The image I’d painted slashed through the tension coiling around everyone’s legs. The ugly understanding descended,latching its fangs into their necks and replacing their blood with venom.
Kali took over. “Loss will be unavoidable. Deaths of your friends, partners, family—it’s a guarantee. I won’t sugarcoat or deny it. It’s a given. When all hell breaks loose, you will have three options: stand aside, flee, or become the meat in the grinder that war is. I’ve mademychoice thirteen years ago and solidified it recently.” She ripped the sleeve of her dark green shirt to her elbow, revealing the ink. Three black vines encircled her forearm, the plants twining around a knife, a bird perched on the top vine.
“So whatever destiny you pick, be sure that you will see me at the front lines the day we march into Ilasall. I won’t cower on the side. I’m not made of glass. Flesh, yes. But I am ready to burn, I am ready to carry on through my pain, and I am ready to chase the tomorrow I want.” Her voice rose with each sentence, and my goosebumps followed her flow. “Not what the cities dictate. Not what they cram into the minds of the young.”
As her boot hit the stage, the thud rang out in tandem with my pulse.
“So the question is: will you join us?” She stomped onto the makeshift stage once more. “Will you fight alongside us?”
Guessing her strategy for increasing the temperature of the pot until it boiled, I struck the wood together with her.
“Will you trust your neighbor to watch your back while you fight our enemy?” she yelled, and the front row matched our stomping this time. “Will you pledge your life toourfuture? Our rules? Our laws? Our choices?”
From the back to the front of the cavern, more feet thumped the limestone floor.
“Will you fight forourtomorrow?” She shouted the last question.
The sound of feet striking the ground increased, a singular rhythm forming and climbing, like a cacophony of thundering hearts ready to play the fortune’s game, flip a coin, draw a card, one side depicting a decaying organ, the other, a bloody mess of an active muscle. A game of chances, or, as Gedeon had preferred to call it, probabilities.
The thuds heightened to a roar, and Kali laced our hands, raising them in beat with the stomping?—
And dropped them.
Leaping on the momentum, I finished what we’d come here to do. “Our time has come. Spread the word. Say your goodbyes. Fix your regrets.” I gestured to Ava and Eli lingering near our table. “We’ll send people through the tunnels to familiarize you with our strategy. Your team leaders will tell you the rest.”
The explosive atmosphere rippled through the expanse, and second by second, the throng’s emotions leveled out.
Psychological manipulation was a finicky thing. If overused, it could tear the veil you’d placed over their eyes. If under used, it wouldn’t bring the required effect.
But Kali… My chest swelled. She’d balanced the rope of potential outcomes perfectly.
“Is— Was it true that”—the young man who’d spoken before glanced between Kali and me—“you and Gedeon were, uh…together?
“Yes. Both of us.” Kali squeezed my hand. Her grip was tender but firm, not an ounce of hesitation at the challenge hurled at us. “Does it change anything?”
“It does.” A high-pitched reply washed over the front rows’ heads.
Frowns popped up, and the crowd parted to reveal a woman, her straight blonde hair cascading down her front like a wall all the way to her hips.
“It changes things forme,” she said. “I knew Alora.”
Kali’s grasp on my fingers tightened. “Alora?”
“Yes. Our, for lack of a better word,assignedpartners worked in the same office.” She drew her cream sweater’s sleeve to expose a glinting green wristband. “Alora told me about you. How you”—she studied the multitude of ears awaiting the end of her story on her left and right, then fixated back onto Kali—“choseyour fate.”
Carefully picked words failed to conceal the true meaning—Kali’s betrayal. How when she was thirteen and went through fertility testing, she’d changed her friend’s plan and got marked with a black wristband instead of Alora.
“She said it had taken her time to come to terms with her situation, yet she wished you nothing but a good life. Alora was the kindest person I had the privilege of knowing.” The stranger’s attention shortly snagged on me. “So yes, the three of you…having been together makes a difference. You did something with your fate instead of wasting it. Alora would be proud of you.” Standing taller than the majority of people in this room despite barely reaching the chest of those around her, she finished. “Whatever you need, you can ask me. I’ll follow your lead.”
I could swear Kali’s hand in mine lightened. A tendril of that serenity slithered into my veins, and I bowed my head to her—yielding.
Her journey hadn’t been easy. I would’ve groveled before any of those gods Kali believed to reside in the sky to have the ability to wind back the time and pull her out of the city full of walking nightmares earlier.
Though I’d attempted to convince her that Gedeon’s departure hadn’t been her fault, that accidents happen, she still carried a smothering cloud of guilt around her.
A warm palm pressed to my cheek. Both shadows and sparkles twirled on Kali’s angular features, the dip of her cupid’sbow overtaken by the darkness, like her pupils, but her irises flamed with emerald fire. “I’m yours, Zion.”
Heat spread underneath my ribs, devouring my lungs, and I gladly gave myself over to its maw.
