Chapter 4 Zion
ZION
For the seventh time in the last twenty minutes, Kali lunged at me. Aiming a knife at my throat, her wrist, at last, was straight instead of awkwardly bent, her hold on the rubber handle proper.
Finally, she’d given in to her instincts.
Only the rigidity in her steps betrayed the calculation going on in her mind, and I leaped aside, effortlessly avoiding her strike by blocking her forearm with my own.
“Don’t overthink it.” I quickly kissed her nose, well aware of how it irked her when I guessed her moves and peppered her with kisses as punishment.
Hilarious.
Yet also teaching her the necessity of patience. She was still too prone to lashing out, regardless of the fact that we’d been training daily for months.
Though I did love watching her snap and then lose the fight against me. I would pin her underneath me and glide my favorite knife along her fair skin, drawing lines of scarlet and licking them up while she writhed in surrender, tugging the ends of my hair and gifting me those addictive whimpers.
Those cries were even better than the imprints that chains and cotton ropes would leave on her flesh whenever I tied her up. And the combination of both… A road straight to the point of no return.
“Easy for you to say.” She rubbed her nose, her glower popping back up. “You’re the one who showed me the moves. I’m just copying them.”
Gravel crunched under her black leather boots as she retreated to the chalk rim of our training ring and took up a ready position: knees slightly bent, core tensed, and feet apart.
Rule number one in physical confrontation: you engaged your muscles or lost the match in the first seconds of combat. Or, in more exciting words, you died.
Well, exciting if it meant their deaths. Not Kali’s. No, if someone so much as cut a strand of her dark and fluffy waves escaping her high bun, death wouldn’t serve as their sentence.
That would be me and Gedeon.
No.
Not anymore.
Now, it would be only me.
The lack of knowledge of what had happened to him affected me more than I cared to admit. Especially because of the vow Gedeon had lured out of me right before he’d slipped into unconsciousness.
It made me buzz with the need to stab someone, to weave their entrails in an intricate braid and stuff them back inside, to fill my underground with their wails and pleas to die, to prolong their suffering for as long as possible.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead. “You shouldn’t copy the moves, but feel them. Like…your next thought.” Like how my feet carried me to Gedeon’s vacant room at night. “Your steps should flow out of you. Don’t let your mind dictate them. It gives away your intentions from afar.”
“What’s even the point of this?” Kali gestured at the rest of the square brimming with our people preparing for the upcoming war with Ilasall. “It’s not like things are going to change overnight. I’m as ready as I can be.”
Peeling off my sweat-soaked shirt, I tossed it on the wobbly wooden bench, savoring the cold biting my back.
“The point is that we still don’t know who the traitor is.
” Who had informed Ilasall of where we’d hosted the participants of the Matching.
And spurred the events that had led to Gedeon’s…
disappearance. “So when we go to our meeting in Ilasall next week, we have to be prepared for everything. You need to know how to defend yourself in case I become indisposed.”
“You mean dead.” She blew upward to get the loose hair out of her face.
Early spring sunlight highlighted her angular features, identically to how it sharpened the edges of tall, dilapidated buildings looming on three sides of the square, the fourth open to a field of grass. “Don’t use Eli’s fancy words on me.”
It’d been worth a try. Eli had been adjusting his cold-weapon-use-in-close-combat lessons to include fallen comrades, and “indisposed” had become his new favored term.
Bleh, in my opinion.
“Death” carried much more pleasing notes. And the shape of the word held an appetizing flavor. Or maybe it was just the taste of iron swirling in your enemy’s blood.
“But fine. I’ll do as you wish.” Kali cracked her neck, first the left side, then the right, exactly how Gedeon used to do, and took on a defensive stance. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Her blades glinting in daylight, Gedeon’s black sweater hiding her curves, the crinkle of her nose as she secured her grasp on the weapons…
Mesmerizing.
She was going to love the full-body, custom-made sheaths I’d ordered for her mere days after we’d snatched her from the city. I’d been itching to gift them to her for months.
And strap them to her naked body. Fill in the gaps between the black leather with scarlet, coloring her fair skin in my favorite shade, inch by inch, until her protests grew incoherent.
And then, of course, I would take her to Ilasall to unleash herself. Because she deserved to let out her viciousness through the most agonizing methods.
It wasn’t common knowledge, but knives, especially if you were deeply familiar with their capabilities, could cause the most pain out of all weapons. For example, getting slashed hurt more than receiving a bullet. I could testify to that myself. But flaying someone alive…
Now, that shit was delicious.
I slipped from underneath the fluffy duvet—Kali’s most prized possession—and tucked the corners around her sprawled-out form. For once, she’d escaped reality in her dreams, sleeping soundly.
More often than not, her nightmares would steal her peace.
Gloom clouded her bedroom, obscuring the angles of the sparse furniture: a bed large enough to fit three, two bedside tables, and a closet lining one wall. All were carved from wood as dark as Kali’s hair and Shadow’s fur, his small body barely visible on the pillow above her head.
Careful not to disturb her, I brushed away the strands stuck to her mouth. A pair of green eyes fluttered open, followed by Shadow’s tiny ears popping up.
“Don’t you dare scratch me again.” I tickled the underside of Shadow’s chin. The pink lines on the back of my hand had healed, but as much as I was into pain, I had no wish to experience the kitten’s claws raking my skin.
Purring rose from Shadow’s belly as he settled down. A week had been all it took for him to learn how to climb onto the bed.
Or, if truth was to be told, I simply couldn’t watch Kali hoist the cat on and off the mattress over and over again anymore and had built the makeshift stairs for him to use until he could jump high enough.
Rubbing Shadow between his ears, I sighed at the small puddle of urine under a large window. I’d forgotten how long Gedeon had said it’d taken for Dusk to learn to use her litter box, but it was clear Shadow was going to need some time to acclimate.
After quietly cleaning up, I padded across the room to the door, pausing for one last look at Kali on her stomach, her forearms stuffed under the pillow, her calmness the opposite of the turmoil boiling inside me.
But the twenty-seven steps, the distance to Gedeon’s bedroom, called to me.
As I wandered down the dimly lit hallway and slipped inside his room, a rush of crisp air blasted me. Closing the window I’d cracked open last night, I pressed my forehead to the glass. The chill numbed my nerves, yet I didn’t dare to glance at his bed.
Even if I did, all I’d find would be pristine white sheets, not a wrinkle in the fabric, and three of the same size, rectangular pillows resting against the sleek headboard.
No tall shape hogging half the mattress and two pillows for himself.
No bare legs kicking the bedsheets off. No grumbles about the too-thick duvet.
If not for the icy-cold hardwood floor leaching warmth from my soles, I could swear the ground had split open under my feet.
I missed his laugh. His smugness. The way he pinched the bridge of his nose.
How his commands lured my defenses to disintegrate, never to rise again in his presence.
The feeling of him pressed against me, demanding control and growling a warning into my mouth if I didn’t surrender, and how it weakened my knees.
The mess of his disheveled hair in the mornings.
“Zion?”
Kali’s whisper knocked against my thoughts, but the fogged-up window had glued my forehead to the glass—the pathways of my memory had caught me in their snare.
But as Kali padded over to me, her light footfalls destroyed the oppressive stillness. “Come back to bed,” she said, enveloping my waist from behind.
Her fingers skated across my abdomen in search of the two newest scars, one along my fifth rib and another below my pectoral, both of which I’d been graced with hours before Gedeon had ceased being a part of us.
Covering her arms with my own, I turned us sideways so I could look at his bedroom. “It looks like he never left.” Everything was in its place, not an item sticking out. “Like he could just walk in at any moment.”
“I know.” Her warm breath tickled my neck, reminiscent of how his grip on my throat had felt.
“Did you know he’d said I was his?” After so many years.
I doubted I’d realized it then, but there had to be a reason why I’d been obsessed with following Gedeon everywhere when we were kids. Why I’d stayed by his side all this time. Why I’d toyed with him, telling myself it was just for fun.
“One day. I had him for one day. Not even a full one,” I murmured, fixated on the burn scars marring my left forearm. The swirls of discoloration reminded me of him.
Kali’s touch skimmed my back as she moved to stand before me. “I feel it too, Zion. You’re not alone.” She cupped my face, and I nuzzled her palms, savoring her body heat. “Let’s go back to bed, okay?”
Real. She was real.
Not merely a wisp of memories like him.
I dipped my chin in agreement, and she led me back to her bedroom without pushing me to talk, without nagging me to leave the festering past behind.
Snuggling in bed on our sides, I wrapped myself around her and buried my nose in her hair still slightly damp from the shower. A whiff of mouth-watering sweetness, juicy with a note of a tart scent, invaded my nostrils. “You smell—”
“Like cherry.” Kali drew the duvet up to our chins. “Your favorite shampoo.”
Huh.
“How do you know?” I’d been slowly replacing her toiletries with my preferred ones since we’d moved into her room. After a soldier had come after the three of us last autumn, our pictures in his uniform pocket, Gedeon and I had refused to leave Kali alone for a single night.
As one could expect, the soldier’s mission had gone unsuccessfully.
Well, depending on how you looked at it. We’d delivered his body parts back to Ilasall, so in turn, he’d served as our response to the city’s assault.
“You’ve stashed, like, five bottles in the bathroom cabinet under the sink, Zion. It’s hard not to take notice.” Total darkness cloaked the room, but her smile was palpable. “Why do you like it so much? It’s just like any other shampoo.”
I traced idle circles on her back, relishing how her muscles loosened. “First, cherries are deep red. And second, they—”
She slapped my chest. “Please don’t tell me they remind you of blood,” she groaned into the pillow, and another wave of cherry fragrance washed over to me.
So relaxing.
I planted a kiss on her shoulder. “They do.”
“You’re terrible,” she huffed.
“That’s why you like me.”
She searched my face for a minute. “Why do you keep showering me with gifts?”
Grabbing her hand, I nipped her fingertips, reveling in her giggle. “I like to take care of you.” I sucked her pinky into my mouth and bit above the first knuckle.
Kicking joined her squeals as she sought to get away. “What are you doing?”
“Snacking.” I licked the indentations my teeth had left on her flesh. “You’re irresistible.”
She flushed. “You’re saying you want to eat me?”
All the ways possible. “I do call you a bird, and we had chicken for lunch so, technically, I could consume you too. I’d impale you on my cock, and then roast your pussy until it dripped, so I could lap up the flowing juices.”
Her jaw fell. “That’s disturbing. I don’t even want to know how it would work.”
“Easy. I’d begin with plucking your feathers—”
She covered my mouth. “Please tell me it means my clothes and not something else.”
Rolling us over, I pinned her beneath me. Torturously slowly, I licked up a line down her throat, taking my time at the hollow of it—she’d squirm if you focused on the area. And her writhing…
Thank the gods I wasn’t wearing anything restricting.
Or at all.
“Why does it have to feel so good?” she groused. Her nails scratched my scalp, and I practically purr—
A small mass landed on my lower back.
I stilled.
Scalpel-like claws punctured my skin as Shadow traveled up my spine to settle between my shoulder blades.
“I swear that cat is out to get me.” I slowly turned, in hopes of coaxing the kitten to jump off and make his bed elsewhere.
“No!” Kali grabbed my shoulders to keep me hovering on my elbows above her. “Let him sleep. We need rest before tomorrow too.”
Her smile drained the last dregs of annoyance from me, and I surrendered to her wish by plopping down on my stomach beside her.
She adjusted the duvet to cover me up to where the kitten had decided to make his bed. “You both look so adorable.”
Murmuring into my pillow, I promised her, “You should know that I will eat you tomorrow morning, cat or no cat.”
There was one thing my parents had taught me that I’d taken to heart: never start your day without breakfast.