Chapter 39 Kali #2
I slid out of my chair and took the handle, terminating its non-ceasing rotation. As gently as I possibly could, I raised Zion’s head. My heart wilted at the anguish etched into each contour of his face, as if the maw of a vicious storm had closed on him.
“I’m sorry.” I kissed his forehead, his nose, his chin. “I know it won’t change the past, but I’m so sorry.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. “I have you now.” His breath mingled with mine.
“It’s not the same.” I placed a palm on his chest, counting his heartbeats, each thump heavy, fighting for the next one.
Gedeon knelt beside us and squeezed Zion’s shoulder. His hand glided to Zion’s neck and lingered there for five heartbeats, his thumb stroking along the artery, before withdrawing and turning my chin to face him. “Why did you run?”
I gathered saliva in my parched mouth. My question was about to drain the entire reserve of my courage. “Have you ever got tested for fertility?”
“Why?” Gedeon released my chin. “You wore a black band. It carries no weight if we did or not.”
I traced the seams of dark wood floorboards, all straight and glued perfectly together, not crooked like me.
“I’m fertile,” I blurted out.
“You can’t be. They don’t make mistakes in testing.” Zion shifted into a cross-legged position and pulled my palm into his lap. He did that a lot. Deflected whenever I asked why.
I threw my head over the edge of the chair’s seat. “It’s a long story.”
“Now.” Gedeon’s voice took on a note of authority. “You are telling us now.”
My sigh mirrored the heaviness of the flaking paint marring the ceiling. Moisture had swelled and shrunk, causing hundreds of cracks to appear, unseen unless you searched for them. Identical to the lacerations my nightmare had left in me with its talons—invisible but slowly bleeding me dry.
Surrendering myself to the judgment I was certain they’d dole out to me, I began telling the story of how my blood had turned to ice.
“I used to have a friend. When we were twelve, I talked her into sneaking out of our school and we ended up finding ourselves near Ilasall’s wall.
Maybe luck had decided to follow us that day because we found an unlocked door and climbed to the top of the wall.
” Brutal wind had whipped our hair, and her cheeks had reddened. I’d loved seeing the color on her.
“Alora.” Zion massaged my pinky, the finger that had marked step one of my and Alora’s plan.
“Yes,” I admitted. “We gaped at the sea of trees, a forest, so green, so vivid. But the guards found us and brought us back to our school. The teachers asked how we’d wound up there and Alora took the blame.
They separated her from the rest of us for three days.
I still don’t know what punishment she endured, but she was never the same after.
I spent every night in her bed to soothe her.
She couldn’t sleep without someone holding her.
She’d cry herself dry and stare at the ceiling otherwise.
“A year later, we were going through fertility testing, and she had made a plan. There was a man in the school’s lab who’d agreed to mark her test samples as negative if she…
You can guess this part. The thing is, they don’t mark the samples with your name, only a number.
My job was to find out hers if she couldn’t do it herself.
” I paused. “I found it. I also found mine.” I furiously scrubbed away my traitorous tears.
“I told her everything would be alright. That she would be okay.”
“You told her your sample number instead of hers,” Gedeon stated. “So no matter the result, you got marked as black.”
I stayed silent, focusing on the largest flake of white paint right above me.
I couldn’t say it out loud. The admission felt like walking into a sea with a backpack full of rocks and wading away from the shore, toward the sun vanishing on the horizon, toward salvation and damnation.
Swimming until you couldn’t reach the bottom, until the waves didn’t crash anymore, until the weight pulled you under, salty water filled your lungs, the depths of nature’s force absorbed your scream, and slippery creatures with fins ate away your heart.
So I didn’t say it.
Instead, I finished my story. “They separated us into different schools. The tests showed she could have children, so she got a green band, and I, a black one. No matter how much I begged, they wouldn’t let me visit her or tell me anything about her.
Years later, I spotted her walking across the street.
She was pregnant and…” I swallowed. “I was supposed to be in her place. I had used her to get out of it. Had condemned her to the worst life possible. And yet she kept quiet. Didn’t tell anyone about this as far as I know, because no one has come searching for me.
She’s been protecting me all this time. Even though I did nothing but hurt her.
“After I got my first job, I spent months trying to find out who the man in the lab was. I found out the places he frequented, including an illegal bar. One night, I pretended to have ended up there by accident and got him drunk. Convinced him to take me to his apartment. After, on the verge of passing out, he revealed that the sample he’d marked as negative was actually positive.
That’s why I need to know if you can have children.
Because I can’t. I won’t. I didn’t sacrifice her for nothing.
My nightmares do not plague me for nothing.
” My voice cracked, but I willed my unshed tears away.
They were for people whose hearts weren’t stone cold.
“Look at me,” Gedeon said softly.
I stared at the peeling ceiling.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
My throat closed up as I raised my head to meet his gaze.
“You did what you had to in order to survive. All of us have. I’m far from innocent myself.
No one, I repeat, no one is going to blame you for this.
If they do, they will not stay alive for long.
Do not let it eat you up.” He brushed along Zion’s burn scars, so careful, so gentle.
A stark contrast to the bitterness in his laugh. “Once you do, there is no coming back.”
“We all do things we’re not proud of to survive,” Zion added, kneading my thumb symbolizing the last step of my and Alora’s plan. The one that had changed everything.
Five. I was afraid for my life.
I stared at the thumb curling around my fist. This last part hadn’t been in our original plan.
“Proud or not, doesn’t change the fact that I’ve betrayed the one person I truly cared about to not have a life with a green band.” My confession morphed into shards tearing apart the gashes my actions had left deep inside me. “Do you know if you’re fertile?”
“We’re not,” Gedeon said.
“How do you know for sure?” I pressed.
“Can you imagine us with kids? Raising them for war. Like we had been. Our parents foresaw that. I have no recollection of it, but somehow, they got us tested. The results came up negative.”
“Zion?” I had to erase any lingering doubts.
“He’s right. They tested us together with Conall and Damia.” Zion rubbed circles on my inner wrist. “Is that why the green and black wristbands the soldier had left on your pillow freaked you out?”
The pressure in my chest eased. I’d sentenced Alora for a reason.
I wouldn’t let the price she was still paying for my freedom go to waste.
“I presumed the city had figured it out. But he left both, not just the green band. I think they’re supposed to remind me that Ilasall owns me, whether I’m there or not. ”
“This is where you are wrong.” Gedeon stood up and extended a hand to help me rise. “They have no claim on you. They lost it the day I saw you.”
I’d abandoned my morals to earn my relative freedom in Ilasall.
To avoid becoming someone’s property. To live with a shred of independence.
Yet hearing them stake their claim on me, seeing Gedeon’s ink painting my skin, enduring Zion’s grins that lured my own out…
I craved to bottle the feeling. Control it.
Surrender myself to their words and whims and have them yield to me in return.
And not suffer through their friends—perhaps now mine too—congratulating me with knowing smiles and wishes. “I don’t want to go back to the party. You can go and celebrate, but I’m not going to.”
Zion leaped up. “I’m not letting you slip away.” He launched toward me, and the world turned on its axis as I hit a muscled back.
He’d thrown me over his shoulder.
“Put me down!” Beating at his back, I tried to push myself off him. A sting bloomed on my butt, and my hands rushed to cover up. “Did you just smack my ass?” I glared at Gedeon.
“I told you it’s mine.” Upside down or not, his smirk was as irritating as always.
And maybe a little bit hot.
Enough to make my face heat.
Zion zoomed out of the room, wind rushing past us as he carried me up the floors.
He put me down inside my bedroom, and I stumbled from a sudden rush of dizziness.
Which they used to their advantage. Murmuring, “This fucking dress,” Zion tore it off while Gedeon unlaced my boots.
He threw me onto the bed, and the mattress absorbed the blow as I bounced on top.
“Don’t move,” Gedeon ordered before disappearing into the bathroom.
I crawled under the sheets and rolled around so the fluffy duvet tucked me into a heavenly cocoon of coziness. It also became the perfect hiding spot for my blush as Zion undressed, revealing the muscled and toned lines of his chest, abs, and damn, even his ass was spectacular.
Utterly naked, he stalked toward me, and I pulled the cover up to my eyes to mask how my tongue hungered to explore the texture of the most recent scar on his stomach and the smaller ones scattered across his abdomen.
“Something you want?” He wiggled his hips, making his cock bounce around.
The duvet muffled my giggle. Crazy idiot.
Holding a towel, Gedeon snapped from the bathroom’s doorway, “No. She needs to rest.” When he tugged on the sheets, I clutched them tighter, burrowing myself deeper. He sighed through his nose. “Do you really want to start a fight? I thought we had established you are not going to win.”
“Fine.” I pushed two corners of the duvet from underneath me, one toward Gedeon and one toward Zion. “You can have these corners. It’s not my fault you didn’t give me bigger bedsheets.”
Zion jumped on the bed, ripped them away, and rolled onto his back, with me squealing on top of him. “I will sit you back on my cock if you don’t stop squirming.”
“I said no more fucking tonight,” Gedeon growled.
I muttered into Zion’s chest, “He’s such a controlling jerk.”
Gedeon pushed my legs apart and ran a damp cloth up my sticky thighs to clean me up. Finished, he tossed the towel on the floor and pulled the too-small duvet over us. “Nowhere to run now,” he murmured, his chest pressed to my back.
“Shut up or fuck me.” I wiggled against his groin. “Your choice.”
He grunted, gripping my hips and stilling me, much to my amusement.
I jerked at the unexpected pain on my shoulder and launched to sit up. A pink flush in the shape of two half-moons shone above my collarbone, the tiny curvatures his teeth had left forming a bite mark.
He hauled me back to the sheets between them and chuckled into my neck. “You know my choice. But you need sleep. If you can calm down, I will wake you up with me between your legs,” he murmured and kissed his bite.
“And me in your ass.” Zion squeezed the mentioned body part, kneading my cheek.
“Not one of you is touching my butt. I have a better idea. It involves your gift.” I peered up at Zion. “Can you teach me how to whip him?”
He drew me closer, tangling his legs with mine. “Anything you want. Say the word and I’ll teach you.”
Gedeon had it coming for putting me on stage tonight.