My mother had told me of a rite to bless both items and people, to officially claim them as belonging to you. It always began with a poem, or a chant, and then bathing the objects in liquids.
The notion of me massaging myfluidsinto Kali and Gedeon, painting patterns on them and then having them pass out withmecoating them, roused my appetite to do exactly that—to sanctify.
Thank the supposed gods for Gedeon’s unceasing massage or I would have jumped them both ten seconds ago.
“My mother was green-banded, so after she fled Ilasall and died giving birth to me, someone else had to have been assigned to my father. I doubt I’m his only child,” Gedeon mused.
His bare foot shuffled closer to mine until they were lined up from heel to toe.
The way he utilized all opportunities to touch me… Mhm, I could sail in the ocean of his massages, the endless horizon my beacon, not a scrap of land in sight.
I wasn’t sure whether it was this or his caught-in-the-act look whenever I’d catch him ogling me, but one of these dissolved my disappointment at keeping the identity of the rat nesting among us to himself.
Inexplicably, I couldn’t care less about it. The years had done a job on me, our past entwining us like strands of a rope, and I trusted him to make the right decisions.
Some of them did hurt, like not knowing whether he was alive or dead for three months, but something had changed in him during his absence. Something that had taken root before, and the time apart had been necessary for it to bloom like those daffodils Tarri and Amari had used to weave flower crowns. One of which I’d chased him into wearing, and which also had mysteriously ended up in a bowl of water on the dresser in our bedroom.
It was as if a toggle had been switched inside him.
Standing before us, Kali frowned. “Who’s your father then?”
“I have my suspicions, but…” Gedeon shrugged, the lack of information surely eating him up. “I do not wish to spread rumors without confirming them first.”
“Spread rumors?” She rubbed her forehead, her fair skin reddening. “Who the hell is he?”
Releasing me from his spell, Gedeon trailed his hand down my back, vertebra by vertebra. “Someone you know.”
She snorted. “That’s nothing. Our friends are the same, we live in the same place, we talk to the same people. ‘Someone you know’ is not good enough. Why are you so bent on protecting him?”
“I’m not.” Throwing the thickest duvet I’d ever seen aside, he scooched up the mattress and collapsed on the flattest pillow in existence. “Come on.” He patted the sheets beside him.
How could someone look that enticing when clambering across the bed, I had no clue. So I leaped after him, snuggling close, throwing my leg over his thigh and resting my head in the crook of his shoulder.
Was it comfortable? Meh. My neck ached from the weird pillow straining my tendons, but the press of his body against my own and the steady rise and fall of his chest glued me to him.
Yup, this was my new residence. Permanent one.
Now, was there any possibility of convincing him to remove his underwear? The thin cotton covering both his and my hips felt…wrong.
In nature, neither strawberries nor kittens ever wore pants to bed, and as he was both to me, the rule should apply to him as well.
Granted, his order to wear clothing to bed was supposed to be temporary. I understood him trying to assure Kali nothing would happen, that we wouldn’t demand anything. She had doled out so manyfavorsin the city that assurances, or “one-sided deals,” as she called them, still baffled her.
If she couldn’t see it play in action, she wouldn’t believe it.
“I’m not shielding my father from anyone,” Gedeon said. “I’m not disclosing my suspicions, because once I tell you, neither you nor Zion will be able to act like all is well. Zion will go on a rampage to catch him, and you—do notgive me that look—will join him. My guess is you both will sneak out in the middle of the night without telling me.” Tracing idle lines along my side, each brush a chord of a lullaby tightening its embrace on me, he added, “Tell me I’m wrong, and I will share my theory.”
He was right. There was no point in contesting it. I would do exactly what he’d detailed.
Before he could continue his tirade, I reached for a seething figure looming at the foot of the bed. “Sleep with us.”
“Fine,” she huffed. “I’ll let you off the hookfor now.” Climbing in beside me, she yanked the bedsheets off us. “But I’m commandeering the duvet.”
“What about us? Will you seize us for your use too?” I twisted for a more comfortable position as Gedeon rolled on his side. His palm slid up my waist, and his smirk widened at my sigh of contentment.
“No.” Kali stretched out behind me, too far away for me to feel her body heat. “I don’t want your freezing toes.”
I wiggled the mentioned body part. “But they’re so?—”
