And shook my head. The bag of coffee sitting on the shelf was less than half its size the last time I had seen it—the majority of its contents were gone.
As screeches rolled over to me from the hallway, I scooped out the ground beans from my swiftly diminishing stash, the process expedited undoubtedly by Zion. He always denied being the thief, but I had caught Eislyn carrying steaming cups to his underground more than once or twice.
Returning to the kitchen with Kali slung over his shoulder, Zion slapped her ass. “Told you I always catch my birds.”
Shrieking, she clutched the hem of the oversized black t-shirt—undeniably mine—to cover her perfect backside. “You cheated!”
Chuckling, he deposited her beside me, and I laid a kiss on her shoulder, where the cotton fabric had shifted to reveal a prominent collarbone.
But the caress couldn’t erase the fight in her.
She trackedZion taking his plate of eggs, and the moment his back was to her, swatted his butt as hard as she could. The crack pierced the rush of boiling water in the kettle.
He twisted around. “Did you just hit my ass?”
“Nope.” She leaned against the counter, her chin held high. “Gedeon did.”
My eyebrows joined Zion’s on their trip to reach the sky. Such a sly little death.
“How did your last lie feel, Kali?” Stepping into her, I tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear, savoring how her breathing hitched. “Because you will tell no more after we are finished with you.”
“What—” She glanced at Zion coming to stand at my back. “What are you planning to do?”
Grabbing the counter near her hips, I caged her in, desperately trying to distract myself from the body heat radiating off the man behind me. I longed to lean back into him.
“Lies come at a cost, so first, we will take our payment.” I gripped her waist and, without warning, switched our positions, so she was trapped between me and Zion. “And then we will have our way with you.” On the last syllable, I pushed her into his ready arms.
Zion lunged, tickling her waist until she collapsed on the floor. Her gasps and pleas for mercy spurred him on, and he narrowed his targets to the back of her knees and her sock-clad feet—her weak spots.
Fueled by their laughter, warmth spread in my chest, eradicating the cold and evoking an emotion I had long forgotten about—joy.
8
KALI
The fifty-foot-high concrete wall loomed half a mile from us. Sporadic sparks betrayed the faulty electrical wiring on top—part of the reason why Ilasall assigned guards to walk the wall.
Having reached the zenith, the sun hovered above, but its rays couldn’t defrost us as we trudged deeper into the forest. I tugged the sleeves of my leather jacket to cover my hands as much as possible.
“Here.” Zion offered me an arm to help me clamber over a fallen log—most likely a consequence of the storm that had ravaged the land recently.
I shot him a small smile. If not for Zion, I probably would’ve ended up like deadwood a long time ago.
Marching behind Ava, Eli secured his blond waves into a high ponytail. “Are you sure the tunnel will be open?”
“Remember what Malaya said?” Her story had made nausea crawl up my esophagus. “Whenever Ilasall organizes a Matching, boys and men come in cars, but they bring the girls through an underground tunnel. The passages have to be in a functional order for them to risk taking green-banded through them.”
I’d been born and raised in the city, yet the concept of Matchings went against everything I believed in. All three—Ilasall, Ardaton, and Coriattus—viewed women as living wombs and herded them like sheep into the Matching institute once the girls had turned sixteen.
The cities could inject as much indoctrination as they wanted into their citizens, but it couldn’t dissolve the truth: the so-called Matching ceremony was nothing more than an auction in reality. The green-banded males were given free rein to choose the most appealing female partners, in hopes of increasing the odds of pregnancies.
Despicable.
As we neared our agreed-upon spot, far from any roads, harbored by a thicket of bushes, Eli said, “I know. But it still seems improbable for the tunnels to work here, outside the gates. Ilasall should’ve collapsed or at least blocked the exits.”
“Ezra said his contacts assured him the city keeps this one open for emergencies.” Studying our surroundings, Zion drummed a melody on the sheath strapped to his upper arm. The black rubber handle of the knife his sister had taken her life with called out to him any time a topic related to the cities rose up. “In case of an evacuation.”
Ava tucked her strands back into the braid woven around her scalp like a crown. “Ezra knows…a lot. Are we sure his contacts are trustworthy?”
