Although pushing forward despite my invisible scars was the only language I spoke, somehow, they’d found a way to teach me more: affection. Kindness. Support. All wrapped up in a ribbon of protectiveness. A bit over the top, but soothing nevertheless.
I could provide the same for them. Undoubtedly, I was going to fail a thousand times before I succeeded, but Eislyn had said it was the intention that mattered, not whether the execution was flawless.
“Gedeon?” I whispered, and his eyes met mine. “It’s okay if you feel like you’re not well.” Zion’s faint snoring accompanied my murmur. “Feeling doesn’t make you weak. It’s the opposite. Strength comes from emotions.” I kissed his jaw, the stubble as rough as Shadow’s whiskers. “I know it may not seem like it, but things will get easier over time. It’s a…promise.” The second one I’d ever given him. And one I’d poured all of myself into. “You don’t need to look for the light. It will find its way to you. Just— Don’t run away from it.”
Not how I’d attempted to do it.
Gedeon’s small smile dissipated the last heaviness hanging around him. “Thank you.” His gaze bounced to Zion and his slightly open mouth. The man could pass out anywhere, any time.
“You would do anything for him, wouldn’t you?” I asked.
“That and more,” Gedeon replied without delay. “Does it bother you?”
I didn’t need time to figure out the answer. It’d resided in me since the beginning. “It makes my heart feel too large for my chest.”
The kiss he marked my forehead with flipped my belly. “I don’t deserve you.”
“You truly don’t. You still have to work off your debt for kidnapping me.”
“Only me?”
“Zion gave that slimy guard for me to torture and kill. I count that as payment.”
He smirked. “So I need to kidnap someone else for you, then?”
Oh, he was going to loathe my wish. “You need to let Zion fuck you.”
His heavy sigh fueled my glee.
“That’s what I want.” I shrugged. Well, more like I tried to. “We can make it easier this time. I can simply watch.” For some reason, I couldn’t picture Gedeon being in the middle of the sandwich like Zion had been, trapped between Gedeon and me.
“I want to return you back to Ilasall,” Gedeon deadpanned. “They can deal with your brattiness themselves.”
I stuffed my face into a pillow to muffle my laughter. Not once had he proposed a lighthearted notion like that before.
Collecting myself, I brushed a rogue strand off Gedeon’s temple. “What did Eli and Eislyn want earlier?”
His jaw flexed as if the darkness wreaking havoc in our bedroom had wormed inside him. “Ezra has escaped.”
58
GEDEON
“So, Ezra is gone.” Seated in my study, Damia draped her arms along the backrest of the light gray suede couch. Though the long ride from her compound to mine had left her exhausted, she had not spared a minute to change outfits. “And Clyde is dead.”
I reclined in the seat behind my desk. No wonder Clyde hadexpired. Dain had killed the man who’d betrayed our locations to Coriattus.
Honestly, I was surprised Nissa had not taken care of the matter. I would have broken Clyde’s neck myself if Zion or Kali had lain in place of Conall’s and Aanya’s corpses.
Which also made Nissa a woman stronger than most. Doing what was good for your people and not for you required selflessness I lacked.
“So we have no one to interrogate,” Eli concluded, clutching Eislyn’s thigh as she sat in his lap. The moment she had walked into the room, he had nestled with her in a chair in front of my desk, unable to spend a minute without guarding her.
Browsing the ebony bookshelves lining the far wall, Kali added, “Don’t forget that someone had to have helped Ezra disappear. Someone who waited for Zion and Gedeon to leavethe underground, and while they were…preoccupied, they got him out.” She rose on her tiptoes to pull out a book with an ivory spine. “Which means Ezra wasn’t working alone.”
“Great.” Damia toyed with the ends of her cornrows tickling her nape. “Just perfect.”
Eislyn scratched the dimple on her chin. “So what’s the plan?”
