Chapter 2 Kali
KALI
“Scream.”
Sitting on my heels, in an identical position as Zion, I widened my knees. “What?”
Winter had released its hold on the world, thawing the earth, but spring hadn’t reached the peak of the three-thousand-foot mountain we’d climbed. Hard soil and tiny rocks prodded my shins through the two pairs of cotton leggings and sweatpants.
Wind tugged the strands out of my high bun, cold nipped my ears, and I thanked the gods for the hunch to pack the extra sweater I now wore under the humiliatingly yellow parka I’d borrowed from Jayla.
Only, the dawn had melted away my embarrassment by painting the sky in purple and golden hues. This high up, the valley below unraveled before us like a blanket of slowly budding greenery.
“Scream,” Zion repeated as he gestured to the vast expanse, no evidence of human civilization anywhere you looked.
“What do you mean, scream?” I shifted, my muscles aching from the hike he’d put me through in the last hours of the night. Navigating the tricky terrain under the stars wasn’t what I’d expected when Zion had announced he was taking me on a short trip yesterday evening.
“Just scream.” He shrugged. “Until you can’t anymore.”
“Seriously?” I glanced down the slope, the rocks giving way to the naked branches of larches and farther down, near the lake glinting in the sunrise, elms, and beeches. “Why?”
He unzipped his leather jacket, as serene as I’d ever seen him. “To let it all out.”
“Let out what?” I dumbly echoed, my incomprehension rippling like the sea crashing into the sandy shore at the fringes of the valley.
Our compound seemed to be so far away; I struggled to locate it.
It took us most of the night to drive here.
Well, that was my guess. I’d fallen asleep an hour into our journey.
“Everything.” Zion scooched closer until his knee bumped into mine.
He brought my hand into his lap, succumbing to his usual habit of massaging my palm.
Upon meeting him, I’d thought nothing of it, a weird quirk he had at most, but time had lured the truth out.
Whenever inner turmoil consumed him, feeling my or…
Gedeon’s body heat would bring him back, steady him.
“After my parents’ and then Ayla’s death, I…
” he paused, “kind of lost it. I lashed out at everyone, including Gedeon, digging myself into a deeper and deeper hole, causing one incident after another. Gedeon kept compensating people for their troubles and handling the consequences of my actions, but after I passed out drunk in one of the schools’ playgrounds, his patience snapped.
I don’t remember much, just being awakened by him emptying a bottle of ice-cold water on me.
” Zion shook his head. “He handed me a backpack and marched me up here. We had to stop five times for me to throw up, but he wouldn’t relent. ”
Lacing my fingers with his, I gave him a squeeze, much gentler than the barbed wire squashing my heart from the memory he’d shared. “That sounds like Gedeon.”
Sadness permeated Zion’s chuckle. “It does. Once we reached this peak and I collapsed, he told me to scream. I questioned him, of course, but he simply stated he wouldn’t allow me to leave until my voice turned hoarse.”
“Did it?”
“More than that. Once I started to scream, I couldn’t stop. My throat was sore for three days afterward.” He kissed each of my knuckles. “So if not for me, do it for him.”
I rubbed the spot under my right collarbone, right above my breast. Four layers of clothing hid the tattoo I’d gotten inked a little over two months ago, two days after we’d lit up the funeral fire for Gedeon.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Can you show me how?”
He brushed his lips over my joints one last time, took a deep breath, and let out the most guttural, soul-consuming scream. The vastness hovering around us absorbed the echoes, smothering the sound that cleaved me in two and blurred my vision.
If not for Zion holding my hand, I would’ve thrown myself off this mountain, chasing the agony surging in his voice.
But then he finished. Silenced himself. And stared. Not at nature, but into himself. Into the memories of Gedeon.
A wet path shone on Zion’s windburned cheek, and I cupped one to wipe the tear away. “Are you okay?”
No answer left him as he leaned into my palm, his chest heaving.
The knot in my throat thickened. There was no such thing as a clean break. It was all jagged edges sawing your soul into pieces, bleeding you dry, stealing the remnants of your sanity until death began looking beautiful.
Yet a splinter would dig under your chin, raising your head higher and higher, toward the stars spelling out a tale about how an easy exit wasn’t the way. Because you knew, deep down, that life was about everything around the doorway, not what was behind it.
That was how I carried on. How, day by day, I spent the time with our friends. Organized war strategy meetings with Damia and Conall. Became the leader of our compound together with Zion. Pretended that Gedeon had perished at the hands of Ilasall. Spun a lie to cover how my knife had bled him dry.
The truth of his demise would cause a rebellion among our people, and we couldn’t have that. We had to squash all rumors and stand strong as a unit to have any chance of destroying Ilasall.
Easier said than done.
Week after week, I floated, lost in the madness my life had become. But then I would meet Zion’s eyes, the shade of the bluest sea, inviting and serene. Understanding. He would pull me close and kiss my nose, out of all places.
And no matter how many fractures I had inside me, they would all smooth out because of him.
Because he’d become the sole thing convincing me to wake up each morning.
“Okay.” I tugged down the slightly too short, disturbingly yellow parka’s sleeves to protect my wrists. “How do I do this?”
Fixated on the sea lapping the shoreline at the border of the valley, Zion murmured, “I don’t know. I don’t…” His reply was barely audible as the currents of air snatched it away. “Know.”
Compressing his hand in my own, I inhaled to my lungs’ capacity and opened my mouth in a scream. The howl rocked through me, and I let out everything that had been festering inside me for more than two months.
For weeks, I’d been searching for a goal to seek, for a trail to follow, for something, anything, to pull me out of dreaming about going back to the night I’d met Gedeon. When he’d been only a dark figure hidden in the treeline of the clearing near Ilasall.
When he’d been more than just a ghost haunting me since the day I’d plunged my knife into him.
My vocal cords strained as my cry reverberated off the clouds above.
But I continued. My lip corners ripped, and my tears scorched my skin until my voice disappeared, and I drowned in my wish to go back to that early morning when it’d all changed for the worse.
Sniffling, I collapsed onto myself. Zion curled around me, tucking me under his chin, holding me while I fell apart.
“Pretty birdie, you can fly, you can,” he purred, and I half-snorted, half-choked on a sob at his insanity. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly it was, his obsession with unexplainable things or simply the most freakish sense of humor, but it lifted the weight off my shoulders.
There was a time for a breakdown.
There was a time for silence.
There was a time for peace.
And there was also the time for war.
So I scrubbed my face dry with the sleeves of my yellow parka and stood up. With my head held high, I extended an arm to Zion kneeling beside me. “Come on.”
When I was thirteen, I’d vowed to myself I would raze the land the cities stood on.
It was time for my promise to come true.
For once in his life, Zion remained speechless, not a single remark. We tightened the straps of our backpacks and trekked down the mountain, navigating the uneven terrain and the frozen mud path—or more like what I imagined being a path.
Our beat-up ride glinted in the sunlight, parked on the side of a desolate road, the asphalt cracked and full of potholes—nature’s plant pots.
A memory of how Gedeon and Zion had come in frantic search of me to Damia’s compound in this exact car last autumn resurfaced.
It was the night I’d chosen to be theirs. Fully.
Shooing the thoughts shriveling my soul away, I yanked open the back seat door—
And froze.
From the inside, a set of green eyes studied me.
“Zion,” I whispered, the leather straps of my backpack digging into my forearm as I didn’t dare to make a single move.
Rounding the vehicle, Zion asked, “What?”
“Shhhh,” I hissed.
But my backpack slid off my wrist and landed on the ground with a clonk.
The dark fur ball’s tiny ears flattened. It watched me from the back seat, curled up on top of another sweater I’d borrowed from Jayla, this one vivid green. I could swear it on Alora’s non-existent grave that Jayla physically couldn’t wear anything that wasn’t shouting in color.
“There is…something here.”
Coming to a stop beside me, Zion cracked up, causing the creature to lower its head. But it didn’t flee.
As much I enjoyed Zion’s laughter—free, unrestrained, and so beautiful—I glared at him.
He shrugged. “It’s just a cat.”
“I know it’s a cat. I’ve seen them before,” I said, locked in the staring contest with the black animal. “But it’s in our car.”
“So? Just move it outside.” Picking my backpack off the ground, Zion placed it behind the driver’s seat, oblivious to the kitten refusing to budge from its spot.
Rooted in my spot, I huffed, “How am I supposed to do that?”
His chuckle wrapped around me like wisps of smoke. “Don’t tell me you’ve never held a cat.”
My glower deepened. “I haven’t. Ilasall euthanizes any strays, and only green-banded can afford to keep them as pets.”