“Oh, Zane…”
“I left Oppalli. Ran to Santursi.”
Kalie’s voice hissed in his memory:coward, deserter. Zane flinched, but then came the softer echo of her voice:“You are the furthest thing from a coward.”
He could trust her with the truth.
He closed his eyes, and he was sitting on a stool in that filthy bar, holding a bottle of pills. “I just felt so guilty. And the morning of the anniversary, I decided that… that it’d be better if I ended it all.”
Kalie seized his hands. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
“I had a bottle of pills in my hand when I heard a crash down the street. I almost didn’t go, but someone was screaming. I wanted to make sure everyone was okay.” Zane cleared his throat. “It was a hovercraft collision. Hit and run. I chased after the driver, cornered her about the crash. She was wounded. Told me she was on a mission and had to escape. The Feds came looking for her. I got her back to the bar and saved her, but if she hadn’t been there…”
“Mira saved your life.”
As he nodded, his gaze caught on her stained shirt, and his blood ran cold.
It played out in his head with horrible clarity. Light glinted off onyx armor as legionnaires barged into the palace. Dozens of pulsers fired as one. Red lasers screamed down the marble hall, tearing through her head, her chest, her legs. She would fall, gasping, as blood bubbled from craters in her chest.
Zane shuddered. He would die before that happened, but it wouldn’t be enough.
“I tried to talk Lys out of joining the Marines, but she was like you. She believed in the cause. And that’s why I’m so scared.” He pressed the back of his hand to his nose. “She’d been fighting for four cycles. She wasgood. Could hold her own with the toughest of them. It didn’t matter, in the end. And I just think… if I couldn’t protect her… how am I supposed to protect you?”
Kalie hooked her arms around his neck and leaned closer. Their foreheads were practically touching. “I don’t need saving.”
He glanced at the scarlet stains on her shirt, but she caught his chin and raised it.
“That won’t happen to me. You don’t have to protect me, Zane.”
Their shallow breaths quivered between them. Her flushed face was so close that he could make out every fleck of sapphire in her shining blue eyes, every line on her glossy lips. All other sounds faded away as the world fell silent. The rustling trees, the roar of a transport soaring overhead, the hum of a mower slashing through damp blades of grass—it all disappeared as he moved towards her.
He’d been trying to keep his distance. She was different, and he couldn’t bear to risk their friendship when she was the only person he could really open up to.
But this time, she didn’t pull away.
She wasn’t like the others. This mattered.Shemattered.
She alone existed in the world—her rapid breaths brushing his skin, her cherry perfume he’d come to love, her arms hooked around his neck.
Zane threaded his fingers through her silky hair. Her tongue skimmed her lips, and as his pulse pounded in his ears, flutters of heat danced in his stomach. He leaned in and Kalie did too, and then?—
Then she put her hand on his chest. Her chin dropped.
“We can’t.”
He let go.
Her shoulders curled in, and she ducked her head, averting her gaze.
“I overstepped,” Zane muttered, rising to his feet.Again. She’d pulled away that night in his room, and she’d pulled away a second time now. He was an idiot to keep pushing. “I’m?—”
“Princess Hannover!”
A stocky Praetor bustled down the yard’s rocky path. Zane stiffened, glancing at the distant palace. If her father had seen that, he was screwed.
The Praetor didn’t spare him a glance as he skidded to a halt. Kalie lurched to her feet.
The man’s face was ashen.
