“You know I don't want to leave you, right?” Kira asked.
“I know, darling.” Adelle patted her hand. “Does Zayne realize what you plan to do?”
“He thinks he can stop me and that what I say to my mom doesn't matter.”
A long sigh, and Adelle rested her head against Kira's. “What you say always matters.” “Fighting the Phaedra, isn't as simple as right and wrong. You make choices. Compromises and sacrifices. Those are what kill most people. They lose the thread, wander from the path, and get lost in the war.”
Grief crashed into Kira's heart. Standing against Zayne was hard enough. Not Adelle too. “Sometimes keeping hold of the thread means giving up your life.”
“And sometimes it means giving up your words. I've already sent the message for Becka not to speak. The elders promise she received it. Zayne sent messages of his own. Your mother will be hearing from every direction to keep silent and trust the thread of justice to cling to you and protect you.”
“We're human. The Followers are human, and so is Zayne. Some wars can't be won.” Kira sat up and met her eyes. “You've been fighting a war just for me, and I'm so thankful. The cost is so high.” She rubbed the pain out of her chest. “Not just the cost for the Followers.”
The understanding in Adelle's eyes broke Kira. “I know.”
“I know you do. You live in this house where you can't escape it.” Shifting on the bed to face her, Kira still clung to Adelle's hand. “Zayne is going to get himself killed trying to save me. He'll never stop, not until he's dead.”
Adelle's lip quivered. “I know.”
“I'm not sure anyone can help me. It's up to me to save myself, and if I can't, it's up to me to choose my path.” A whole life behind her and all the wonderful possibilities ahead of her—it all gaped wide open in her heart. “I'm not making my choice in a black or white view of right and wrong. I'm not making it on principle. I'm doing what I have the power to do.”
Adelle chuckled quietly, and it was anything but happy. “By loving us, the Phaedra thought you'd bind yourself to him and fool your heart into compliance. He doesn't understand what he's fighting against. The good in you is the same good that's been transcending suffering since the beginning of humanity. The good that ended wars and freed the enslaved and saved rights from the hands of greedy men. No matter how many times the spirit of the Phaedra kills us, we return. We stay steady. All that good lives in you. It lives in any of us who choose it.”
“Then you understand why I have to do this,” Kira said.
“I understand why you think you do. Our power is subtle. We see his in bombs that rip apart innocent bodies. He often can't see ours. The Phaedra has beaten the good out of so many people. Do you know how some people survive the men who hurt us?”
Adelle slid a strand of Kira's hair behind her ear, touch as soft as her whisper. Kira just watched her, wanting to stay here with her forever, speaking in thesilence the Phaedra demanded, voices mingling with generations of unbreakable revolutionaries.
“They love those men,” Adelle said. “They love them more than they've ever loved anyone. They push the fear down so deep inside they don't know it's there, and they worship the men who abuse them—praying, praying, praying they might be spared.”
Adelle was right. The people who should hate the Phaedra most often offered him the most praise and excuses.
“I love that you tell those same men no.” Tears dampened Adelle's eyes. “But damn it, does it terrify me for you, my sweet girl. The Phaedra won't hear you say no. Sometimes, we need to shout it out at him. Most times, we should be strategic. Take a lesson from the people deluding themselves into loving him. Pretend today so you can fight tomorrow.”
Kira buried her face against Adelle's shoulder and wept without trying to stop herself. If she pretended to capitulate and told Mom to give up the Followers, she risked pushing her mom to do just that. What if Mom didn't listen to everyone urging her to stay quiet?
“Please,” Adelle whispered, rocking her softly. “Please be careful. Please, Kira. Please, sweet girl. I'll never ask you to stop. I never asked Zayne to stop.” A sob cracked Adelle's voice. “But please be careful with this heart and life I love so much. Don't make decisions until the moment you know. It's never too late to reconsider.”
“You be careful too,” Kira whispered back. “We need you.”
“I'll always be careful for you kids. Now hold on, okay? Don't give up hope.”
The grief burrowing in her chest ached with a depth of pain her mind couldn't comprehend. “Adelle…” Kira allowed herself to be broken and whole at once. Fighting and alive while also dying from the terror and pain. “It's only a matter of time, and I would rather do it than give the Phaedra the satisfaction.”
Adelle never faltered as the picture of strength and wisdom. Not until now. Fear cracked through her composure. “I'll never agree that you should kill yourself.”
Now it was Kira's turn to soften her voice and comfort this woman. “I'd never ask you to. I only want your forgiveness if the time comes that I have to lay down my life. Sometimes, people die, and no one can save them. I want to live. I'd do anything to live. But if I'm going to die, I'll die fighting. I'll give my life to save the others, not lose it while praying, praying, praying to the Phaedra for mercy.”
The emotions gripped them both so much that neither of them noticed the door had opened until Zayne's low rumble coursed through the air. Adelle and Kira both flinched at the voice, twisting to stare at him.
“You will not die.” Never before had Zayne exuded as much authority and confidence as now. Speaking as if his decree alone could reorder the heavens and Earth and make it so.
He strode forward with his shoulders rigid and his eyes lethally hard, staring down on her for several seconds. Kira couldn't breathe.
Suddenly, Zayne hauled her up so forcefully her feet left the ground. In an instant, he pressed against the wall, his grip commanding and his stare even more forceful. He ripped the rest of the world away from her and forced her into this corner where she saw only him, felt only him. His hands were unyielding.
Even if he wasn't stronger than her, Zayne's touch immobilized her. The touch he gave her three years ago and denied her ever since. The touch she felt along her sides and lips when she slept.
