“He won’t ever admit it. It’s kind of adorable.” Zion craned his neck to look at Gedeon, and his voice lowered, as if his thoughts alone could strike that chord promising trouble. “We won’t like you less for spilling a tear or a dozen, you know. We’ll just lick them off you.”
Gedeon grunted, sighed, and growled at the same time, employing the entire spectrum of his wordless retorts at once. I had to roll my lips together to prevent any reaction from bursting free.
I hadn’t seen him display his vulnerability openly so far. It…did things to me.
“It’s…” he trailed off, clearly enjoying the sight of his friends losing themselves in their bubble of joy. “I haven’t seen Conall this happy in a very long time.”
“I was only joking about crying. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up surrounded by people who care about you, but seeing all this…” I gestured to the square brimming with Conall’s close ones. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Gedeon’s frown returned, and I rushed to clarify. “In a good sense. Seeing you care for your family is so beautiful ithurts.” Widening my feet, I pretended the more stable position steadied my voice too. “So please don’t hide your emotions from us. Don’t hide from us at all, Gedeon,” I murmured. “Because I’m not sure I could survive it again.”
“Kali—”
“I see the reasoning in why you did what you did, I do, it’s just…” I filled my lungs to their capacity, the surplus of oxygen being the fuel I lacked. “It doesn’t make it ache any less.”
“Little death?—”
“No, let me finish,” I cut him off. “I can’t erase the three months without you. Ibelievedyou were dead. ThatIkilled you. I know you asked me to forget everything for tonight, but I can’t, Gedeon. I can’t. It’s not something I can pretend never happened.”
A minute of stillness passed, Zion for once calm in the sixty seconds it took Gedeon to admit, “I know.” He shuffled closer, merely an increment, but it wedged Zion between us. “To survive, you have to believe in something,” Gedeon said. “My whole life, that has been our people.” His gaze burned with things unsaid. “You changed it, Kali. It’s you and Zion now. You are who I believe in. Who I choose to follow. The only ones I will ever bow to.”
I swallowed the ball clogging my throat. “Then why are you so set on breaking us?”
38
KALI
“It’s not going to be easy to hear.” The seriousness Gedeon exuded warred with the joy of the dancers twirling around us. “Ilasall has raised you in their mold, Kali. Yes, you saw the cracks in it, slithered out like a weed through a fracture in the asphalt. But that mold the city had crushed you into since birth? It had already shaped you. Even after Zion and I got you out of there, the freedom wasn’t enough for you to unravel and take the form you should have had from the beginning.” He rubbed his forehead. “When a bone heals improperly, you have to shatter it anew before setting the fragments together. Only then will the limb work properly again.”
Yet nobody talked about the inescapable pain. The agony of splintering apart. How the blessing of unconsciousness hovered nearby, but jumped back any time you reached for it, always staying out of reach, taunting you with its presence.
“That’s why I took you and why I won’t let you go,” Gedeon said. “I want to free you, Kali. I want to see you rain fury on the city that birthed you.”
Sometimes I wondered if Gedeon’s way of thinking was as skewed as my own. I was damaged goods; I knew that, and although it required immense effort, I could accept the factthat I was glad they’d stolen me from Ilasall. That, despite the difficulties, and our brokenness, we wanted the same thing: someone to plan your tomorrows with.
I cupped Zion’s cheek. His day-old stubble pricked me as I asked, “Why had you gone along with kidnapping me? Was it Gedeon? You never told me what or who convinced you to?—”
“Because you were a creature stuck in a cage.” Zion took my wrist, his hold as soft as his tone. “The moment I saw you in that clearing, I knew you were like me. A lone wolf, a stray without a pack. Manic and merciless. Not the blanket of grass, not the rustling forest, and especially not even Gedeon could contain the determination pouring out of you.”
My pretty boy. With a bloodthirst matching my own. His mind so far beyond logic and reason, it somehow had begun to make sense.
I brushed the fallen eyelash stuck near his nose. “How could you glean all that without even knowing my name?”
“I knew it.” As fast as a bullet, he licked the tip of my nose. The night’s chill assaulted the moisture, but I didn’t wipe it off. The ticklish sensation caused me to float while he continued. “I followed you back the second night we found you in the forest. That guard at the gates said your name as you passed.”
The abhorrent man he’d gifted me to do whatever I wished with him. Deep in his underground, he’d chained the pig to the steel table. The same one Gedeon had hoisted me onto and ripped three orgasms from me, fulfilling his vow to pay me for the stitches I’d received because I’d tried to defend myself against them earlier.
That night had made me reconsider staying at their compound despite having arrived there against my will. Well, technically, unconsciousness had prevented me from expressing my will in general, so you could say they hadn’t known my wishes.
But I would be lying to myself. They’d done it for selfish reasons, but I was anything but selfless myself.
As we stood in the center of the stone-paved plaza, surrounded by a million dancers, the drummers changed the rhythm, increasing the frequency of beats until they weaved into an intricate melody, a symphony nudging your pulse to follow along.
Facing me, Zion leaned into Gedeon’s chest, free from tension for once.
I couldn’t help but admire my men relaxing in each other’s arms. The sight disintegrated any dregs of unease swirling in my gut.
Seeing Gedeon hold Zion like a lifeline warmed me from inside out. “Both of you?—”
