Chapter 21 Gedeon #2
“Shout if you need anything.” After giving me a once-over, he raced back to the sea. He dived into a rising wave and vanished underwater, the water smoothing out with not a trace of him, like his existence had not seen the light of day to begin with.
A silhouette blocked out the sun. “What are you looking at?” Dressed in a pair of dark blue cotton shorts and a sky-blue cropped t-shirt, Kali tracked my gaze to the sea and its jaws.
“You.” I smirked, the pressure on my ribs easing as Zion resurfaced. “Let’s go.”
She paused at the shoreline and wiped her palms on her shorts. Carefully, like the water was going to bite her, she put her foot on the damp sand, and a wave submerged her toes in white foam.
“Ah!” She jumped on one leg and instantly lowered her foot onto her footprint. “It’s warm. I believed it would be cold. It always looked cold in the photographs.”
“If you come here during winter, it’s freezing.” With a hand on the small of her back, I encouraged her to move forward.
“Have you? I mean, swam during winter?” she asked as water engulfed us up to our thighs.
“Yes.” I nodded toward Zion diving straight into another wave before it crashed fifteen feet away from us.
“His sister loved the sea, so his and mine parents would bring us here every few weeks. He would drag me into the water to jump over the waves until our parents shouted at us to get out so we would not get sick.”
“Loved? She doesn’t anymore?”
“She died twelve years ago.” Alongside endless others.
“How?” Her question was barely audible over the water playing nature’s game of which wave was the mightiest.
“You will have to ask him yourself,” I said, my voice carrying a note of the past.
“Do you have any sib—”
A large wave crashed into us, and she clung to me to keep her balance. The sea gradually leveled out around us as she coughed out water from her lungs, not releasing her iron grip on me.
I rubbed her upper back. “Are you okay?”
“Ye—” She coughed out more seawater. “Yes. It’s just stronger than I assumed.”
“We need to go farther where the waves do not break yet.” I pushed us through toward the shallow strip of lighter-colored water about twenty feet from us. A refreshing breeze tousled my hair, lifting the strands glued to my nape and drying off the sweat.
With not a single complaint, she held on to me, hiding in my chest from the impact of stray waves. I chuckled to myself. She was comfortable with violence, but a little bit of water freaked her out enough to forget I had stolen her for myself.
The moment we were far away from the shore, where the seabed was shallow and the water reached only her mid-thighs, she let go of me and waded a couple of feet away, her eyebrows drawing back together. “What do we do now?”
She said we.
“Why are you laughing?”
Paying no heed to her question, I said, “Now you come into my arms, and I’ll teach you how to swim.”
“You can tell me how to swim. You don’t have to hold me. I’m not a child.”
“Your choice.” I turned around to walk away. “I will see you on the shore.”
“Wait!” She wobbled in the water, arms extended to the sides in hopes of keeping her balance in the unfamiliar environment as she scrutinized the endless water and huffed, “Fine.” Trudging closer to me, she eyed up the sea like it was going to eat her. “Do what you must. Just don’t leave me here.”
She might not have realized it yet, but leaving her was not an option I would consider. She was mine. And you took care of what was yours.
Taught them how to swim.
After gulping gallons of seawater, cursing the waves so viciously they had finally mellowed, and swatting me for pulling my arms from underneath her to force her to try to swim, she could float in the water well enough to enjoy herself.
She dunked her head underwater and popped out half a second later, too afraid to spend a full one buried underneath the force of nature. But the smile with which she took in the horizon, the deep blue water sparkling in white from the sun, was bewitching.
Abruptly, she screamed and flung herself into my arms. “Something touched me!”
Zion broke the surface right beside us with a huge splash.
She shoved at his chest. “Jer—”
A powerful wave snatched my footing. The sea ripped her away, and I held my breath, my lungs on fire, as water maneuvered me like a doll, up and down, left and right, forward and backward, water rising higher and falling, spinning me around my axis.
I searched for her frantically, finding nothing, nothing, and nothing.
Something solid hit my hip, and I clasped onto the slippery flesh, gaining ground, digging my heels into the sand and paying no heed to the rocks digging into my soles.
I spat out the briny water out as I resurfaced, blinking away the salt burning my eyes, my heaving calming down at the sight of them choking out water.
“Let’s go back,” I said, and she nodded, falling into another coughing fit. Zion moved her soaked hair away from her face.
She did not resist us guiding her to the shore, speechless in the minutes it took us to wade out of the water.
We collapsed on the blankets, and I passed her a bowl of fried rice, vegetables, and hare that our kitchen had prepared.
Silently, she ate without protesting and observed the sunset, unaware of our group’s debate about returning here next week.
But once the stars lit up in the night sky, she did too.
It was like a switch in her mind going on. It nagged me to break it wide open, figure out what made her tick, and own it.
“How did you get that scar?” she finally asked.
“Which one?” Countless covered my torso, most gained more than a decade ago.
She reached out and lightly circled the old gunshot wound below my right collarbone. “This one.”
The scar that made me recoil each time I remembered it. “War. A soldier shot me in Ilasall.”
“Is that how you became the leader of your compound?”
“I became one hours before.” Hours that ate away at me until I had found Zion holding the knife embedded in his sister’s stomach to the hilt.
She shivered from how the cold swirled around us, the waves rising higher, their roar growing loud and brutal.
I pulled my jacket from my backpack and placed it over her shoulders. “Here.” We had changed into dry clothing, but the fabric could not keep away the chill slithering under it.
“Why do you call it a compound? It’s more like a city, from what I’ve seen.” Kali drew the leather material snugly, her head thrown back to observe the white dots peppering the sky. Their silver shimmers caressed her while the wind lashed at us, our clothing flapping from its gusts.
“At first, it was a compound. A few chosen buildings, a fence people had built—way before any of us were born. The place expanded, but the name stuck.” I rose, and she followed. “Many loath the term ‘city,’ so we never changed it.”
“I heard there are two more,” she said as we walked along the shoreline, toward where Zion sat by himself, away from everyone. The air currents whipped our hair and sand grains pricked us like needles. The stars blinked out one by one, hidden by the gathering clouds.
“Yes, one close to each city, Ardaton and Coriattus. They’re much smaller than us. Damia is the leader of the one near Ardaton, and Conall leads the one near Coriattus.” We sat down on the sand beside Zion, taking in the horizon, where the waves moved like shadows, formidable and perilous.
“Why did you go back?” Zion asked Kali, his short golden-brown hair flying in all directions, as wild as the day I had found him in that cursed military truck. “To Ilasall. You were free in the clearing, outside the city wall, but you always returned to it.”
Her face hardened to stone. “Because I’m going to kill the Head of Ilasall and his followers.” A raindrop struck her forehead. A warning of the storm about to be unleashed.
The determination behind her statement forced my fingers to pause sifting the sand. The damp granules were as cold as her will was strong. And her display of perseverance, tenacity some mistakenly called stubbornness, was what leaders were forged out of.
Kali was a ruler.
Zion gave me a loaded look, one showing he was impressed. He always was whenever someone wished to plant murders all around like poppy flowers.
“You plan to butcher Peter and the rest by yourself?” On my last word, the sky broke. The torrent beat our sweats, drenching the fabric to the last thread in seconds, as ferocious as her proclamation. Maybe it had drawn inspiration from her.
“Poison doesn’t require a team.” She grasped my jacket firmer, bracing against the icy wind coming from the raging sea and the raindrops hitting us with such force they left indentations in the sand. “Drug me for the fourth time, and I will add an extra spice to your breakfast.”
“Guys, we’re going back!” Ezra shouted as everyone haphazardly packed up the blankets, towels, dishes, and clothing, and raced to the beat-up cars.
We plodded back and, despite Kali’s objections, shoved her between me and Zion in the backseat with Eli at the wheel and Eislyn in the passenger seat. Howling wind assaulted the windows as we flew down the desolate roads back to the compound.
Fiddling with the fresh gauze I had wrapped around her palm, she asked, “Why won’t you release me?”
“You think this is prison?” I hooked a finger under her chin.
“You could not be more wrong. I will set you free, Kali. And I will stand by your side while you rain death on everyone who wronged you.” I brushed away a fallen eyelash from under her eye, and her throat bobbed.
“See? Your eyes are already flaming. I am going to kindle them until they explode.”
“I don’t think you know what would happen if you did,” she murmured, and tugged on the sleeves of my jacket, our sweatpants glued to our bodies from the sky’s shower.
Keeping to herself, she stared out the front window and stole glances at me and Zion. But in the middle of our drive home, exhaustion spread its wings and carried her off to the dream world, and her head fell on my shoulder.
I understood Zion’s obsession with watching her sleep. Her logic and reason would withdraw, instinct taking over, and her body would mold to yours.
Without knowing it yet, she was right where she belonged—with us.
Zion and me. Because, for some reason, it felt right.
He brought her left hand into his lap and began rubbing circles on her palm with his thumbs. His shirtsleeve rode up from the movement, exposing a sliver of his burn scars, a reminder of that forsaken night, my own nightmare straight from hell.