Chapter 43 Gedeon #2
I had started collecting them the day I got my first tattoo. They had become smaller and smaller over the years, filling any available space on my back, to the point the newest additions had inked my nape and sides.
“Each bird represents a person from our compound who has died because of my decisions. I’m responsible for every life here.” I scratched the back of my neck where the two most recent tattoos had settled. “It helps me to remember it.”
“Then where are the others?” Kali asked, her breakfast forgotten on the mattress and her legs crossed as she leaned against the sleek wooden headboard painted in the lightest shade of gray, way too bright for my taste.
“The others?”
“What I’ve told you many times.” Zion picked up her plate and loaded it on top of his finished one, devouring her leftovers as if he had not just scarfed down his own meal.
“Your tattoo doesn’t make sense. From what I’ve seen and heard, people here risk their lives willingly for what they believe in.
They know it comes at a cost, primarily—your life.
” She licked the tomato sauce that had dribbled on her wrist. “But by whatever favor from the gods, things have worked out so far, and the compound has flourished. Yet you mark your body with deaths, and not lives saved. It’s stupid. ”
“My tattoo is stupid?”
“Yes,” both of them said simultaneously.
I stared at them.
Kali lunged, one second beside me, and the next, straddling me. “But stupid is good.”
It never was. Foolishness had to be avoided at all costs. It would only lead to painful repercussions. “It’s n—”
She muffled my objection by pressing her mouth to mine, devouring me in my surprise. “See? It works for me.” Pulling away, she tapped Zion’s nose. “Crazy too.”
He leaped on her, tickling her waist as she squealed and curled into a ball between my legs, laughing and begging him to cease, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
“How is that for crazy?” He hovered above her on his elbows and kissed the tip of her nose. “Need some more?
“Not what you have to offer,” she scoffed and squirmed out from underneath him.
“Behave.” I pulled her into my lap and reclined against the non-cushioned headboard. “Or I will give you to him to play with for the day.”
“It would be more fun to give you to him.” She nestled in with her back resting on my chest. “Now that would be a sight.”
Zion chuckled. “You have no idea of the things I would do. For starters, I wouldn’t stay afar anymore.”
“Stay afar? What do you mean?”
“I’ve followed Gedeon most of the times he went searching for you in that clearing near Ilasall,” he shared. “He never noticed me.”
“Wait. You stalked him while he stalked me?” She covered her mouth to mask her laughter.
Satisfaction as bright as the morning light framed Zion’s smug smile that rendered me speechless. He had attempted to involve me in his games many times, but I had always kept him at arm’s length. Shoved him away despite it chilling my blood.
Yet he had taken care of the soldier. Watched me sleep. Said it calmed him down during the nights when rest evaded him. And now it had turned out he had been following me.
He would not leave me alone. Madman or not, he was toying with my head.
And I was beginning to fall for it.
“Don’t act so surprised,” he told me and rolled onto his back, hooking his hands under the pillow. “Now, can we talk about something else?”
I would have if it was possible. My brain refused to stray from digesting the fact he would hover above my bed in my slumber, ensuring I remained alive, and had trailed me in the forest, silent and holding his distance.
“What was it like to be raised by a family?” Kali asked.
I sighed. “Not as great as you think.”
“But you had parents.”
“And they did their best. But the needs of the compound outweigh those of familial bonds.”
“We were raised in preparation for war.” Zion scratched the curling scar under his collarbone that he had earned the first time we had fought each other, all the while staring at the ceiling.
“In our teenage years, we already knew the best ways to defend ourselves in case of an attack. We heard enough stories from those who’d escaped or our parents had smuggled out to grow up hating the cities.
It taught us how to take a life without remorse or shame. ”
She traced the veins on my forearm. “I supposed you spent time with your families.”
“We did. I spent it running around in the streets with Damia, Conall, and later, Zion, but that’s a small part of it. In the mornings, we went to school, and in the afternoons, to training. Same as it is now. Have you visited our schools?”
“No. I’m not…particularly comfortable around children.”
“Then you have not seen how we destroy their childhoods, same as our parents did to ours.” I tightened my hold on her.
“It all starts from a few years old. Readings of fairy tales about kingdoms and wars, good and evil. Then the games begin: hide and seek, tag, capture the enemy’s flag while protecting your own, free the prisoners without getting captured.
You would think it ends there, but once they are old enough to understand what we are doing, we move them into our actual training rings.
You never know who you will go up against: a woman, a man, a teenager, an adult, a senior, a lean soldier, or a bulky guard.
“Because if we do not succeed in taking Ilasall down, kids will become the next generation to attempt it. We cannot leave them defenseless. So we teach them warfare. Fuck up their developing minds. Turn them into cold weapons or calculated strategists, so if we ever disappear, they can survive. Like we did. People are our greatest asset. If you think our childhoods were easy, know they were not. Zion and I? The rest of us? We are the children who have been raised for a future war. And so, we continue the cycle.”
Our parents had taught us to value loyalty above all, as questionable as it was.
“That’s not how I imagined it was like,” she murmured. “I’m sorry you both lost your families. I wish I could’ve done something.”
“I’m glad you were not here.” She likely would not have survived the attack Ilasall had launched on us twelve years ago. Or would have ended up in the back of a military truck like Zion’s sister.
“Someone else might’ve snatched you for themselves instead of us,” Zion said, and pounced at her. Squealing, Kali scrambled off the bed as he climbed over my legs to chase her.
“I’m not playing with you until you give me my clothes back.” She half-ran to the closet, and its door almost jumped off its hinges from how furiously she ripped it open and dug in, tossing pants, t-shirts, jackets, and everything in between into a heap on the floor.
“What did you do?” I asked him.
Legs dangling off the edge, he sprawled out on the bed. “I told her she lived here now. So, naturally, my closet is where her clothes should hang.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. At least he had not thrown them away.
“Will you help me carry everything back?” Frowning, she surveyed the pile of fabrics reaching up to her knees.
Rising, Zion proposed, “I’ll help you in coming back to my bed,” and rushed toward her.
She bolted out of the room with the few items she had managed to pick up before he rounded her.
I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and strode to the window. As I had suspected, the bustle of the day had washed over the streets. Residents were strolling at ease, undisturbed by the pressure of leading their own people into the future war. Into their unavoidable deaths.
“Do you think they have received our message?” Two months had passed since we had sent the soldier’s body parts to the Heads of Military, Ilasall, and Welfare, and they had not issued a single retaliatory action. The utter silence was disquieting.
“Yes. But I think I know why they haven’t responded.” Zion paused, stuffing Kali’s clothes back into his closet, then straightened. “We have a rat.”