Chapter 9 Gedeon
GEDEON
Ihad not expected her to be awake. Had figured it would be easier for the doc to check on her if she were unconscious.
But the way she had fought us without considering surrender… A wild animal raging in a cage. Except it was not something that could trap her. She immediately noticed the rusted spots to hit, the gaps between the bars to squeeze through.
She had even sacrificed her crystal decanter. She had giggled at it so mischievously in her apartment that I could not leave it behind. I wanted her to have it.
And now she had used it against us.
She was a fighter.
“Put her down.” The doc motioned toward the bed, and I laid her down on the ash-like sheets, careful not to aggravate her injury.
Deep in restless sleep, she still resembled a fighter.
Hair so dark, as if weaved from the death’s cloak was sheared by its scythe below her shoulders.
Parted plump lips highlighted her cupid’s bow and angular jaw as sharp as that scythe.
Her skin was so light it seemed she had bottled and drunk the death itself.
She was death incarnate.
One I had stolen for myself.
The doc placed a pillow under her hand to elevate it. “You drugged her so much yesterday, she passed out for the night and half a day and now this.”
“How were we supposed to know she was going to cut herself?” Walking around the bed, Zion picked up the bloody shard she had chosen as her weapon. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“Did you really think she’d drink the water after you drugged it the last time?
” The doc pulled on a pair of disposable gloves and resumed his tirade.
“And this, now, was a game. You were playing with her. The longer the injury is untreated, the harder my job becomes,” he complained, as grumpy as the hundred previous times he had treated one of us.
He was good at his job, but could not do it with his mouth shut.
“She looked so beautiful, all covered in red.” Zion licked the crystal piece she had used as a weapon and a drop of scarlet colored his chin. He collected it with his forefinger and sucked it clean, his ocean-blue eyes closed. “Who could say no to that?”
I glared at the doc. “Stitch her up.” A reddish ring had spread on the ashen pillow supporting her limb.
He tore open a large pack of sanitary gauze with a harsh crinkle. “Pull up your shirt. I need to see if you’ll need stitches too.”
“Take care of her first,” I pressed.
Zion might have enjoyed seeing her bleed, but I was not indulging him this time, not for such an insignificant reason as her attempt to escape me.
The doc laid out his med supplies on a tray on the bedside table and selected a few cotton pads. “I won’t examine her until you lift your shirt. She’s not the one responsible for everyone here.”
I ripped my shirt up, exposing the scarlet line low above my hip. It was fine. Not the first time I had been cut and surely not the last.
And I was not letting him erase the slash she had left in me with a needle and a thread. They would eliminate the possibility of a scar forming. The idea of her marking me before she consciously chose to be mine called out a primal need inside me.
I gave him a total of ten seconds to inspect my abdomen before I took the bandage from him and plastered it on myself. “I said take care of her. And Zion too.” If he allowed the doc to touch the shallow stab wound in his thigh.
“Don’t you growl at me. Or I won’t stitch either of you the next time you come all cut up.
” He scrutinized her wound and dabbed the white gauze on it.
“And she’ll be fine. Should be out for about an hour.
She might sleep it off for longer due to the lack of hydration and nutrients.
I don’t suppose she’s eaten or drunk anything since last night? ”
“Not as far as I know,” I answered. Food I was sure about, and his assumption that she would not have drunk the water sounded plausible.
“That’s not good.” The doc wiped the skin around her wound with the antiseptic and the pungent odor curled the hairs inside my nostrils. “Bring her to me tomorrow. I’ll check her over. And make sure she drinks plenty tonight.”
“How long will it take to heal?” I was set on repaying her for the stitches. She had hurt herself because of me. And I needed her healthy, not cut up.
“A couple of weeks,” Zion said, collecting the glass shards scattered on the floor in a gray pillowcase he had removed from one of the two pillows on her bed. “Speaking from experience.”
The experience he had plenty of. He probably was the most often injured in the whole compound, and managed to heal physically perfectly each time, but his mind evaded the recovery process. And knowing it was partly due to my fault…
It had forced me to keep my distance.
I hovered at the head of the bed, monitoring the doc inspecting the damage. He threaded a disinfected needle and pierced her flesh to place the first stitch, pausing to pull the thread taut. “Stop breathing down my neck or do this yourselves,” he groused.
Zion tied up the pillowcase with the glass bits, hooked his thumbs in the loops of his jeans, and grinned. “This is so fun.”
Once again, he could not pause to pay attention to his own wounds.
Taking a centering breath, I pinched the bridge of my nose.
I had gotten no sleep last night, keeping watch over her, and then he had come into the equation.
I did not want her to wake up alone, and yet she had.
Zion had dragged me out into our training rings, where he circled me until my self-restraint had snapped and I held him in a chokehold until he tapped out with a drunk expression that haunted me for the rest of the day, preventing me from getting any rest whatsoever.
I rummaged in the doc’s box of med supplies, finding the necessities, and pointed to the open door. “Get lost.”
Zion’s smile widened. “Want to get lost with me?”
Shoving a bandage and a pack of gauze to his chest, I turned my back to him. “Do not bleed out.” Sometimes, it was too hard to just look at him.
And he could take care of his leg himself. Neither I nor the doc were doing it. For the life of me, I could not count how many times I had to stitch him up over the years.
“What do you mean, we cannot do anything?” I picked up a microchip we had snatched from the city. Smaller than my thumbnail, yet capable of hindering our operations and halting our supply chains.
A pile of them lay spread out on the silver tray on the large table in Sadira and Ryder’s workroom.
Rolling the tiny electronic piece on my palm, I squinted from the reflections assaulting me.
Everything was bright here, from the sky-blue upholstered chairs around the few tables dyed milky white to the birch-like floorboards.
How did they live in such a perpetual state of brightness?
It hurt my eyes just to be here. The only spots to give me any reprieve were the electronic parts either sorted into neat piles on different silver trays or the black, rubber-coated wires coiled into loops Sadira was sorting out at the end of the table.
Clearly, no one here had migraines or knowledge of the symptoms.
“Can’t any of this”—I waved at the tech lying around—“help you figure it out?”
“Listen. I grew up in the city with, as you call it, this, around me.” Sadira took the microchip from me and inspected it in the blinding light falling—no, shouting its illumination—from the multiple light bulbs installed in the ceiling.
“So when I tell you that we don’t have what it takes to work out these chips you’ve brought in, I mean it.
Nelle is better than me in software, but even with her on this, we’ll likely need direct access to Ilasall’s systems to solve the problem. ”
I rubbed between my eyes, hoping it would inspire my nerves to protest another headache creeping in. “So you are telling me all we can do is sit and wait?”
“Until someone from the Damia’s compound can figure this out, yes.
Ryder has reached out to her and Conall, but so far neither Ardaton nor Coriattus seem to be updating their security systems, so yeah, we might have to sit tight for a while.
” She shrugged and her shorts-clad, dark-skinned legs sparkled from the endless array of table lights.
They were sure to fuel another migraine into lunging at me.
“How is she, by the way? Seeing as you remain surprisingly alive.” Leaning back in her chair, Sadira hoisted her feet on the table, one ankle crossed over the other.
At least the dirty rubber soles of her boots gave me a target to focus on—a blotch of darkness in this room of scorching brightness—and that placated the frustration surging inside me for taking our conversation elsewhere.
Though Sadira was one the bunch of bastards who had somehow managed to worm their way into my personal bubble of friends, I could swear to the night sky of Kali’s and the blood Zion worshiped so dearly, some days, they made it a point to get to me.
“She’s giving them hell.” A head full of shoulder-length curls appeared in the entryway. He tucked a stray lock around his ear and perched himself on the corner of the center table. “I heard she managed to cut one and stab another within the first few minutes of waking up.”
“Ryder,” I said with lethal calm.
“Fine, fine, just bring her to dinner tonight.” Ryder inspected the silver tray full of microchips. “The girl has to eat sometime, and we’re all too curious not to know how she is planning to deal with you.”
“Nope, it’s going to be poison. Strangling someone the size of them is too complicated.” Sadira shook her head, and her ebony braids swooshed around her. “The question is, which one is going down first?”