Chapter 89 Under the Ember Sky
(Amani POV)
The sky above Ember Pass bleeds red.
It’s dawn, but it looks like the world’s on fire. The ridge smokes from somewhere deep below, the air hot enough to burn the back of my throat. Every instinct in me screams that she’s still down there, that Zuri’s heartbeat is buried beneath all that metal and ash.
“Signal still dead,” Rex says, pressing the radio to his ear. His voice cracks through the static. “Nothing from her tracker. Nothing from Ghost’s either.”
That name turns my stomach. Ghost.
If he really was alive, if he’s the one who lured her under, then everything I thought I’d buried just clawed its way back to the surface.
I grip the handlebar of my bike so tight my knuckles go white. “We go in anyway.”
Rex curses under his breath, checking the drone feed from the tablet strapped to his vest. “The main shaft’s unstable. You try to ride through that, the whole thing could cave in.”
“Then we don’t ride,” I say, swinging off the bike. “We run.”
He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have.
The closer I get to the edge of that ravine, the louder I can hear it, the low, rhythmic pulse under the ground. Not natural. Machinery. Ancient. The kind Antonio Moretti would’ve built back when he thought the earth owed him a throne.
A gust of wind rips through the valley, carrying with it the faint scent of smoke and iron. Blood and memory.
“Zuri,” I whisper, before I start down the narrow slope.
The ground shifts under my boots. Dust clouds rise. I slide the last few feet into the side passage, grabbing onto the rusted ladder leading into the underground shaft.
The metal burns cold against my palms. I climb anyway.
Halfway down, the first explosion hits.
A deep roar tears through the tunnels, throwing me against the wall. Pebbles rain from above, a wave of hot air slamming into my back. Somewhere below, the floor gives way.
“Rex! Get out of here!” I shout into the comm.
The only reply is static and the faint crackle of fire.
I drop the last ten feet and land in a crouch. Dust blinds me. The air tastes of electricity. My flashlight flickers over jagged stone, splintered beams, and a trail of blood leading deeper in.
Hers.
I know that color anywhere.
“Zuri!” I call again, voice echoing off the steel ribs of the tunnel. No answer.
The hum beneath the floor grows louder, like an engine awakening after decades of sleep. I follow the trail until it ends at a steel door, half-collapsed, warped from heat.
Behind it, faint light pulses blue.
I shove at the metal. It doesn’t move. My shoulder protests with a pop, but I keep pushing. The door creaks open an inch, just enough to slip through.
The room on the other side is a graveyard. Burned-out screens. Scattered tools. Smoke curling from a melted control panel. In the middle of it all, a screen still flickers weakly, showing static and—
My chest goes cold.
Antonio Moretti’s face.
Recorded feed, maybe, but it’s clear as day. His voice slides out of the speakers, smooth and poisonous.
“You think you can take what’s mine, boy? You think she chose you?”
I freeze.
“You ride with the Kings because I let you. You built your name with my money. Don’t you remember who gave your brother his first patch?”
The words scrape through my skull.
“No,” I whisper. “That’s not true.”
But the truth tastes like rust.
When the Kings were nothing but chaos and scraps, someone funded our first safehouse, supplied our bikes, pushed the cash that kept us from dying in the dirt. Rex told me it was an anonymous donor. I didn’t ask questions, didn’t want to know.
Now I do.
And I hate myself for it.
The screen glitches again, and I see a flash of Zuri, pale, bloodied, running through a maintenance shaft. The feed cuts before I can tell where she’s headed.
“Damn it, Zuri.”
I grab the remaining power cable and yank it from the wall. Sparks fly. The entire room goes dark except for the faint glow of fire leaking through the cracks in the floor.
If Antonio wanted me to doubt her, to make me question everything we built, then he almost won. Almost.
Because no amount of twisted bloodline history changes the one truth that’s kept me alive: she’s mine to protect.
Even from her own family.
Even from the ghosts I helped create.
I turn and run.
The tunnel shudders again, this time with the force of something collapsing in the distance. A wash of heat hits me from behind, followed by the shriek of bending metal.
The ground opens up for a split second, and I see it, the firestorm roaring through the deeper levels. Ember Pass is eating itself alive.
I sprint faster, lungs screaming. The exit ahead glows faintly from daylight bleeding through a half-broken hatch.
I crash through it just as another blast rips the air apart. The shockwave sends me tumbling across the dirt outside. When I finally stop, the world is spinning, the sky painted in smoke and flame.
My ears ring. My vision tilts. Somewhere behind me, the tunnel mouth collapses completely.
“Zuri!” I roar, dragging myself up. My throat feels raw. “Zuri!”
Nothing but the crackle of fire and the echo of falling rock.
Then—so faint I almost think I imagined it—a sound answers.
A cough.
I spin toward the ridge where the smoke’s thinner. Something moves there—a figure half-crawling, half-dragging herself through the debris.
Zuri.
Alive. Barely.
I sprint toward her, sliding to my knees beside her as she collapses against me, her skin streaked with soot, her breath shallow but steady.
Her eyes open for just a moment—wild, haunted. “He knew,” she whispers. “He built it all. The tunnels, the club, even you.”
My stomach knots. “Zuri—”
But she’s already fading again, her head dropping against my chest.
I look toward the collapsed tunnel. The flames rising behind it. The faint hum that hasn’t stopped.
Because the war didn’t start tonight. It started years ago, the moment Antonio Moretti decided to make monsters out of all of us.
And I’ll be damned if I let him win.