A faint smile softened Kira's face. “It's okay.”
He wasn't sure if he returned it or not, but his face didn't feel so strained. “I'll finish up. Tell me if you need anything.”
Now Zayne cleaned what remained.
In the shower, he scrubbed his hands raw until there was no trace of his mom or her death left anywhere. Not visibly, anyway. Ice-cold skin stole his warmth again. He should have put more blankets on Mom. She hated being cold.
Zayne shook his head. He was living moment by moment through discovering his mom. And he couldn't do this here. He couldn't. Kira didn't know yet.
But even when he looked at his clean hands, he smelled the blood. Felt it. Doubling over behind the shelter of the curtain, he gasped for air, worried he made too much noise.
He gave himself over to the silence like Mom taught him, abandoning his fight against the feeling and memories. After dressing and leaving the shower, he felt just as bad, but he could breathe. Zayne tossed his ruined clothes into the hall, mopped up outside the shower, and searched the room for more blood.
He noticed then that Kira had been watching him, the worry in her eyes infuriatingly apparent when she'd been catatonic.
“You're shaking,” Kira said.
No, he wasn't.
Looking down, he saw the tremble in his hands. “I'm just angry.” He sat on the ground beside her so the bed hid most of his body. “Did you eat or drink anything the last three days?”
“I don't remember.”
“We'll start with broth and water. I might be able to get an IV for you.”
Tears trickled down her cheeks. How did he take the pain away from her? What did he need to do?
Zayne never knew holding back ached like this. A deep, crawling ache that burrowed beneath his skin. He tightened his hand into a fist to keep himself from wiping the tears from her face. Each one ripped his chest open. The Phaedra watched, and he didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing him touch her, not after what he ordered Zayne to do.
No one got to think of Kira like that for any reason.
“Stay,” Kira said, voice hardly audible. “Just tonight, please.”
The same deep look filled her eyes as when she asked him to kiss her, only this time it was all pain. His heart was broken, and for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure he could hold himself together. As much as he wanted to comfort her, to simply be with her, he needed to protect her. Now more than ever. But that same sentiment led his father to become the last thing Zayne wanted to be.
And he couldn't walk away from her when she looked at him like that.
“Okay.” The word came out far softer than he knew he could speak. He sat back against the wall, his arm resting on her bed. “I'll stay while you sleep.”
Kira’s touch eased over him, first the brush of her fingertips against his, her hand settling against his knuckles, sliding up to where a scar faintly lightened his wrist and hair no longer grew—almost too subtle to see. No amount of time or distance could erase the memory of the shackles that stopped him from helping his men in the North.
“You can't stay forever,” she said. “I'll be alone.”
Dampness glistened against her slender neck and her collarbone. Glittered in her tortured stare.
She tugged his wrist toward her so gently that he thought it was in his head. Another pull, and he knew it wasn’t. He could give in, crawl into bed beside her and hold her again, feel her, soften the pain they both felt…
Why cover her in blood when they'd just gotten her clean? Zayne would never be rid of it, but she could be. Besides, it would make the Phaedra too happy.
“When I'm gone, find a place to go in your mind,” he said. “Just run there and shut everything out.”
“Where did you go when you were in the north?” The life was stripped from her raspy, hollow voice.
A deep, terrible moan clawed its way up from his depths. He didn't release it, but he'd never be rid of it. Back then, he hadn't had the strength to even scream. Only to groan words they didn't want. The useless words that got his friends killed. He blinked, trying to believe he wasn't still trapped in that room. That he was here with Kira.
“My mom's house.” Dangerous, guttural pain churned in his depths. “I closed my eyes, and I heard her voice… I smelled the vanilla and the fire…” He could see it now. Feel it. Kira closed her eyes, and they were back there together. Back home with his mom. “I felt that heavy blanket she always draped over me when I slept.”
A little sob slipped from Kira. She curled, missing the home she'd grown to love, the mother who'd taken her in. And it was the only mercy in his life that Kira cried too hard to see because it all hurt so terribly that Zayne couldn't hide it. He clenched his jaw until his jowls shook to hold the pain at bay. To keep his voice steady and his eyes clear.
