Chapter 33 Kali
KALI
“What happened?” Eislyn held the infirmary door open. “Get him on that table over there.”
Together with Gedeon, we maneuvered Zion toward the steel table in the center of the room. We heaved his legs on top, coaxing him to lay back, and his slashed stomach stretched out.
“Fuck,” he hissed, arching his neck.
I staggered a step back, too petrified of an accidental touch causing him more pain. Hauling him the short distance from the car to the infirmary had already pulled enough curses from him. And more than enough winces from me. And grunts from Gedeon.
“A knife. Where’s the doc? He needs to see to her.” Gedeon gestured behind us. “We’ll take care of Zion.”
“Here, come sit.” Ava guided a shaken and unseeing Malaya to sit on a stool. Her eyes had been glazed over since we left Ilasall, shock written all over her heart-shaped face.
“He’s out in the training rings with the rest of our med team to tend to some mess.
Something about a brawl and broken bones,” Eislyn shared, digging into their med supplies closet.
Having found what she required, she brought back a silver tray loaded with instruments and rushed to wash up in the sink. “Did he get stabbed again?”
“No. It’s a slash wound.” Gedeon untied our makeshift bandage—a strip of my dress—from Zion’s abdomen.
With a pair of disposable blue gloves covering her hands, Eislyn cut off Zion’s blood-soaked shirt with a pair of long metal scissors. “Anything else I should know about?”
“Nothing worth wasting time,” Gedeon said.
I lingered at the edge of the table, fiddling with the neckline of my dress, heart racing, unsure what my role here was.
Inspecting the wound, she rattled off between Zion’s curses. “No visible damage to his organs, no ruptures or affected major arteries. He’ll survive.”
“Not my first time,” he gritted out, and gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Nothing to worry about.” Except the deep crimson on my green dress objected to his statement. The fabric drenched in his drying blood was plastered to my waist.
Eislyn disinfected a spot on his stomach, uncapped the syringe, and drew in the clear liquid from a tiny vial. “Pain meds,” she explained before I could open my mouth to ask.
The needle vanished in Zion’s abdomen, and his neck arched once more. A grunt slipped past his clenched teeth. “This is worse than getting cut up.”
“Don’t be a baby,” Eislyn scolded, earning a snort from him.
She threw her bloodied gloves in the trashcan and gestured to the tray.
“You know the drill. Shout if you need anything. You two, come with me,” she ordered Ava, then ushered her and Malaya into the adjoining room.
A click signaled the door closed, but I couldn’t peel my eyes off the gaping wound in Zion’s stomach.
The result of my uselessness.
Wetting my dry mouth, I mumbled, “She’s impressive.” Eislyn truly was. Firm and no bullshit. A different person compared to our daily interactions. Like a switch had gone off inside her.
“That’s why she is second to the doc.” Finished washing his hands in the sink, Gedeon pulled on a pair of latex gloves and jerked his chin at the brown glass bottle sitting on the tray. “Pour it over the needle.”
I untwisted the cap and generously doused the curved needle, flooding the tray with raised edges. My nose scrunched up at the pungent odor of alcohol destroying the tiny hairs inside my nostrils.
“You know how to stitch someone up?” I asked, as Gedeon threaded the needle with a dark blue thread.
“I have done it too many times to count. Mostly on him or myself.” Hovering above Zion’s abdomen, a smear of scarlet on his forehead, Gedeon instructed him. “Hold on to the table. You will need a dozen stitches or so.”
“Just do it,” Zion bit out. “The meds will dull the pain.”
He pierced Zion’s skin at the left corner of the nasty gash and began meticulously placing stitch after stitch. Blue thread weaved his flesh back together, his fingers grasping the edge of the table paling, and without thinking, I gave them a small squeeze.
It was my fault.
We had reached the smallest of northern gates without a hitch. And then it’d all gone haywire.
Six guards had blocked our way. Malaya and I had to stand on the side and wait for everyone to disarm the guards of their guns and toss them aside to avoid the rattle of bullets from raising alarms.
But even then, one against two hadn’t sounded like great odds in hand-to-hand combat.
And they hadn’t been.
Two guards had managed to attack me and Malaya. Mine hadn’t expected me to pull a knife, stab it in his thigh, and open his throat like Zion had taught me, but Malaya had been weaponless.
Zion had jumped in to help, and in the blur of the fight, had gotten his abdomen slashed.
Yet he’d still managed to take care of that guard.
The rest handled the remaining guards, and we’d moved through the malfunctioning gates without anyone chasing us, only us chasing time to bring him back to the compound.
I placed my forehead on mine and Zion’s hands. I was the one who’d decided we were taking Malaya with us. If I’d left her alone, his stomach would’ve remained intact.
But I couldn’t leave her like I’d done with Alora. I couldn’t condemn Malaya to a terrible life by walking away. Yet it meant my decision was the cause he’d gotten injured. And if the guard would’ve aimed better…
Cold fingers brushed my hair away from my temple. I raised my head. Splashing water told me Gedeon had finished stitching him and was washing up.
Zion murmured, “I would have taken her with us myself. It’s not your fault.”
I caught his wrist as he stroked my cheek. Lowering his arm, I traced the discoloration on his inner forearm, where his skin was wrinkled and matte in some areas and stretched out and shiny in others. “How did you get the scars?”
He stared at the ceiling, his muscles tense. “It’s a reminder of something stupid I did years ago.”
I transferred my weight to my left leg. “A reminder?”
“So I wouldn’t repeat it.” He pointedly focused on multiple lights dotting the ceiling.
And then it dawned on me.
A reminder.
Whatever had occurred, it wasn’t an accident.
“Who did this to you?”
Zion turned his head to face the white med supply closet lining the war, away from me. “It doesn’t matter.”
I licked my upper teeth to compose myself. “I will ask again. Who did this to you?”
Throwing the towel he’d used to dry himself over his shoulder, Gedeon came up to the other side of the table. “I did,” he stated.
I blinked.
Gulped.
Blinked again.
“What do you mean, you did it?”
He pulled a stool on wheels closer and sat down, resting his elbows on the table and looking at Zion. A foreboding sense chilled me to my toes as he nodded. Unease permeating my bones shuffled my feet and my stiff-from-Zion’s-dried-blood dress scraped at my thighs.
Gedeon cleared his throat. “You know the story of our compound. How we came to be.”
“You told me it at dinner,” I carefully confirmed.
“But what I have not is that the previous leaders were my parents.” He heaved a sigh. “I grew up together with neighborhood kids, mostly Damia and Conall, and met Zion at school. He was a year younger than us, but somehow, we couldn’t get rid of him.”
Zion snorted. “Don’t pretend you tried.”
I fiddled with the neckline of my dress. The roughness of the fabric grounded me as their story conjured a visual of them running wild and free as kids, unconcerned with the worries adults tended to bear. It sounded dream-like.
The wheels squeaked as Gedeon shifted on the stool. “He followed us three everywhere, like the kitten my parents had adopted as a pet for me. They both never left my side.”
So that was the kitten thing. Zion had mentioned it would drive Gedeon crazy if I called him that. Now I knew why. He’d been stalking me, trailing me exactly like that kitten, like Zion had done with him.
But the way he’d said it, the way his gaze had softened at Zion as he’d spoken… There was more.
“I won’t go into details, but the two of us grew close, and he became my partner in whatever my parents would task me with for the following years while they raised me as their legacy.
” Gedeon lowered his head into his hands.
When he rose back up, shadows spun in his irises.
“About twelve years ago, Ilasall launched their war. A few days long, but it was enough to slaughter plenty of families.” He curled his fists on the table, the glinting steel harshening his words.
“But luck evaded ours. Instead of putting bullets in between their eyes, they tortured our parents for information about the compounds.
In the middle of our central square, free for all to see.
“They raped our mothers repeatedly and laughed at their screams. Chopped off our fathers’ fingers one by one.
Poured bleach over our parents’ eyes. Thrust hooks under their shoulder blades to hold them up and whipped their backs with spindly branches, not even bothering to peel the cracked bark off.
Strike after strike mashed their backs into pulp.
All the while, we observed the entire ordeal from a rooftop nearby, hiding.
They had no idea we were their children.
Our parents had taught us to keep our mouths shut.
“They refused to talk despite the interrogation, so soldiers left them to hang in the scorching summer sun with no food or water, guarded non-stop, their bodies swaying on the rusted hooks piercing their limbs. They died in less than two hours. Instead of saying goodbye, we watched them incinerate their bodies in a large fire that same day.”
Nausea crawled up my throat and mixed with abject horror at the sickening image he’d painted.