luke did not know just how deep Zayne's sabotage ran.
Though Dr. Cooper pressed her once more about her secrets, Kira steered the interrogation better than before. Perhaps his interruption gave her ideas about how to handle him. She was smart. If any civilian could survive this, it was her.
“Let's dig deep. Can you think of any other secrets?” the doctor asked.
“I don't know. Plenty, I'm sure. I read books I'm not supposed to read,” Kira said.
Good. Not such a harmful admission. Not as harmful as admitting that she learned how to manipulate PXI and stained the Phaedra's sky with rebellion.
“Her mother isn't just a rebel but a revolutionary,” his brother said. “The daughter of a revolutionary won't be easy to sway. She probably grew up being conditioned to hate the Phaedra.”
Kira was a revolutionary in her own right, not just the daughter of one. With mere words, she exposed the Phaedra's lies about divinity and undermined his authority. The people saw it as the PXI rebelling against the Phaedra. The entire empire witnessed him losing control, and Kira didn't need to hurt a single person to do it.
“What do you think about the books?” The psychiatrist leaned forward, lips quirking in a show of how eager this made him.
“Thoughts I'm not supposed to have. Like we aren't as powerless as you all want us to believe.”
Her words sounded fearless, but Zayne knew she was not fearless. He considered her quite risk-averse. Terror flickered in her gaze now and set a tremble in her fingers. Despite that, she spoke with such steadiness and confidence, strength emanating from smoldering rage and unyielding conviction. In Kira's every word, he sensed the kind of anger that took a lifetime to grow, and more than enough control to wield it like a scalpel. That disciplined indignation might be enough to transform someone so kind into someone so fierce, except one thing dwarfed all else in herblazing eyes.
Compassion.
Kira felt all the hurt of the empire without recoiling or breaking down into a numb, bitter thing. She felt it, and with it she conquered that considerable amount of fear. Just like she climbed buildings with him when heights terrified her.
The empire called Zayne a war hero. They called him fearless. Courageous.
Zayne fought without fear and feeling because he was broken.
Not Kira. She felt it all. Carried it all. And never looked away.
His fists tightened until they ached. If anyone hurt her…
Luke's gaze cut to Zayne again. His brother must have noticed the tension in his body. Just being here set him on edge. With Kira fully under Dr. Cooper's control, Zayne struggled to mask when normally he did it so expertly.
