Free The Last City by Nina D'Aleo

It wouldn’t be long now.
    Ev’r stared at the chains binding her arms to her sides. The imp-breed soldier, Snack-size, had tied her securely but not cruelly, and the chains didn’t feel so foreign against her skin. Captivity wasn’t a stranger. It had long been an enemy, but she’d grown to understand that the captivity she hated had defined her. It had given her a purpose, a goal to reach, enemies to hate. It had destroyed and reformed her so many times that she was little more than a composite of the scars it had given her, painful truths it had taught her and years lived one day at a time, second by second. Inside captivity, she had known who she was and what she wanted – only to be free. Yet once free, she had lost herself, known nothing. She was no one. Her thoughts crept back to the asylum, where she had left her memory-self cowering outside the black door with the inscription, ‘Thou Shalt Not Enter’, scratched across it. She had ignored the warning back then and she decided to ignore the warning now. There was nothing left to lose.
    Ev’r’s memory-self pushed her weight against the doors of the witch’s quarters and they opened inward, slow and heavy. She stood on the threshold of a room. It smelt strongly of urine. Its many barred and grimy windows looked out across the desert to the immense Boundary Wall in the far distance. Rays of sunlight lay ragged on the floor. Ev’r cried out; it felt as though it had been year-cycles since she’d seen the suns. She started forward then stopped abruptly. A tall man stood by one of the windows, looking out through a patch of glass wiped clear. The mark on the back of his neck displayed his high military rank and the dark line crossed over it exposed his dishonourable discharge. She studied his broad back and powerful arms, large rough hands held at his sides. His wrists were scarred and he was swaying slightly. He sensed her presence and turned. Recognition rushed through her and she inhaled sharply as it twisted a knife in her gut.
    ‘Ismail?’
    The man narrowed his dark eyes.
    Ev’r studied the face she’d seen every day growing up and found only traces of the boy he’d been. Pain and anger had carved his features into sharp relief, though his lips still curved in the way she remembered. She stepped forward slowly. There was something bestial in his expression that said to move quickly would be a mistake.
    ‘Ismail, it’s me – Zingara.’
    He blinked, his stare drug-heavy and full of torment. He turned fully around and the aggressive lines of his face began to smooth out. Her eyes passed over the thick scar across his neck. It looked like a failed beheading. Around the scar were red marks like love bites, and down his chest, in the line of his unbuttoned shirt, she saw the burns of electrodes, tracks of needle-stabs and weeping sores of symbols re-carved in his flesh day after day. These were signs of experimentation and torture. Anger choked her. Who had done this?
    She held out her hand, but he just stared at it. So she reached for him and took him in her arms. The touch of him and smell of his skin was so familiar it burned inside her. When she pressed her face against his chest, his heartbeats sounded faint and uneven. He kept his arms at his sides, unresponsive. Ev’r mumbled some words, a mind-clearing enchant the Mocking Witch had taught her. Ismail’s body jerked. She pulled away and looked into his face, where comprehension struggled through the haze.
    ‘Zara?’ he whispered, his words still slurred. ‘Is it you? Are you real?’
    Tears overflowed from her eyes. Ismail had been the only one who cared for her, the only one she’d loved. They had planned to escape together. She’d waited at the place they’d decided on – waited and waited and waited. He’d never shown.
    ‘Where were you? Why did you leave without me? You promised,’ she sobbed.
    Ismail shook his head. ‘Your father had me arrested. I couldn’t get back. I tried