For the first time since they met three years ago, she learned what it looked like when her stranger smiled. When Zayne Riven smiled. And she'd been right before. He did have his mother's smile. A heavy, strained version, but every bit as pleasant. A sorrowful smile shadowed by deep gray eyes that glowed with the softest blue in the moonlight.
CHAPTER 32
Kira
The Before-Times
Three Years Ago
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
830 P.C. [Post-Collapse]
Kira waited in the shadows of the office while the stranger who scaled buildings with her disappeared to check for soldiers. If anyone approached, she had nothing to use to defend herself. Scissors might do. She grabbed a pair and jabbed them through the air.
That wasn't stabbing through flesh.
Stepping on one side of the scissors, she pulled on the other, until she pried the two blades apart.
Not bad.
The problem was, she'd never tried to hurt anyone before and didn't know if she could bring herself to do it.
“Follow.” She jumped at the voice, not even hearing the stranger approach from adifferent doorway.
His head lowered to the makeshift blades in her hands, and he might have chuckled. The voice changer made it hard to tell.
Laugh all he wanted. Kira was mostly confident she could use these and that they might cut through flesh and muscle.
“That's better than your sad hunk of wood from earlier,” he said.
How ineffective that turned out to be. He'd yanked it right out of her hand.
“You have enough weapons to share,” she said, looking at the handgun on his hip, the thick knife on the other side, and then the slimmer one strapped to his thigh. Plenty of things to hurt people with.
“I need these. You look like you have a great thing going with your tiny swords.”
Kira frowned at the broken scissors. “Why does it feel like you just don't trust me with your blades?”
He walked forward without answering, leading her up the stairs and to a ladder that she assumed opened to the roof. Climbing behind him, she noticed the flex of his shoulders beneath his black shirt and thought of how easy he made scaling the building with her look. He knew what he was doing. Why was someone like him helping her?
When the stranger peered above the opening, he held a hand for her to wait before quietly leaving her sight.
Within seconds, she heard scraping and thuds. The sound of a struggle. Her heart quickened.
Kira ripped the two sides of the scissors from her pocket and peeked up to see her stranger kick a soldier in the gut. He moved so fast, every motion precise as he knocked the radio from the other man's hand and spun to slam his boot into his sternum.
The soldier coughed, collapsing against her stranger who had rushed him again.
Her heart hammered watching her masked soldier wrap a thick arm around the other man's neck, lock his wrist with his other forearm, and choke him.
Bucking. Snarling. The wounded soldier flailed and fought for any hit he might land, but there was no relenting.
Kira stared into his bulging eyes while the stranger maintained his hold, shoving his foot against a wall for added support. His biceps strained against his black sleeve while he mercilessly strangled the life from the other man.
Kira dropped her scissors. She wasn't a fighter. Didn't know how to do what he did. And these weapons were more likely to get turned on her than anything.
