Sitting down beside Zion, I dragged my nails from his nape to his tailbone, the scratching so light he didn’t react at all, unless you counted the satisfied hum the gray cushion muffled.
Kneading his back, I imagined his body heat as a living being, something I could order to drain him of the last dregs of energy. “I like you like this.” A puddle of limpness at my mercy.
He slurped in his drool. “Like what?”
A chuckle rumbled out of me. “Content.”
With half of his shins hanging off the edge of the couch, he hugged the cushion. “You fucked everything else out of me.”
“That I did.”
“Wipe that smug?—”
I threaded my fingers in his hair, grazing his scalp, and any objections he might have had fled him. The longer I rubbed his back and scratched his nape, the more his inhales evened out, and soon, they blended with the hush ruling in my study.
If not for Kali’s dream to decapitate the Head of Ilasall, to give people a chance at freedom, to ensure Alora’s death was not in vain, if not for Zion’s hatred for the cities burning as strong as a pyre, and if not for the sense of duty my parents had instilled in me, I would have packed our bags and ran away into the night with both of them beside me.
From my father’s collection of books, I had learned of what our civilization used to be, of the comfort so easily attainable to our ancestors, of the technological advances they possessed. Our current life was a pit of mud everyone floundered in, and I would have given anything to hoist Zion and Kali out of it, to offer them a better future.
Situating herself on the floor before us, Kali hugged her bent legs. “Is he…” she trailed off, observing motionless Zion.
“Asleep?” As long as I knew him, if you gave him two minutes of downtime, he would pass out before the timer beeped. “Yeah.”
“Why did you wait so long?” she asked, fiddling with the laces of her boots. “He’d clearly wanted you way before you…locatedme.”
The number of times I had wondered that was infinite. It wasn’t one of those questions with obvious answers, such as a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. The resolution here was more like a child’s drawing: a bunch of hurriedly scribbled lines, usually in concentric circles—a maze.
“Fear.” Once I had discovered the path in that labyrinth, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. “We grew up together, spent our time goofing around or in training. Or with me and Conall chasing Zion and Damia to pull them out of the messes they would get themselves into. I can’t say when things got more intense between him and me, but…”
Something must have been there since the beginning. Since the day a kid with an inclination for trouble had entered my class at school.
“I was terrified of losing what we already had. And then the war came. The deaths of our parents, the suicide of his sister, my idiotic reaction to his recklessness, it all instilled another layer of dread. So I waited for it to pass.” I traced Zion’s spine, up and down. “In the end, it did not.”
“But something else changed.” Kali tugged her leggings to cover her ankles. “I’m not blind, Gedeon.You’vechanged. You’re like a different person right now, and I like it, I do, it’s just…” She tucked a lock of her black waves behind her ear. “Unexpected.”
“I know.” Careful not to disturb Zion, I unfastened the strap secured around his bicep. Sleeping with his knife had become second nature to him. “I think it’s because the day after tomorrow is when everything will change. War is not something that can be taken lightly. It’s not merely a victory or a loss. It’s everything that occurs in between, the trail of carnage that permanently alters your being.”
She looked out the window into the gloom swirling beyond the glass. “I understand consequences are inevitable.”
“Do you?” My question was so bitter it abraded my throat. “In battle, like in first aid, you come first. Only then are you supposed to help others.” In my case, the opposite was non-negotiable. “But that is something I can’t promise. Because you two are the only outcome I care about, not whether we win. Not anymore.”
For so long, I had thought the scars I had coerced Zion into inflicting upon himself were it, the barrier so thick and high it had locked him out, leaving only the crumbs of who he was for the universe to see.
But the way he had smiled the last few days at me… Not a grin or a grimace, a wink or a smirk, just…softness. As though he had calmed down. As though he could simply be. As though everything had clicked into place.
It simultaneously broke my heart and repaired it, stopped its beating and restarted it anew, healed the lacerations so deep they had sliced the organ in two.
I had hurt him irrevocably, discarded him like someone irrelevant to my survival, but that sweet smile he would give me in the evenings and mornings, it solidified my resolve to repent.
I was a foolish man, that was true, but at least I recognized it.
I was going to do everything to fix my wrongdoings, including taking care of Zion in this world and whichever one came next. Death was a thing too insignificant to part us.
It had all started as a game for him and a headache for me, but it was going to end as a relationship of three.
61
KALI
