The drive back to State Lodge was the longest ten kilometers of Zazu's life. The city was bustling with Saturday morning energy, but inside the car, the air was stagnant. He didn't look at his phone. He didn't look at the driver. He just watched the red soil of the roadside, thinking of the way Leya had stood her ground in the boardroom—a queen who had finally found her throne.
When he walked into the main house, the silence was absolute. No servants in the hall. No music from the salon.
Mwansa Tembo was in the courtyard, standing by the koi pond. He wasn't wearing a suit; he was in a simple linen shirt, throwing small handfuls of feed into the water. He looked older than he had twenty-four hours ago.
"You have your mother's flair for the dramatic, Zazu," Mwansa said without turning around. "The Board is in shambles. Arthur Monde is calling his lawyers to see if he can sue for emotional distress."
"He was trying to make a woman homeless to hide his own tracks, Dad," Zazu said, stepping onto the stone path. "The drama was necessary."
Mwansa turned then. His eyes weren't angry—they were hollow. "You think this is about Arthur? Or a flat in Chelstone? Zazu, you deleted the encryption keys. You destroyed the only leverage we had against the Consortium."
"Leverage?" Zazu's voice rose. "You call it leverage? I call it a ransom. You were keeping that money to buy their silence, hoping they wouldn't notice you were tracking them. You weren't winning, Dad. You were just paying to stay in the game."
"And what happens when the game stops?" Mwansa stepped closer, his shadow falling over his son. "When the stabilization fund dries up because the 'shadow accounts' are locked forever, and the price of fuel doubles overnight? Who do you think the people will blame? They won't blame Leya Kapiri. They'll blame the man whose face is on the currency."
"Then let them," Zazu snapped. "Tell them the truth. Tell them Lombe Kapiri wasn't a thief. Tell them you made a deal with a martyr."
Mwansa let out a short, bitter laugh. "The truth isn't a shield, Zazu. It's a blade. And you just handed it to a girl whose family has every reason to want us destroyed."
"She doesn't want to destroy us," Zazu said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "She just wants to exist."
"She is a Kapiri," a voice interrupted.
Chileshe was standing on the balcony above them, her hands gripping the railing. "She is the daughter of a woman who understood sacrifice. But you, Zazu... you are acting on sentiment. You think that kiss on the rooftop was a beginning. In this world, it's a liability."
Zazu looked up at her, then back at his father. He felt the weight of the Tembo name—a mountain of expectations and half-truths.
"I'm not going to be your 'stabilization fund' anymore," Zazu said, his voice cold and clear. "I'm not going to be the face you put on the billboards to make the people think the future is bright while you're burning the floorboards to keep the house warm."
Mwansa stepped back, his expression hardening. "Then what are you? If you aren't a Tembo, what do you have?"
"I have the truth," Zazu said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his school blazer's silver crest—the one that marked him as Head Prefect. He set it on the edge of the koi pond. "And I have the land she owns. Because if you want to reach her, or the Society, or the truth... you'm going to have to go through me."
"You're choosing her," Chileshe said from above, her voice trembling with a rare flash of real emotion. "After everything we built for you?"
"You didn't build it for me," Zazu said, turning toward the door. "You built it for the statues. I'm going to go be a human being for a while."
As he walked out, he heard the sound of the fish splashing in the pond, a small, inconsequential sound in the wake of a family's collapse. He walked out of the gates, past the guards who didn't know whether to salute him or stop him, and into the dust of the afternoon.
He had no car. He had no title. He had no security.
He walked until his feet burned, until the sun began to dip behind the horizon, painting the sky in the same bruised purple as the night of the storm. He ended up at the gates of ZIA.
Leya was there. She was sitting on the stone wall by the entrance, her cello case beside her. She looked like she had been waiting for a lifetime.
"You left," she said, her eyes scanning his face.
"I resigned," Zazu corrected. He stopped in front of her, his breath coming in short, ragged bursts. "I don't have a house. I don't have a name. I'm just a guy who knows where the archives are buried."
Leya stood up. She didn't say anything. She just stepped into his space and put her arms around him, her head resting against his chest. For the first time, there were no cameras, no boardrooms, and no ghosts. Just the two of them.
"Then I guess it's a good thing I'm the landlord," she whispered. "I have a spare room in Chelstone. It's small, and the sink leaks, but the rent is free for traitors."
Zazu laughed—a real, raw sound that broke the tension of the last ten years. He pulled her closer, his chin resting on her head. "I think I can manage that."
But as they stood there, a black car pulled up across the street. Not a Tembo car. A car with tinted windows and a subtle, gold emblem on the door—the mark of the Consortium.