Without a second glance at the glasslike reception desk and the three empty, sand-hued leather chairs behind it, Kali stomped toward the stairwell. We had no knowledge of how the power worked here, so risking taking the elevators while there was a possibility of them shutting down mid-ride would have been foolish.
I pulled Zion closer to me. His muscles rippled under my palm, his shape a sculpture of exercise. “Once this is over, I will destroy you.” Smugness washed over me at the effect I had on him—his core spasmed. “You won’t be able to walk out of here.”
Kali ripped the door open to the stairwell bathed in blue by the flickering backup lights.
Zion paused in the doorway. “I never said I was above crawling,” he drawled, looking me up and down so slowly, it set me aflame.
Heat climbed up my thighs, causing them to spasm?—
“Kill first, fuck later,” Kali yelled as she hovered a dozen stairs above us. A drop of red gathered on her chin, dangled, stretched?—
It fell, bursting open on the metal stairs and glazing the grated treads in color.
Climbing to the first landing, Zion muttered, “Bossy.”
Such a feisty creature Kali was, with a foul mouth and a ferocious attitude, yet I didn’t want her to be anything else.
Despite us ascending the winding stairs for what felt like an eternity, floor after floor, landing after a landing, a task without an end in sight, she didn’t complain. Didn’t stop for a break even when her muscles must have lit on fire, when sweat dotted her eyebrow, when her breaths grew labored, and not even when she had to clutch the railing for support.
She kept moving forward.
We left ten, twenty, thirty, forty floors behind us, and only when the door to the last one—the fiftieth—loomed ahead of us, did we slow.
Throughout our trek, not a single security guard had jumped us and not a sound had slipped past the closed doors in all the landings.
The building had been evacuated.
We could only hope the king of Ilasall remained in his throne—the top floor of the Spire.
As Kali wiped the sweat off her face, Zion and I copied her. My shirt had become a second skin from the moisture, and a V-shaped stain decorated the fabric in the front. The trip had injected acid into my bloodstream, and my muscles begged for me to give them a rest.
Willing their prayers to subside, I seized the door handle, the brass so cold it zapped me. “Let’s end this once and for all,” I said as I pushed the door open.
Daylight assaulted my senses, incinerating my retinas as we emerged into an…apartment. A space overtaking the entire floor, the housing fit for the commander of the city.
Plush, no-expense-spared furniture dyed milky white decorated the expanse. The walls were shaded from white at the top to black at the bottom, creating a mirage of shadowsslithering across the pale wood floor, laying in wait for an opportunity to twine around your ankles.
As a short and curvy woman rose from the snow-like couch, her ash-brown hair cascaded down to her waist in ripples. Climbing out of the sunken living room in the center of the space, she contorted her plump lips brightened by the red lipstick into a smile not quite reaching her eyes. “Welcome.” Her high heels clacked against the hardwood floorboards. “I’m Livana.”
So she was the newest doll Peter had commandeered. About twenty years younger than him, closer to my age than his.
A green wristband dangled on Livana’s wrist as she smoothed out the wrinkles in her impossibly tight white dress. “We’ve been waiting for you.” She gestured to the man gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Even from afar, I could appreciate the view from this high up. The city unraveled before you in a blanket of gray roofs and equally gray streets buzzing like a hive—a home for an ocean of bullets and knives, fists and elbows, cracking bones and tearing flesh. Bodies flooded the roads, both fallen and upright.
In the mass of Ilasall’s military, the colorful clothing of our people and dark outfits of the black-banded stood out like flowers in spring, the blossoms flapping in futile attempts to avoid being crushed.
But it wasn’t the scenery that hammered against the wall of ice I had formed around myself.
It was the familiar features of the Head of Ilasall turning to face us.
The easy confidence in his tone demolished the barrier I had constructed as he said, “Hello, my son.”
69
ZION
Paralysis took hold of me.
