A scoff slipped past my defenses. “We are everything but well, Gedeon.”
His fingers dipped beneath my towel, prompting a twitch in my pelvis. “We have talked about this. All I want is for you to reach your dreams. And then find new ones to chase. If I have to stand aside to increase the probability of it happening, I will. But what I will not relent on is your safety. I will protect you, Kali.” He maneuvered my head into the position he wanted, and I swallowed roughly. “Always.”
“No. You can’t say that.” I clutched my towel, hoping it would serve as a sufficient distraction to stave off my tears. “If you cared about us, you wouldn’t have told me to run.”
The sprint from the clearing I’d stabbed him in to the compound had been a blur, the minutes drenched in murkiness. The memory inaccessible, even now. My mind had balked at recording it.
“I trusted you, did as told, and what came next?” I took a shaky breath. “Lies. Just lies. Zion told me you’d passed awayin minutes. I didn’t get to say goodbye to you. Instead, I had to lie myself. Whenever someone asked, I had to say that I’d left before the fake soldiers came. And then nod along to Zion’s story of how Ilasall’s military incapacitated him long enough for them to take you.” I raised my right forearm, the tattoo distorted in the mirror, its ink facing the wrong direction. “I got your mark, the symbol of your trust in me, but how can I trust you? Both of you. You lied to me, Gedeon. Hiding in the shadowsisa lie, only with a pretty ribbon on top.”
“This lie was a necessity,” he said. “It helped you to unite our people. I didn’t keep you in the dark for any other reason than to increase your chances of success and, in turn, the probability of your survival.” He gripped my shoulders. “If you knew I was alive, would you have been able to act convincing enough to make everyone else believe I was gone? Would you have been able to persuade the people who had split into factions to return? Would you have been able to rally everyone despite our depleted reserves, the deficit in med supplies, and the food shortages? Would you have been able tonotlook for me and avoid exposing the charade?”
My intrinsic itch to protest lost the battle. “No.”
Because I would have sneaked out of bed every midnight and roamed the compound in search of him. I would’ve begged Zion to tell everyone the truth. I would’ve slipped in the conversations, unveiling the lies we’d crafted.
False words were not my specialty. Speaking them to our friends had felt like a shard of glass carving out my insides, one slice per each sentence.
“Exactly, Kali.” His thumbs kneaded my muscles. “I know you. Zion knows you. And the burden of this lie was one I refused to load onto you. You can despise me, but I will never push you more than you can take. If you knew about me beingalive and had to live as if the opposite was true, it would have broken you.”
My tongue thickened. “But not knowing broke me just the same.”
“And I will spend the rest of my days trying to make it up to you. I will gladly sacrifice anything, and I do meananything,for you. You want the compound? It’s yours. You want my position, my power? I have already relinquished it to you. My life? Take it.” Removing his hands from me, leaving my exposed skin to freeze from the loss of his touch, he resumed shortening my hair. “I just— I don’t know how to act around you. You are the most exquisite, enthralling creature I have ever laid my eyes upon.” He licked his thick and fluffy lips, and the leftover moisture glistened in the sunlight. “I want you both, you and Zion, I want you mine, and I want you happy.”
I sniffled. “Is that why you left us? To make us happy?”
“I didn’t leave you. Not entirely,” he said, chopping off sections of my hair. “Who do you think pushed the patrols into Zion’s path so he could drag them to his underground? Do you really think they happened to lurk far from the city gates by accident? Or why Ilasall has never searched for their bodies? I watched over you. Only from afar.”
“It doesn’t count, Gedeon. Not when I’d knelt before your funeral fire and threw my letter into the blaze. Not when I’d observed the ashes floating in the air and imagined them taking me on the ride so I could at least talk to you one last time.”
I couldn’t convince myself to share that I’d cried a month ago because Gedeon’s shirts had ceased smelling like him. That last week, I’d curled up on his bed and stared out the window for hours. That Zion had come in after me and held me close while he trembled.
I kept it all inside. Swallowed it up. And pretended I was stronger than I actually was.
Because yes, Gedeon was right. Before he’d departed, our people had split into two groups: the first eager to storm the city, proclaiming Gedeon would never do it, and the second seeking a quiet life, declaring the cities would leave us alone if we renounced our intentions of dismantling the governments.
The tale about Gedeon’s imprisonment in Ilasall had done the trick of merging the groups back into one.
As Gedeon had once said, war was largely a numbers game. And we had been losing the battle before it’d even started by missing the signs of a civil war nipping at our heels.
The constant alertness, the endless training since you could walk, the fight for resources, they all had left an imprint on everyone. The mental exhaustion had reached the highest peak.
The breaking point.
But the three months without Gedeon had made our people reconsider their actions.
His tactic had worked.
A puff of warm air grazed my neck as Gedeon blew the clippings off me. “If you need to blame someone, feel free to tell everyone I’m the villain.” He pressed the softest lips in existence to my temple, and the world tilted off its axis. “But please, remember I’myourvillain.” He kissed behind my ear, and I closed my eyes at his proximity, his caress, his whisper. “Only yours and Zion’s.”
21
KALI
“What about our friends, Gedeon?” I demanded. “What about Conall and Damia? Who knew about you? I won’t believe you were in this alone. It’s not like you.”
“Zola,” he listed. “Carys.” A faint smirk graced his beautiful face at my shock. “I see you have met her.”
Met her, trusted her as a guide in the catacombs, rejoiced in her support to stand by me. Which turned out to be fueled not by my actions and goals, but by whatever Gedeon must’ve told her.
