Page 64

Amaia

F or the first time in a long time, I did not want to die. And that was how I knew my circle of life was complete.

Hadn’t that always been the joke of what we called living?

When one turmoil ends, another begins—and the second you think it couldn’t get any worse, you realize how good you had it. Whatever Millie had seen had changed nothing and everything all at once. But most of all, it’d killed my hope. That last sliver, that final tendril of juvenile thirst for a future.

Dreams weren’t for generals.

Dreams were for revolutionaries to form and generals to bring about. The good ones, the greats—they were both.

I did not desire greatness for myself, only others. With that came the necessity of being too comfortable with sacrifice. I was going to blow this motherfucker to the ground.

Reaching into my pocket, my fingers grazed the smooth, cool surface of the most precious thing I owned. With shaky fingers, I slid the ring gifted from the other half of my soul, and placed it where it belonged. That slight narrowing in honey brown eyes and contortion of confusion on Alexiares’s face echoed in my mind. I shoved it aside. No distractions. No second-guessing.

This was my choice, my mess to clean up. You will end this today . The magic churned beneath my skin. It was hungry—starving, volatile.

There was no creak of the massive doors as I slipped inside the capitol. Suddenly, I felt small as fuck. What are you doing? Clutching onto my blades, I stepped down the cavernous halls. They stretched in eerie stillness, light filtered through the large windows.

I moved through the mansion with unexpected ease. It was all wrong. There should be guards, or at least staff—people moving about. They were under attack and this was their base—their capitol.

The faintest scuff of footsteps echoed in the stillness around the corner. My pulse spiked as I scanned the shadows, fingers twitching at my sides. I was really about to test my luck here. Pushing into an uncleared room, I stepped behind the door. Thank fucking God. It was empty. And beautiful. Focus … focus . It was an effort. Danger or not, I loved touring stuff like this.

My awe burned away as the doorknob turned behind me.

The door swung open.

Without thinking through the repercussions, I grabbed them by the arm and dragged them inside, accidentally slamming the door in the process. Before they could so much as yelp, I pressed them against the wall, my forearm pinning them in place.

A girl.

“Talk,” I demanded. “Now.”

Wide eyes stared back at me. She was somewhere between Elie and Abel’s age, her face ghostly and gaunt. She didn’t shake or cry. Instead, she tilted her chin up, that recognizable defiance sparking in her expression.

“I’m here to help,” her voice was light as the wind—small, but certain.

Oh my God. Were kids everywhere just intent on putting themselves in the middle of a war? “I don’t need any help.” I scoffed, leaning in closer. She may be but a teenager, but I knew from the one under my care they were not to be underestimated. “I have somewhere to be. Who the hell are you and what makes you think you’re capable of providing any help?”

Her lips twitched in a dare. “My name is Miranda,” she said. “And I can get you to Ronan. I know this place like the back of my hand. My mother is … was on the cleaning staff, I grew up here. You won’t find him in any of these rooms.”

“What do you have to gain?” I said, easing my hold on her, if only by a fraction.

“I knew Seth?—”

“Not a good start,” I interrupted, my arm promptly going back to her neck.

“He was the only person in the capital to treat me like a person. You’re General Bennett, right?”

I scanned her over, she was maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet—still great condition for someone who obviously lived in The Outskirts. Which meant there was a high chance she was desperate to get out of that place, and desperate people were capable of great things. I pushed harder, cutting off her air supply.

“I never … said … he was kind,” she gasped, her lips pursing to the side in an attempt to bring oxygen to her lungs. “He was just … true.”

Given the fact that I’d already wasted precious minutes searching through this maze of a place without coming across a single soul, Miranda was the only lead I had at the moment. “Ugh,” I groaned, releasing her for good and pacing across the room.

Drawing one of the twin blades, I swung it, pointing it at her. “You have two minutes. Talk fast.”

“He loved his sister, Tomoe too. Seth didn’t say much most days, but when he did, it would always be about something the two of them liked. I want to help them. He cared about them and now he’s not here to protect them. Let me help.”

“You want to help because someone was nice to you in passing and talked to you about the people they betrayed?”

Miranda shrugged, “The last time someone was nice to me just for the heck of it, I was a little girl. I want what Seth wanted—what my family wanted—our worlds to blend. There seems to be … freedom in that, I think.”

Freedom . It had been a long time since the word had been uttered in any real sense. In one that had zero relation to war. Yellow seeped into the whites of her eyes but the stare in them was sincere. Prescott’s words echoed in my mind. The best thing a person can have in life is the honor of returning a favor. When money no longer has a use, when loyalty can’t be bought, your word and life debts are the only currency left.

“What power do you have?”

“Air. Not much?—”

“And you can get me to Ronan?” I asked, narrowing my gaze. Coincidental, how it was all working out.

She nodded, the dry strands of her midnight hair fell over her shoulder as she glanced down, calculating. “There are tunnels beneath the building. They run to other stuff nearby, Governor’s Mansion and the Pocahontas Building specifically. Some of it was open to the public at some point. But if I had to guess, they’re underground in one of the hidden rooms in between.”

“Secret rooms, that you know about?” I asked, a slight edge to my words as I sheathed the blade.

“I found them by accident. A lot of the staff kids would play hide and seek here … before Ronan.”

Good enough, I suppose . No time better than the present to have a little faith in someone’s morality. “Show me,” I said, gesturing for her to lead the way.

We crept from the dusty sitting room and I kept her pace through the winding hallways. The stale cool air wrapped around us once we hit the passageways. Shadows drifted unnaturally, darting in and out of view, always at the edge of my vision. The first sign of life since I’d stepped through the second portal. Despite the shadows, the tunnels were engulfed in silence.

The walls were narrow, tight enough for the damp stone press on every side. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped in a slow, tortuous rhythm. It made me miss my hound. I rubbed the small diamonds on the band against the two surrounding fingers, needing proof of it existing on my body in the present, as a grounding force.

“You came down here as a child?” I asked in a hushed tone.

Miranda nodded, her focus still ahead. “It’s … easier when you don’t know what’s actually around you.”

“What’s around us?”

As if the universe was suddenly thrilled to answer the questions I had in life, an ear-shattering scream came from beyond the other side of the wall. It muffled out by the next time I blinked.

The tunnels grew narrower as we went and the magic in my chest swirled in unease—as though it could sense something I could not.

We reached a dead end, and for a moment, I thought she’d gotten us lost. But Miranda pressed her hand against the wall, her fingers searching until they found an almost invisible seam. She pushed, and the wall groaned as it shifted, revealing a narrow passage.

“Through here?” Yeah, fuck that. Inside, I was screaming. It was pitch black, save for a single, half-dead torch flickering down the hallway.

“No one comes this way except for the staff. Some of the doors are another exit from rooms facing the main hallway.”

“Perfect,” I muttered, squaring my shoulders. Okay. I was really doing this. Everything is fine. You are fine. You are still breathing which means you still have to fight . I wiggled my fingers, forcing that false bravado I wore for others front and center in hopes that maybe, just maybe, I could fool myself.

“There’s light streaming from under three doors in the center. What are those?” I asked, nodding toward the glowing lines.

Miranda hesitated, shifting on her feet. “Never made it that far. The storage for cleaning material is in this one … for, um, harder clean ups. Mass clean ups.” She pointed to the door right next to us.

“Here?” I stopped and turned to her.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Miranda?”

“Mhm?”

“If I tell you this is where your portion of the mission ends, you wouldn’t listen, would you?”

Her expression shifted from defiance to resolve in her eyes, the same fire I’d seen in Elie’s and Abel’s. She was brave, too brave for her own good.

And I couldn’t let her die for me.

“Um …”

“Didn’t think so. You don’t seem like the type.”

“I can help,” she insisted, taking a small step closer.

“I know,” I whispered, regret curling around the words. “I don’t doubt that you could. I’m sorry. When you wake up, press the button in the middle, it will keep you safe. Just … trust me, which will be hard considering.”

Miranda’s sparse brows knitted together, confusion flashing across her face. I let my magic unfurl, pulling the oxygen from her lungs. Her eyes went wide, panic flickering there for the briefest moment before her body went slack and her lungs emptied.

I caught her before she hit the ground and pulled her gently into the storage closet. “You’ll have a place in Monterey,” I murmured, brushing her hair out of her face as I lowered her to the stone floor. “Find Reina.”

It was a gamble. The device, clunky and slightly heavier than it appeared, had found its place in my hand. I slid it over Miranda’s wrist, positioning it the way Finley had instructed. Leave it to her to give me one last Fuck you , even in death. She’d brought it to me a few days before she died, yet another one of her prototypes—except this one she was interested in offering for a trade after the war. The button in the middle felt too small against my trembling fingers. When she woke up, she’d need to press it, trust that it would work. Just like I was trusting it now, even as the weight of the choice sat on my chest.

I turned back to the passage, releasing a long, controlled exhale. The doors with the lights on dared me with a devilish glow, to find out what was on the other side. A dare in which I’d have no joy in taking because I knew, without a doubt, that Ronan Moore awaited me on the other side.

I chose the middle door. No particular reason. The path that lay in between seemed as good an option as the other two. I rolled my shoulders, flexing my fingers again as my magic coiled tighter and pushed it open.

The room was too clean, too bright. Screens covered the wall, lit up with cameras on one side, photos of my family and I on the other. Prescott and Jax had one simple phrase noted in red ink over theirs—TERMINATED. Strange. How in such a moment, I knew I should have been filled with rage. My eyes wandered to the picture at the very end of the line-up … Seth’s. And the same message was displayed over his. Ronan’s own son, who had lost his head trying to make his father proud, had still been deemed an enemy in the end.

“So you’ve met my son,” Ronan smiled, leaning back in his chair, his desk at the center of the room.

I refused to look at him. Willed myself not to respond immediately. It shouldn’t have been painful—seeing Seth on the wall like … that . The pain should have come from seeing Prescott’s stern military photo from his time in the Marines, pulled from God knows where or Jax’s grinning face, a picture that had once been displayed in Compound Hall. But that wasn’t where the ache came from. They had family and loved ones to mourn them.

Seth in the end, had no one, only people who’d deemed him a traitor. I hated him, but the complexity of his betrayal had become clear in the passing months. He was nothing more than a boy who had been driven mad by the fact that he knew in his gut that his brother was alive. Yet, he had no resources to find him. Instead, he resorted to the closest source, a man who happened to be a spitting fucking image of him.

“Hunter’s more pleasant than the last. I’ll give you that,” I said finally, glancing around the rest of the room, keeping my voice strong. “Bietoletti, Malachai, as ugly as ever, how are you two doing? Riley says, Go fuck yourself .”

I waved to Malachai, decided to hold his grotesque stare instead of his master’s. He said nothing, his beady eyes only stared through me, like he couldn’t be bothered to see me as a clear, evenly matched opponent. Fine. Let him think that .

The door groaned shut behind me, sealing me in. The sound of it latched deep into my chest in a steel trap. The scrape of my boots against the cold floor echoed in the silence, the rhythm of breathing around me adding weight to the air. The room itself seemed to amplify the truth— you’re not getting out of here . Every step I took sealed my fate.

“He takes after his mother,” Ronan said, his voice dripping with casual malice. “You know how genetics are.”

“Oh, I’d say you’re one to two on the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree , thing.”

He leaned forward in the blurred lines of my vision. “You’re outnumbered, why don’t you take a seat.”

“Please don’t insult me, Ronan.” I scoffed, eyes glaring daggers into his soul. “I’ll get mad. You don’t like me when I’m mad.”

Ronan didn’t move. Didn’t blink. The silence between us stretched on, suffocating, unbearable. His eyes were locked on mine, watching for any sign of weakness. I held my ground, refusing to be the one to turn away first. His lips twisted like he wanted to smile, the freckles speckling his face making the harsh wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead more pronounced. The faint tension rippling through his jaw betrayed him.

It was a small tell, hardly decipherable to the eye of a person unwilling to take risks, but it was enough for me to stay on my feet. That small hesitation to engage, a sliver of uncertainty on which of us would leave the room … It gave me all the confidence in the world to keep going.

I was outnumbered, and though I was armed, I should be the scared one. But I wasn’t, I was numb. Ronan—the man who had built his empire on corpses and greed—was the scared one. And that made it so much worse. After the glimmer of hope settled, it disappeared. Fear made my situation fatal. A scared dog would always bite.

Malachai moved behind him with methodical ease, dragging a black tripod from the corner. His olive-hued hands adjusted it methodically, as if this was all rehearsed. Bietoletti moved from the door and stepped aside for the camera’s line of sight, his frame tilting toward me with renewed interest.

The setup wasn’t for show. I knew what this was. He wanted to make an example of me but he had yet to realize this was my stage, not his.

Ronan stood slowly, his steps deliberate on the polished floor. His hands remained behind. He didn’t need a weapon. His sheer size as a Supra was a threat, every move designed to remind me how much smaller I was. Ronan Moore came to a stop directly in front of me then leaned down, hoping to make me cower in fear. I did no such thing.

I stayed focused, holding a quiet, deliberate calm as I watched him. Where he moved, my eyes followed. Submission wasn’t an option. The only thing I had to offer him was the sour taste of absolute disgust of knowing I had to exist and breathe the same air as a murderous sack of shit. One who had zero regard for human life that was unable to serve his benefit.

“Tell me, General Bennett,” he said, his venomous breath warm against my skin. Peppermint was now on my no smell list. “What’s the end goal here?”

His laugh was low and maniacal as he reached out, brushing a curl from my temple, the outside of his hand tracing down the side of my face. I did not back down. The glare aimed at him was meant to mark.

“Funny.” I shrugged. “I was just about to ask you the same thing before I realized, I don’t really care.”

“Tsk.” He was amused. Enjoying this. “Now, I don’t believe that for a second.”

His fingers tangled into the mess of my bun. The sharp pull yanked me off balance and forced me to my knees. The cold stone bit into my skin, but I didn’t flinch, didn’t cry out.

I glared up at him, the heat of defiance searing through the numbness. He wanted to make me cower. I’d make sure he’d regret it.

Today, he would dance with death—we both would.