Chapter 24 Gedeon
GEDEON
“So I guess that means I’m off my breakfast delivery duty.” Ice cubes clinked against the glass as Ezra mixed whatever his drink was with a wooden cocktail stick. “He didn’t carry her away. She ran off herself.”
Zion seized his own glass, downed the remnants of his amber-colored beer, and slammed it into the table so fast and hard the glass burst. Blood speckled the ragged wooden surface and the sticky floor as he flicked his hand.
Oblivious to the sting from years of exposure, he ran the same hand through his short golden-brown hair and scarlet streaks colored his strands like war paint, a result of a battle.
“She’s not getting away.” He hurried toward the exit, and I raced after him. Someone had to have his back.
My chest tightened as we explored the streets, him shouting her name and his echoes the only response reaching us.
Grabbing his bicep, I brought his attention to the place she frequented. “The forest.”
We rushed down the outskirts of our compound, where the buildings gave way to the field of tall grass leading to our forests. Something called her to return there again and again, and I had a suspicion she had made some kind of bargain with the night sky in her mind.
She had to be at the clearing I had asked Ezra and Sadira to show her. Otherwise… I gritted my teeth.
“Pretty birdie,” Zion yelled, running in front of me and swiveling on his heel to squeeze between two trees as our feet carried us across the damp forest floor, the odor of rotting leaves drifting up our nostrils.
We slowed at the first sign of broken branches, signaling someone had carelessly marched through here. It had to be her. The tree line signaling the start of the clearing loomed before us.
“Pret—”
I clapped his shoulder. “Keep quiet. She might run again.”
Her unmoving figure lay twenty yards from us. If not for her chest rising, you would think she had given up and claimed herself as the death she was.
“Stay here,” I told him and walked to her. “Little death?” I brushed away the strands plastered to her wet cheeks, so pale, not far from transparent, as if the dew had replaced the blood flowing in her veins.
She hugged her knees, and the shimmering paths of her tears sliced at my ribs. She was battling her demons, the ones we all had. Some stalked us in reality, some haunted us in our minds. Hers were consuming her from the inside out.
Crouching down, Zion checked the pulse point on her neck. “It’s racing.”
“I told you to stay,” I gritted out, and squatted to pick her up.
“And? I’m not going to stand aside while she drowns.” He pinched her thigh, and she whimpered.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I snarled as she squirmed in my grip.
“Bringing her out of it,” he said, helping me to maneuver her. “Pain does it for some.”
“What—” She pushed at my chest. “Let me— Let me go.”
I hoisted her higher. “Wrap your arms around my neck.”
“N— No.” She wriggled in my grasp, but with her words faltering and her punch so weak it barely registered, there was no chance I would let her go.
I was taking her back to the compound, to safety, and making sure she slept through the night.
Taking her arm, he placed it around my neck. “Sleep, pretty birdie, sleep.”
Her bottom lip quivered as she gave in, resting her head on my shoulder.
Her fight had resembled an armor, a shell, a surface of water, the rest of her hiding underneath: the mess, the rawness, the secrets I was set on unraveling.
Perhaps not tonight, but I would chase the stars off the sky to get her to talk.
I always reached my goals. Whether by paying the asking price, sending Zion and his catch-and-play team, or manipulation.
Like taking her to the seaside.
Paying no heed to the concerned looks of those who walked by us on our way home, I carried her to the upper floors of our central building.
The realization had not dawned on her yet that her bedroom was in the same hallway as mine and Zion’s.
I shook my head to answer his silent question and passed her bedroom door, heading straight to my own.
Whether she wanted to be alone or not, I was not leaving her tonight.
He pulled off the top sheet, and I laid her down on my bed.
We unlaced her boots, and I ripped my t-shirt over my head, tossing it on the dark wood floor and crawling under the sheets.
Her skin was damp from the tears and wetness coated her in a freezing layer, so I pulled her close, not an inch of space between us remaining.
When she tucked her hands to my bare chest, the tiny unconscious move of hers solidified my resolve to not let her go.
Tucking the thin sheet around her, I glowered at Zion. “Get out.”
“No,” he said, and made himself comfortable in the armchair under the window. Red covered his palm, but I knew it would be fruitless to talk him into going to Eislyn or the doc. And even more fruitless to try to clean the black suede tomorrow.
“Do not get blood on my things,” I warned him and tucked the loose corner of my bedsheets around the back of her neck so an accidental draft would not awaken her. I had to erase the dark circles marring her sunken eyes somehow.
I would tie her to my bed if it would do the job.
My father used to tell me many bedtime stories, but one was my all-time favorite.
Once upon a time, there were three young gods.
Their father ate two to keep his power, but the third had escaped.
He manipulated his father into expelling his siblings, and together, they challenged the elder gods.
The war lasted for years, and the world sunk into chaos.
But one final battle changed everything.
The three young gods won and decided to divide the world into three realms for them to rule.
The first brother wielded the lightning power of the stars and took control of the skies.
The second commanded the armies of the most vicious storms and seduced the seas and the oceans to bend to his will.
The third one seated himself on the throne of the underworld, the land unseen, except by the unlucky souls who were born with one foot in their graves.
My father had tried to tell me more about each god, but I never listened, nagging him to tell me more exclusively about the third brother.
He had said that he was strict and cruel and would unleash his wrath on anyone who would dare to try to leave the underworld or steal the souls belonging to him.
That he had a horde of demons waiting for a flick of his wrist, a sign to attack and rip the disobeying soul apart.
I had no idea if the tale was true, but I had thought it to be so at the time. When you were a child, you believed the stories written in books, certain that nobody would deceive you on purpose.
Something called for this story to resurface from the recesses of my memory as I widened my stance, bending my knees slightly to secure my balance as Zion cracked his neck ten feet before me in our training rings.
The tale felt fitting. Maybe it was the sun peeking out over the horizon, erasing the stars in the sky, its orange edge like the tips of the flames grazing the tree line.
Perhaps it was because we had taken Kali to the sea Zion and his sister had been so fond of.
Or maybe it was the early morning chill clinging to my sweaty back, or the breeze ruffling my hair, the ends of strands plastered to my nape.
I landed a blow underneath his ribs and he doubled over, gasping for air and clutching his abdomen. He had slapped what used to be a white bandage on his palm, the fabric now deep crimson. At least he did not require stitches this time.
“Stop thinking.” He bared his bloody teeth from two of my previous punches. “It’s boring when you’re away.”
“I’m not away.” I dabbed the sweat on my forehead. “I’m considering how to make you follow a new rule.”
“You’re no fun,” Zion groaned, giving me a pained look. As if even talking about the rules hurt him physically.
I straightened. “It involves her.”
His nails left pink trails on his skin as he scratched his bare chest. “What is it?”
“No one can touch her besides us, Zion.” I inhaled deeply and sighed just as heavily. “I’m okay”—that was surely the wrong word to describe what it felt like; your pelvis tightening at the view of them together signaled it was more than just okay—“with her being with you—”
“Aww, are you saying you like me?” he interrupted me. “That’s so sweet. I’m touched.” His grin stretched wide, but as he spoke the words, something else gleamed in his eyes. A hint of seriousness that prevented their corners from creasing fully for his smile to appear genuine.
I fixed him with a dirty look. Or more like a morsel of it. The air surrounding us seemed to pause its circulation as flashes of how he and Kali looked together spun in my mind, and a want to join them, stand at his side, swirled in me.
Something I could not allow myself to take. Not after everything that had occurred years ago. Not after what I had done.
Seconds, or perhaps a full minute, ticked by as we stood before each other in our training rings, unmoving, frozen in the moment, just staring at one another.
“As I was saying.” I cleared my throat. “You can play with her, but I will not allow another, and I have no care who, our friends or not, so much as try anything with her.”
“Well, obviously. I didn’t think it was up for discussion.
I’d drain their blood before they laid a hand on her.
” He widened his stance. “If we’re done with the rules”—his face scrunched up as if the term itself was disgusting—“let’s do what we’re here for.
” With his grin popping back up, he curled his fingers at me in a come-hither motion. “Come on, kitten.”
Grinding my jaw to mask my lips twitching upward, I pretended to barrel into him so he crouched down and I could hit his back with my knee, but the gravel crunching under my boot gave away my move and he leaped right as my leg brushed his side.
I ducked his retaliatory uppercut. “Where did you go? All that blood did not come from nowhere.”
He kicked the back of my knees, and I stumbled forward, but the hit was not brutal enough to bring me down. He was holding off.
I squinted from the sunlight shining directly into my eyes.
A third of the sun’s globe had risen over the horizon and the temperature had already started to climb, but we were not the only ones in our training rings.
Soon after we had left Kali to sleep in my bed and come here, Eislyn and Eli appeared and began their own training session at the break of dawn.
Zion sprung at me, his feet swiftly carrying him the two yards between us, and I blocked his fist. Twisting on my heels to avoid his knuckles, I caught his bare chest and back and lifted him up, using my weight as leverage.
I threw us both on the ground and we landed with him on his back and me halfway on top of him.
“Fu-ck,” he coughed out, and a storm formed in his ocean-blue eyes as they dipped to my lips. His torso burned under my own.
Shaking myself off, I got up and extended a hand for him to get up. We were not finished. “You left last night. Where?”
He had disappeared during the night and returned with bloody clothes.
As usual. But he would not cease looming at the foot of my bed, so I had hauled him out of my bedroom and to the training rings to ensure he did not wake her up.
She had been sleeping so soundly that there was no way I was allowing him to disturb her.
“I paid someone an overdue visit.” He lunged, and I barely had time to block his kick to my side. Catching my arm, he twisted it behind my back. Cold tickled my throat as he pressed the blade of his favorite knife to my neck.
“We agreed on no weapons,” I grunted.
“You said no weapons. I didn’t concede to anything as such.” He carefully scratched my throat, not cutting, but one wrong move from either of us, and I would not walk off our training field. “I went to get a present for her.”
Using his relaxed grasp on me to my advantage, I elbowed him and ducked away. “A present?”
“Have you ever followed her back to her apartment in Ilasall?” Zion tossed his knife aside, onto his discarded t-shirt.
“No.” I had always made sure she got back safely to the city, but I also had not crossed the gates. It raised the risk of bringing attention to her sneaking out if the guards would have noticed me.
He rolled his shoulders, and his eyebrows drew together as the muscle he had sprained a couple of days ago must have stretched. “You should have. Each time she passed the gates, the same guard waited for her. And each time she agreed to whatever he asked for.”
The dawn’s breeze tickling the back of my neck could not relax my fists.
He was a dead man walking.
I charged at Zion and rammed my shoulder into his waist, bringing us both tumbling down to the ground.
“How long? How long did you let it go on? How long did you let her pay for it?” Tiny rocks dug into my knees as I straddled him and compressed his throat.
Not actually strangling him, but training was training, and for some reason, his throat in my hold closed up my own.
Throwing his arms wide, not defending himself, he hoarsely laughed. “What would you have done? Taken her earlier? He got his payment and let her go every time. She chose to accept his price. We all pay for what we want.” He lifted his scarred forearm above his head.
Stumbling onto my feet, I staggered back. The gravel scraped at my chest from the inside.
Zion rose and threw me a towel from the wooden bench on the side of our training ring, quickly cleaning himself with another one.
“You know it’s not the same,” I said.
“Exactly.”