“I'm not stripping my clothes off to prove I'm not hurt.”
Her lips pursed, failing to form whatever she was about to say. “Well.” Her eyes narrowed again, but the fire in them faltered. “I'm not exposing my forehead to you. At least, not until you explain yourself for once.”
Zayne snorted, a smirk tempting his lips. “You're probably fine if you have the energy to be stubborn.”
“Like you're one to talk.”
Their eyes met for a beat longer than a second, and that was all it took for the woodsy air to turn thick and strangle the levity. The weight of their history and his absence pushed down against him.
“What now?” Kira asked, looking as vulnerable as she did while dangling off the edge of buildings.
Tightness crawled up his throat. “I move on to the next plan.”
“Then when I'm free, you'll pretend not to know me again.”
The quiet was alive with the hard, rhythmic pounding of his heart. Each look and word felt so dangerous now. “I can't know you. You'll never be free as long as you're in my life.”
She wandered away from him to a clearing in the woods, eyes on the sky, fingers sliding over the bark of a tree. Minutes passed while they struggled beneath the same weight, the same budding trees, but utterly alone.
“I get it.” Kira cast a look over her shoulder in the scarlet haze of the setting sun. Her fingers picked away cracking tree bark to unearth the pale white below. “That's why you've never wanted to see me. You think you'll poison me because that's what you've chosen to become.” Her hand fell away from the trunk. “You're deep in a forest no one can reach, contaminating the soil, so the roots of the strongest trees will drink it up.”
Allowing Kira to see beneath that damn mask might be their undoing. The way she looked at him ripped his defenses to shreds and bared his soul to her when he fought so hard to hide. Zayne didn't want to hurt her, but every day she picked away more of his cracking bark, no matter what he did. Panic raked its claws through his chest.
“You're killing yourself along with them, one miserable day at a time.” Her finger trailed smooth wood that hid beneath the rough exterior. “Then there's me, a leaf clinging too stubbornly to the end of dying branches.”
Kira worked close enough that he worried she'd destroy that flimsy distance protecting them from each other. It didn't matter if he ran to the other side of the empire. She'd find him there.
“There's only one way to save the Followers and protect your power to keep fighting,” she said. “I'll do it. I'll drink your poison.” The sun burned red in its descent, and its dying fire shone in Kira's eyes. “Take my life.”
The quiet beat away at him, daring him to break it. He knew he'd failed her, but this was worse than that. He'd crushed her hope.
“No.” He spoke with the authority of centuries of Rivens leading armies. “Don't you ever say that again.”
“Yes.” Kira said it with the same measure of power. “Any day, my mother will give up the Followers. How can my life be worth so many others?”
“I'm handling her.”
“Every time I thought I was alone, you were there. Making sure no one hurt me.” It looked as if it physically hurt to say the next part. “But I still ended up here. You're human. There are no guarantees.”
“I could never hurt you,” Zayne said.
“You killed an innocent woman before. You'll do it again.”
The dread he first felt looking down at her in the observatory window built until his insides were bursting. He'd sacrifice every scrap of his flesh, every drop of his blood, before anyone hurt Kira. Nothing could ever make him kill her. To even think of the sins he'd commit first would damn his soul. He'd lay this empire to ruin. Destroy what remained of his humanity and take the Phaedra down with him.
The fury made it hard to speak, and even harder to keep from yelling once he opened his mouth. “Not even these woods are safe enough to talk like this. Quiet.”
The chilly breeze clattered the leaves and tossed strands of hair over her face. “You just don't want to talk about it.”
“No, I don't want to talk about killing you, Kira. Fuck.” Zayne looked around. “You may think I'm paranoid, but you can never be too paranoid. Come on.”
It took a few seconds for her to follow, but she did, her silence as stubborn as his own. Minutes crawled by while they trekked deeper into the woods, and hewas still fuming about what she demanded he do to her. They'd settle this soon enough in the only place safe enough to talk.
Long ago, Zayne searched these woods for the perfect tree. One that was dead and hollow and didn't stand out among the other dead trees. When they came upon the one he had picked, he pulled back the bush growing over the opening of the hollow.
“Go in. Watch those roots.”
Pausing, she stared at the dark opening, but then she ducked and disappeared into the tree. When Zayne followed, he hit the switch his fingers knew so well, and the battery-powered lights lit.
