Greyn adjusted the sleeve of his moss-green sweater. “What about those tunnels sprawling underneath the city?”
“They’re too narrow,” I said. “It would take hours to move, let’s say, even half of our people into the city. We will use them, of course, but we cannot rely solely on them. We have to get the gates open somehow. Small ones can be ignored, but not the largest three.”
Greyn reached for Damia’s water, right as Nara did. Their hands collided, knocking the glass aside?—
Clear liquid spread like a sheen over the table.
“Water.” Kali rubbed a shred of what looked like a wilted petal of a daffodil between her fingers. The flower resembled the yellow oleander, a plant with toxicity levels so high she had planned to use it to end the seven people ruling Ilasall. “We poison their military’s water supply.”
34
ZION
Whoever had marinated the mushrooms Conall had served for dinner was clearly colorblind. Otherwise, they could spot the difference between edible fungi and the kind with extra properties.
Because Gedeon perching beside me on the bed and scratching the back of my neck had to be a hallucination.
A very, very lifelike mirage. So convincing, his caresses leached the tension from my muscles, reducing me to a blubbering mess ofHmmsandMhms.
Maybe I should ask Conall for a jar of those mushrooms to bring home.For your journey, as people liked to say. A man could get hungry on his way.
Gedeon’s fingers stilled in my hair. “I think Ezra might be my brother.”
The snake. His brother.Family. A chill branched out inside me like a lightning strike.
With my knee pressed to Gedeon’s, I raised my chin. “Wh?—”
He resumed weaving his spell on me by scraping my nape, up, up, and up, delving into my hairline, the heel of his palm a leaden weight keeping my head down as my eyes fluttered closed. They were just nails, but they felt so good, Icontemplated stealing his nail clippers. A new addiction had settled in my bones.
Incomprehensible mumbles spilled from my throat as I fought his thrall on me. “Wh-hrrr-y?”
From the far side of the one-story house Conall had assigned to us for our trip to their compound, slow, deliberately so, stomps of bare feet closed in on us. “What he said,” Kali deadpanned.
“I heard Ezra talking with someone on the radio,” Gedeon explained, his nails abrading the skin between my hair follicles. When he reached that one particular spot, the sounds coming out of my mouth began to resemble Shadow’s purring.
Which was probably why Gedeon’s response had gone in one ear and out another. Exhaustion had snatched me away, one scrape at a time.
He shifted on the mattress, and his bare thigh rubbed against my own. “Ezra’s exact words were ‘my brother won’t change anything. Tell my father we’re still on track.’”
“Your father,” Kali repeated, scratching her shin with her toes, her black cotton leggings ending two inches above her ankle. She was as tall as the tower of her indignation. “So how many secrets are you harboring in total, Gedeon? First, your life. Then, the name of the traitor who turned out to be no other than Ezra. Nowsiblings?”
“It could mean anyone’s father,” I pointed out. “Ezra’s not necessarily Gedeon’s brother. They don’t even look alike.”
“Different mothers,” she ground out. “And still. It doesn’t negate the secrecy we’ve been subjected to.”
She resumed pacing the small expanse of our open-plan dwelling, from the kitchen to the sleeping area. Back and forth while spewing her fury out in bits and pieces ofThinks he can keep everything to himself, why do I put up with this,idiots, both of them,then a bout of unintelligible mutters, and a finishing note ofUgh.
Out of fuel, she folded her arms, and the white fabric of my t-shirt she was wearing tightened around her breasts.
I debated whether I should concede and buy her the clothing she refused to purchase in fear I would burn it again.
She was right in her suspicions, but it’d been a while since I’d ripped and sliced and shredded clothing off her body. Part of the reason I’d packed more than enough colorful t-shirts Gedeon loathed so much.
I had plans to leave tattered piles of fabric all over this house and the wedding ceremony’s location too, so everyone knew he knelt for us. The idea of my boss looking up at me from below…
I should not be thinking about it right now.
Not when I was sitting on a perfectly sized bed to fit three, with exposed rafters and beams running across the ceiling and taunting me with visuals of dangling ropes and chains, and way too many surfaces not yet desecrated. Or perhaps the better word would bebaptized? Consecrated?
