“Yes.” She gave me a small squeeze. “But not like you think.”
Firewood splintered in a fire near us. The unexpected noise diverted my attention to Gedeon steering Zion through the throng with a hand on his lower back.
Practically glowing in the firelight, Zion pranced, his grin an indelible ink.
“Gedeon gave up everything, even himself, in hopes of creating a better tomorrow foryou,” Damia said as her touch left me. The fallen night’s cold snatched the lingering warmth from her affection.
Gedeon and Zion joined the dancers, and the latter grabbed Gedeon’s belt to pull him close. I could feel Gedeon’s sigh even from thirty feet away as he swatted Zion’s hand away, undoubtedly muttering something along the lines ofThis is not playtime.
But the golden-haired man with a mind full of wicked thoughts, the same one whose snare I’d fallen in, simplywrapped his arms around Gedeon and glued their foreheads together.
The sight made my heart surge.
Gedeon’s directness sometimes made me think he was callous. But now I saw the proof his wounds had begun to heal, his scars softening from jagged spikes to blunt curves. Instead of running away, he held Zion close to him.
Zionflowedto the melody, his hips swaying as musicians switched the beat, striking the hand drums positioned between their knees harder and harder. A deep buzzing joined in as they hummed, and the rumbling emanating from their throats washed over me like the flames reaching for the night sky.
The song didn’t require words to depict the journey of searching for a balance between chaos and peace, destruction and creation, loss and discovery.
A faint breeze fluttered my loose pants, the fabric so thin the sensation resembled a caress.
The total opposite of Gedeon standing rooted in his spot like a tree.
“Yeah, he never did figure out how dancing works.” Folding her napkin into a triangle, Damia rested it under the raised edge of her plate. “But he’s doing it for Zion.” She pinned me with a heavy look, and it pooled in my stomach like lead. “I’m not defending Gedeon, but everything he does, however foolish it might be, is to give you a better life. He’d do anything for you.”
Errant locks of light brown floated around Conall’s chin as he stabbed his fork into the last potato wedge. “He can’t help it, Kali. His instincts are screaming to protect you and Zion, to keep you alive and safe. So when he saw an opportunity to increase the chances of your success in the war we’ve all been raised for or learned to seek, he took it.”
Wiping a renegade drop of water from her chin, Damia returned her empty glass to our table, its one leg so short, awooden block had been stuffed under it. “Tell me the people back at your compound aren’t united. Tell me that without his disappearance, without thislie, we could stand as we do now—strong, even with a lack of supplies. Depleted reserves. Traitors among us.”
As painful as it was to admit it, she was right. The deficiencies had caused us to choose who to treat in our infirmaries and who to leave to suffer. Yet that and the shortage of food hadn’t caused any riots, any protests or uprisings. Grumbles, sure, but even at Vice, people agreed on standing as one. That Ilasall imprisoning Gedeon had been the last straw. That no one could have a peaceful life without dealing with the cities once and for all. That the dream was worth all inconveniences.
That they had survived worse. Endured time and time again. And that it all had come to an end.
A single fight.
A single battle.
A single war.
The finish line purred to me that I should pick one of the alternatives for my future. Harbor the ache, let the lacerations Gedeon’s actions had left in me to fester, or let go of the hurt and build the future with the two people who’d stolen the ground from under my feet.
“His actions sometimes wound us too, but…” Conall rested his elbows on the table. A clang rang out as he accidentally grazed his plate and his utensils bounced off the sage-green ceramic, the veins of an imprinted birch leaf webbing across it like a fractal. “He’s flawed, like any of us. Only his imperfections arise from his innate inclination to prioritize others over himself.”
Gedeon had once mentioned his days consisted of casting verdicts, punishments, sentences, or strategizing the next steps,the cursed loop endless. And I’d witnessed how he sacrificed his life for the better of his compound. How he never took anything for himself.
Until the end of last summer. The evening he’d kidnapped me.
And the winter. The month he’d broken down and welcomed Zion.
Scanning the throng, I failed to locate either of them. My back straightened?—
“Dance with me.”
I startled at the deep voice, the cadence so familiar it cast a shiver down my spine.
A palm hovered beside me as Gedeon’s mouth contorted into his favorite shape—a smirk. “Dance with me,” he repeated. The slight sheen of sweat glinted on his forehead like the film of condensation on my glass of water Zion had decided to down.
Shuffling in my seat, I rested one thigh over the other?—
