Andi's lips pinched together. “She taught us how to be everything we are.”
Zayne's eyes burned looking around a room that felt empty without her. “She didn't deserve this.”
Footsteps stilled all three of them, and they turned at once when their father entered the room. The High General looked at each of his children, and then at a picture of Mom hanging on the wall. He sighed heavily, walking to Andi first. She looked up at the father whose adoration she captured, but whose respect she craved more than anything else.
He clasped her shoulders. “Andi. Your mom looked at you the day you were born and said she was complete now.” An embrace followed, and a kiss on the cheek.
When Zayne's father came to him, he wasn't sure what to expect after their altercation. The other man clasped the back of his neck, gaze soft. “She always said when she didn't know what to do, she looked to you.”
A swell of sorrow gripped him, his breath catching. Mom was the one he followed when he was lost. What did she find when she looked to him? Zayne didn't know what to do without her.
His father hugged him, hand firm between his shoulder blades. His body didn't know what to do. He had the urge to shove his father, to swell his face with bruises. But his arms also wanted to come around him and ease his pain. For him to be his dad, and not his High General. Before he could figure out what to do with himself, the other man slipped away.
If one of them were to die today, would Zayne regret not embracing him back?
Finally, he walked to Luke and held his stare for several seconds. “She said watching you become a father was the highlight of her life.”
Their father wrapped his arms around the oldest brother, and Luke lowered his head against his shoulder, hands gripping him.
It hurt too much. All of it.
And soon, very soon, Zayne planned to stomp all over these broken hearts by betraying his country, his family, and abandoning them to carry Mom's death alone.
How could he do this to them?
In the evening, when Zayne left his family to see Kira, he felt so drained and detached that he struggled to think. Every hour mattered right now though.
He didn't know what his mom was doing in that church, but the timing lined up with Kira returning to prison. Mom must have been trying to save her. If Zayne had listened to her when she told him to leave with Kira, would she be alive today? Would she still have gone to the church if Zayne hadn’t let her down so many times? He'd chipped away at her faith in him with his repeated failures and shortsightedness. Mom would disagree, but he didn't see how that wasn't true.
The initial negotiations with Major Tyndale and his superiors left Zayne with the same problem of the mountains. The United refused to supply any jets, saying invading Ciondian airspace, especially close to the Phaedra's tower, placed the territories in too much danger. The Phaedra would retaliate against that severe act of aggression, and they were already in a difficult place due to losing more ground in Antor every day and Caspador's vulnerable position.
If Zayne didn't find a way to take Kira safely to the territories, she'd face worse horrors in the coming days and weeks. The Phaedra already schemed to get the next locations from Becka Rogers. Father spoke of bringing her friends to the prison. There was little time.
When Zayne entered Kira's room, she lay in bed, her hair tangled enough that he didn't think she had brushed it today.
“Did you eat?” He knelt down beside her, searching her eyes to make sure she didn't fall back into that awful trance.
“I'm eating again. Don't worry.”
Hard not to worry when she spent the two days after he cleaned the blood off her drifting in and out of non-responsiveness.
“None of this is your fault,” he said. “You need to remember that.”
Her eyes closed, legs curling up beneath the blankets. “You said you stayed silent before, when they killed your comrades.”
He steeled himself. “Yes.”
“So what did you say when you were told none of this was your fault?”
“You don't want to be like me, Kira.” She couldn't do this to herself. “The Phaedra was going to order the elder dead no matter what you said.”
“You always avoid my questions.”
Zayne wanted to scream. The impulse came on fast, breaking through the numbness. “I killed him, not you. I did.”
“We both killed him.”
Falling back to the wall, he settled his arms against his knees. He was too exhausted to fight her, but he also couldn't leave her with that guilt. “You're being unreasonable. You haven't lashed out at me when I'm the one who literally killed him. I did that.”
