Chapter 3 Gedeon
GEDEON
Leaning against an elm tree, the fissured bark snagged on my leather jacket. Not a cloud floated in the blue expanse as I gazed through the bare branches at the bright sky.
Dawn had broken a few hours ago, and I relished the steadily climbing warmth. Spring had officially decimated the winter and made itself comfortable on the season’s throne.
It had been a while since there was a morning as such. The last couple of months had been…survivable—my jaw clenched at the lie the word carried—but before last summer, before I had taken Kali for myself, before I had succumbed to Zion, my mornings used to suck.
Every one, I would wake up on the edge of a metaphorical chasm. Alone. And every time, my own shadow would push me into it, and I would fall. And fall. And fall.
Darkness would descend, starting its journey along the sides of my body, and slowly, it would enshroud my entire being. The last light would leave my vision, and I would dissolve, grow lost in the void.
But somehow, I would still reach the bottom, the pit of the underworld, where the god from the tale my father had used to read to me awaited me. A blaze would reduce me to char, but that crackling sound?
It would rise not from the firewood, but from my bones fracturing and breaking. Blisters would strew my chest, each bubble bursting with ice, further singing my deteriorating body.
Yet I would keep my mouth shut. Because a god would loom over me, lurking, patiently waiting for me to lose my composure.
Eventually, I would. A scream would slip past my defenses, and the deity would glow in victory, dragging me to his horde of demons. Their fangs would tear off my cooked flesh I didn’t think I had anymore.
Delirium would become my salvation until I realized I had no muscles left, no nerve endings, no neurons firing in my brain. The universe would bleed me dry until everything stilled.
Except death. It would circle me at a distance, always out of reach.
But a single thought about Zion’s and Kali’s eyes would end my torment. A pair of ocean blue would suck me in like a whirlpool, a vortex drowning me in its depths. And a pair of forest-green would wrap around me like seaweed, its tendrils raining caresses and calling me back to life.
My bones would forge themselves out of ash, my flesh would weave back together, and I would take the first breath in eternity. I would come alive again.
Because before I’d met them, I had been a senseless corpse marching around and barking orders to ensure our compound’s survival.
But they had hauled me out of that inescapable pit I had used to spend my days in. Nights, too.
And today’s morning served as a cover to that pit so I wouldn’t fall back into it.
Not that I would entertain such a possibility when twigs and withered greenery crunched under the heavy footfalls of Kali and Zion striding no more than twenty yards from me, their figures invisible in the thick forest of this valley.
Admiring the flawless sky, I stuck my hands into the front pockets of my faded black jeans.
My matching hoodie and jacket refused to keep my body heat at survivable levels for long.
First days of spring or not, the chill swirled in the air and licked your fingertips, leaching their color until they whitened.
Even death couldn’t make you immune to the cold.
20 YEARS OLD
The scissor blades sliced through the brown duct tape sealing the cardboard box effortlessly. Finished, I placed the instrument on the ebony desk in my new workspace—my study.
A leader required a dedicated space for their work, I had been told, and as the damned fortune had placed me at the top of our people’s hierarchy chain, I had free rein, including usurping any location in our compound.
Situated in the center of our compound, atop a small hill, accessible to all, this partly renovated building seemed like the perfect choice to set up my base of operations.
Particularly when I doubted sleep would be a luxury I could afford for the foreseeable future. Having an apartment upstairs I could crash at between endless hours required to recover our compound from Ilasall’s attack seemed a prudent thought.
The door swung open without a single rattle of knuckles against the wood as a warning, and Zion stilled in the doorway, the pair of bright blue shorts doing nothing to hide the grime clinging to his torso. “Ava has finished moving in. She’s on the floor below yours.”
Nodding in acknowledgment, I reached inside the cardboard box filled with my father’s books.
Mystery, strategy, religion, fantasy, folklore—his collection spanned a wide array of genres.
Giving away my parents’ house to others had been easy, but losing the stories my mother had helped my father to amass would have been like spitting on their grave, if one existed.
Realistically, more like dousing their funeral fire.
Zion scanned the room, from the flat boxes resting against my desk, to the packed-to-the-brim ones in the center of the room, to the dark wood bookshelves.
Without a word, he ripped into the box closest to him, taking out the books and lining them up on the top shelf. Frowning, he removed three tomes with taller-than-usual spines and set them aside, so the rest sat in a neat row.
I delved back into the box I’d opened. Not a sentence passed between us in the time it took us to unload two dozen boxes, the utter silence a comforting companion.
Once all the written stories, their covers dull and fraying, stood in their rightful places, I ran a hand over my shaved scalp.
Regardless of how many times I had washed my hair, the suds had felt like blood soaking through the strands, running down my body and pooling at my feet.
Cutting off the locks had seemed the most efficient solution.
Grabbing the steel water bottle from the windowsill, I downed half the contents. The liquid rushed down my esophagus, the freezing sensation so different to hot blood spurting from a slit throat that it pulled me back to reality, and I dabbed the condensation onto my nape.
“Thank—” I grew motionless at the sight of Zion.
Leaning against the bookshelf, with a smear of dust alongside his hairline, he studied me, his gaze trailing from my toes to my face. His eyebrows drew together, more and more—
With a huff, he stuffed his hands into his shorts’ pockets and strode out of my study, pausing in the doorway with his back to me. “I got a room in the same hallway as yours,” he gruffly stated, then vanished down the hallway.
As I had guessed, there was not a chance in a million that I was going to get any rest.
22 YEARS OLD
“Come on.” Zion circled me in the corner of the square, near a grassy field leading to the forest. Sunset gilded the red, orange, yellow and the eighty-hues-of-in-between leaves clinging to the branches with all their might.
Although the gunshot wound under my collarbone had fully healed, I still rolled my shoulder out of habit. “Looking for a fight? Because I will put you down, Zion.”
His grin resurfaced. “Aww, my kitten has some fangs.”
His kitten. The nickname he had used time and time again to test my composure, ever since Dusk had wandered off to never return.
I cracked my neck. “Call me that again.”
“What? A kitten who has nice claws?” Zion scratched his naked chest, his nails creating a spider web of red lines on his sandy skin, now a deeper shade from the lingering summer tan. “Should I run and bring you a bowl of milk so you can lick your wounds?”
Instead of a response, I used his jab as a distraction, charging him head-on and ramming my shoulder into his sternum.
He gripped my shoulders, choking on a gasp—
We tumbled, air whooshing around us, and I instinctively cradled the back of his head as his back slammed into the ground. We slid a good foot before stopping, the short trip marked by the gravel slicing my skin and flaying my knuckles.
With my left forearm bracketing his head, the sole thing keeping me from fully collapsing, I stared at him.
He blinked. Once. Twice.
A sweat bead tickled my upper lip, the drop about to fall, and my tongue darted out to catch it. Simultaneously sour and salty, the liquid exploded on my taste buds.
His eyes dipped to my lips, his own parting, the pinkish flesh chapped, matte in the shadow cast by me blocking out the sun.
His throat bobbed.
Warmth gushed from my hand trapped underneath him, his buzzed hair poking my fingertips, yet I didn’t move. Not an increment.
A second ticked by, or two, or perhaps they were minutes. Sneakers ground against the ground as he bent his legs, the right one coming between my thighs. His bare abdomen burned underneath mine, the sweat plastering our bodies together, and I dropped an inch closer to him.
His breath coasted alongside mine, the scent of exertion wafting off him, heady and dizzying, and—
“Gedeon!”
Conall’s shout shocked my system.
I scrambled to my feet. Shaking myself off, I marched to my childhood friend hovering not that far away, surveying Zion and I with a curious expression.
I ignored it.
“What is it?” Delving into the pile of clothes covering the bench, I pulled on my hoodie and used the cotton fabric to wipe the cuts weaving a pattern on the back of my hand.
Conall gestured toward the opposite side of the training rings, where Damia had hopped out of one of the two vehicles. “We’ve finished packing, and she wanted to say goodbye before we left.”
Flexing my fist, all five knuckles split, the gashes revealing the red tissue, I followed my friend to his car, oblivious to his mutters.
But a gust of wind lashed at my sweatpants, whipping the material, pushing me back, and I glanced over my shoulder.
Head thrown back, Zion sat cross-legged in the center of a chalk-drawn ring. With sweat glistening on his forehead, nose, and chin, his chest rising and falling, his red shorts slung low on his hips, he resembled a picture of peace—a frozen blip of light in the darkness painting the gravel.