A sigh made Zion’s shoulders slump. Mute, he scratched his chest, his nails damaging his skin, and I caught his wrist, returning it to his side.
His throat bobbed as he glanced at the double doors, the one-way glass reflecting the light instead of providing a glimpse inside.
“What is it?” I nudged.
The blue in his eyes dulled. “Amari is dead.”
The woman who had joined Zion’s catch-and-play team, the one he and Ava had personally taught the art of interrogation, of human pain points, of how to win against any opponent.
The friend to both Zion and Kali, the shadow spending all her free time either pestering Zion for more training or pulling Kali into whatever girls’ night nonsense she and Tarri could come up with.
“She’s gone?” I asked, as if the two words could change what had befallen Amari.
He nodded, his chin dipping down and rising back up in a bounce, again and again, like a spring. “Three soldiers backed her into a corner. I couldn’t reach her in time.”
My limbs transformed to stone. I opened my mouth to ask what had occurred, but then shut it before a sound escaped me. Sometimes, knowing was worse than staying in the dark.
So I just hauled Zion close. Caged him in my embrace. And winced at his grunt. The movement had likely pulled the deep laceration in his face, yet I held him tight, bordering on squishing him, unwilling to let him go.
His arms loosened around my back. “Kali,” he mumbled, his fingers catching on my shirt as he stroked down.
“She will come,” I said to assure myself more than him. My nails teased the back of his neck, the area that always liquefied him, turning him into a puddle of mush.
“No.” Wiggling out of my grasp, he gestured for me to turn around. “Look.”
On the opposite side of the street, the thick mist gave birth to a tall figure. Like rising out of the sea, Kali emerged, the bottom of her dark green shirt missing, her navel peeking out, her cargo pants secured high on her waist. The full-body leather sheaths Zion had ordered for her during her first days at our compound dug into her flesh, framing her breasts and upper thighs.
As she marched over to us, she threw a knife high in the air, and a scarlet shower graced her with the beads of the dead. Her fair skin boasted a splatter of red, identical to the steel she was wielding.
Hopping off the curb, she ripped a rifle off her back, a standard-issue soldier’s firearm she must have picked up on her way. She positioned the butt against her shoulder, the black weapon as cold as her determination. Without a pause in her smooth tread, she aimed?—
Thunder slammed into me like a tidal wave. The heavy rumbling morphed into a sharp, high-pitched screech of fracturing glass?—
I yanked Zion away from the Spire’s double doors, maneuvering him to face the street so I could shield him with my body.
The one-way glass exploded, and the shards struck me like a torrent of icicles. Fragments caressed my nape, and heat trickled down to the neckline of my skintight shirt, soaking the synthetic fabric.
But the storm of glass ended as abruptly as it had begun.
“Are you okay?” I half-yelled into Zion’s ear.
“Never better.” As he replied, the tear in his cheek flapped. “And stop shouting.”
I cringed. My eardrums were ringing.
Discarding the useless rifle aside, Kali snarled, “I will skin him alive,” and kicked the few slabs of glass still standing in the door frame.
I didn’t need to ask to know she meant the Head of Ilasall, the man named Peter, the ruler of Ilasall’s land, the person Sadira and Ryder had discovered…extradetails about.
The time had come to see if their suspicions carried a grain of truth or not.
“Stop drooling,” I hissed to Zion as he stepped over the threshold, following Kali inside the building and salivating like a puppy after a treat.
“I can’t.” He rubbed his bottom lip, smearing his own and probably countless soldiers’ blood across the sensitive tissue. “Want a taste?”
As I entered the lobby behind him, shards crunched under my boots, disintegrating into dust. “Oh, I will be getting more than a taste.” I was going to eat himwhole.
The bulge in his pants was unmistakable, but as much as my mouth watered at the prospect of bending him over the empty security station, I erected a wall of ice around me once more.
