Kira fought to hold him up as he regained his hold on his body, but he was teetering. On the verge of falling the rest of the way and crushing any hope of rising again.
“Water and medicine, no arguing.” After digging through his bag, she helped him drink and injected him with another red cap.
The pain clouded him more than sedation from pain medication at this point. He didn't fight her.
Zayne closed his eyes and rested his head atop her silken hair.
Her arms came around him carefully, hands gripping him. “Brock is coming. Hold on.”
He smiled. “Get on that jet when it's time.”
“Don't you dare say goodbye to me.” She drew back, anger papering over her terror.
“I need you to be free…” He said. “It's the only ounce of joy I can find…”
Tears broke as she heard her own words echoed back to her.
“That's how wars are won.”
“I won't leave you here.”
For the first time since Zayne saw Kira drowning in her prison uniform, he pushed nothing away. The force tying them together tugged, and Zayne followed it, wrapping his arms low around her where it didn't take much strength. He held Kira and eased the edges of their suffering.
“I'll fight with all I have to get on the jet with you.” His cheek slid against hers. “If I can't…”
“You can. You will.”
Shock and denial kept Kira from seeing the obvious. Zayne didn't have long. How was he going to survive the trip to the territories? “I'll try to walk farther… But next time I fall, run.”
A sob shuddered her body. “I can't do this. You survived the north. You survived reprogramming. You can survive this.”
He nodded, so tired of making her cry. “I'll take every step I can.”
Her warmth consumed his freezing body. He needed her closer.
Kira's gaze fell to his lips and ignited the night with the taste of their kiss. This was when Zayne normally ran, but he could hardly move.
“You're really done with Mellie?” she asked. “What if she'd come with you to the territories?”
“I left her…” Zayne would sign divorce papers this moment if he could. It wasn't real. Or it didn't matter that it was real. He couldn't keep right and wrong straight, only that he didn't have the strength to carry Mellie and the guilt with him right now. “It has to be possible… to be free…”
“Then you're free.” Kira cupped his cheek. “I know you think you're going to die. So, if you fall again, and if I run for help, you say goodbye.” She wafted a breath against his lips just like he'd once done to her. Her scent tangled his senses and dismantled months of self-control. Of denial. “I'll say I'm coming back for you.”
The entire time she remained in the Phaedra's captivity, he refused to look at her or think about her. He spent so long beating what he wanted out of himselfthat he no longer knew how to feel it. The way his body craved hers overpowered that. Whether it was because she was no longer his prisoner, or because there was no future—because what could be more final than death—Zayne accepted the heat crawling up his chest. Beautiful eyes stared into his, glossed with moonlight and heartbreak, a window to the soul of the bravest person he'd ever met.
Her lips hovered agonizingly close to his.
Habit commanded him not to look, but they had abandoned the prison walls between them, and the wife who loved the Phaedra too much for him to love her, and there was no longer any excuse or honor holding himself back from Kira. Especially not the laughable lie that he didn't want her. That he didn't want to nip her pouty bottom lip or plaster her soft body against his chest. Because all the thoughts forbidden to him these last few months raced through his mind at the hint of her breath on his mouth.
Kira had broken so many parts of him. Now she melted what remained together, so he had no hope of putting himself back together. And what did it matter when he would die today? She could have it all. Whatever of him she wanted. He had no use for anything any longer.
“Zayne,” Kira whispered.
He stared into her eyes, for once not hiding behind a mask. Not hiding the fear of wanting to kiss her before he died, when it could hurt her.
“You said I wouldn't want to kiss you if I knew you.” More breath against his lips. More of her. “You've never been more wrong in your life.”
Every second of holding her and kissing her seared his memory. Every time they'd touched since. When he lifted her from the tank, took her hand to help her up in the tree, held her hand at the prison. When she cleaned the blood from his face in the office, and when he cradled her in the shower. Embracing each other on the prison balcony with their broken hearts between them.
