Page 96 of Seasons of War
833 P.C. [Post-Collapse]
The solace from no longer awaiting constant danger allowed Kira to calm her body. The fear sharpened in her mind, though. Knowing she'd never return to her old life, even if that didn't feel real yet, hurt in the same cruel way as the last time everything changed. After losing her mom, Kira waited and waited to be reunited, and to return to warm days in the woods with her, or late nights reading with a flashlight under the blankets. Eventually, Kira understood that life died that day, but her heart never stopped waiting.
So, she needed little time to recognize losing her whole world a second time. This wasn't something a person came back from in the empire.
That bottomless grief only fueled her determination to fight against her captivity and the plan to slaughter the Followers. So, while Kira felt acutely aware of the pain, she also regained the mental clarity to plan and evaluate. Finally feeling it meant she was processing it. Resisting requires taking care of herself, and all of this was part of that.
Adelle loved long walks outside, so Kira strolled with her any time the woman offered. Inside, Ms. Pumpkin became a constant companion, last night curling up with her while she slept. While Kira soaked up their comfort, she also took inventory of everything she saw in the house to make her drone.
The security team stripped the house of weapons, even removing pens from the rooms Kira used. No one knew to hide the remote-controlled car left in a box of memories, a relic of the Riven children before war consumed them. In fact, Kira hoped the classes she purposefully failed in the last few years of her schooling adequately hid previous records so no one realized she ever studied drones.
Becoming invisible in the capital of Ciondo as a woman without a family, especially one who didn't offer great benefit to society, wasn't that difficult. Doing so as the sole prisoner of the Riven household was completely different. She hoped she raised no suspicion lying on the ground to play with the cat, secretly tinkering with circuit boards under the couch.
The third day after Zayne left, Kira wandered outside for a nap in the sun. She laid a blanket out on the grass and pulled another over her for warmth. The covering also hid the paperclips she straightened and wove together to create weights for her drone. Not her most elegant work, but also not the hardest to explain if any of the security guards in the distance noticed.
Her mind ruminated on her friends and whether the Phaedra might target them next, or how she hoped Zayne had actually delivered the letters, or if Elijah could let her go without searching.
The warmth of the sun brought comfort while she worked. The time alone carried in pain, too, and she accepted both. It was okay. She and her friends were okay in this moment.
The edges of the paperclips scratched against her fingertips repeatedly until they all felt sore to the touch. She wasn't sure how many weights she may need, so she kept crafting more.
Soft footsteps drew her attention, and she hid everything as she sat up, the smile already warming her face at seeing Adelle. Only it wasn't her.
Alarm cut through the peace of the last several days and shredded any sense of security. High General Riven approached, his inhumanely cold eyes on her. Kira stumbled up to her knees, heart racing. What if he found the paper clips? Nervous habit. She needed something to do with her hands.
How could he suspect anything worse?
Her heart raced faster with every step the High General took toward her. Zayne's warning repeated in her memory. Do whatever his father says. Whatever.
“High General,” Kira said, now on her feet.
“Ms. Stiles. I'm pleased to see you're feeling more comfortable here than in the prison.”
She glanced down at the blankets. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
Those eyes. All gray. All ice. She saw Zayne in them, if someone ripped out every shred of his conflicted spirit and left him with nothing except duty. This man stood at the Phaedra's side and led the war that massacred innocent people all over the empire. He personally signed orders sending young teenagers to the front lines to die. Never had Kira stood in the presence of someone so powerful and heartless. A war criminal. The worst kind.
It wasn't hard to imagine Luke becoming this man, but for all Zayne's faults, she couldn't see him with eyes like that. Was he really going to lead at the Phaedra's side one day?
She saw the hints of softness beneath Zayne's uniform, but also all that his father expected him to be.
And she also saw that boy drowning in the freezing tank.
This man did that to his own son.
Heat rolled across her body. Actual waves of hot anger. What else had he done to Zayne? Had he ever hurt Adelle?
There was a flicker in the High General's eye like he saw the change in her, but if it upset him to see her anger, he didn't show it. Rather, he looked as if he had calculated a math equation. “Your mother knows you're here with us now, and she knows what information we expect her to provide.”
“Can I talk to her?” Kira asked.
Hope and desperation collided in the pit of her stomach, the two fighting for dominance in a war ripping her heart wide open. A tremble started in her fingers. What if her mom sacrificed innocent people for her?
How horrible did she feel realizing the danger Kira faced?
A chilly night crept into her memory. Snow had collected along the edges of the windowsill in the children's home the day she accepted that she'd never see Mom again. At one time, the thought of it eviscerated Kira's heart. Time wore away at child-like trust until it faded to faith, and from there hope, and finally a dream. A dream until the last year at the home when she prepared to enterKallum as an independent adult, and the reality of the empire dissolved whatever remained of that idea that Mom might find her.
The death of her dream did not arrive unexpectedly or in stabbing pain. The hurt, long buried beneath years of normal, dimmed over time into an ache. An incredibly deep ache.
