“They were ready for this,” Damia said as we cut a corner to the right. “Coriattus murdering Conall and Aanya had simply caused a delay in their plans.”
But then…
It would mean all three cities were being leveled to the ground.
That we had succeeded.
My pace slowed as we passed open doors on either side of the hallway, the rooms of a medical kind: gleaming examination tables, supplies lining the shelves, folders neatly stacked on tables, and tablet devices glinting in the red emergency lights.
This must have been the prison’s hospital wing.
As if sensing me internally meandering, Damia squeezed my bicep. “It’s over, Gedeon.”
The statement halted me in my tracks—bloody, crimson tracks. Smears of scarlet colored the floor, the footprints adding a story to the composition of the dead. Bodies of soldiers who had served as guards, doctors, and their assistants peppered thehallway, their black, green, and white outfits blending into a painting of life and death under the neon lights.
Knowing Damia, her people had surely apprehended those who had surrendered instead of resisting. Everyone was supposed to be given a choice of fate, similar to how the Head of Ardaton had announced in his broadcast.
Yet I still struggled to wrap my mind around the fact that Ilasall had fallen, Ardaton was in the process of it, and Coriattus likely too.
Since I was born, I had been trained to fight. For the last twelve years, nearly thirteen now, I had been preparing for war.
And to hear it was a done deal… My fist tightened around the handgun painfully, pleading with the chamber harboring bullets to ground me.
Damia slowed in front of a white door flecked with red. “You may have missed some things while you were transported and locked in here, but at the end of this night, the cities will stand no more.”
So could Kali and Zion.
“Where are they?” I squeezed the firearm dangling at my side, my instincts locked in an overdrive, hunting for any signs of trouble.
“Before we go in.” Damia blocked the door, the metal sign of the number two-hundred-and-four glinting underneath a scarlet lamp. “We found Kali hewing the throat of a guard with a shard of porcelain. She…” Damia trailed off, tracing the neckline of her vest.
Her nervousness called out to my own. Not much could rattle my friend.Whenever she began lacking words, you had to expect an onslaught of woes.
With the side of my fist, I punched the wall. A lightning of ache branched out to my fractured ribs, then rose to stoke theswelling above my cheekbone. My pulse pounded in my eye, causing black spots to obstruct my vision.
I gritted out, “What happened?”
Zion was well aware of what would await us if we were ever captured. What he did to his playthings in our basement was much more creative than what the cities were capable of, so I didn’t doubt he would survive whatever they had thrown at him, but Kali…
Both he and I knew from experience that facing your fears alone could reduce you to a shell of what you used to be.
“I don’t know what they did to her, but…” Damia swallowed. “We had to forcefully remove her from the guard. Kali didn’t react well, and since then”—she twisted the door handle, the sound of a lock giving way similar to the safety of a rifle disengaging—“she’s been like this.”
Huddled in the corner of an examination room, Kali stared at the floor, the emergency lights enshrouding her in a bubble of color. With her knees drawn to her chest, she clutched a shard of porcelain in her injured hand, the healthy one curled in a loose fist, precisely how we had taught her.
I dropped to the floor, my knees banging against the slippery tiles, my bones demonstrating their displeasure by sending twinges up my thighs. I ignored it all, my focus falling fully on Kali, on how she didn’t react. On her vacant look. On how oblivious she was to her surroundings, despite sitting completely naked in a room full of strangers.
“We tried to get her to talk.” Damia gestured to the five men and women she had stationed as guards for Kali, and then at the pile of medical clothing thrown on the examination table. “And dress, but she lashes out at anyone who dares to approach her. Which doesn’t seem to apply to you,” she finished with a mutter, indicating her team to turn around, away from Kali.
Smart woman.
Warily, I brushed my bloody knuckles down Kali’s cheek. “Little death.”
She didn’t so much as twitch. Her stare continued to drill a hole in the floor, a couple of clumped strands of her hair hanging over her eyes.
Disregarding the thunder pounding beneath my ribs, I repeated the caress, murmuring her nickname again and again, a thousand times over.
Damia and her people melted from my peripherals as everything but the woman in front of me fell away.
