Chapter 9 Zion
ZION
Kali twisted to face me with such fury my heart skipped a beat. Her jaw practically creaked as she stared me down.
Ava clapped me on the shoulder. “Good luck.” Shrugging off her teal parka with the puffiest sleeves I’d ever seen, she disappeared into the crowd with Eli in tow, his high ponytail as tight as his mood.
Maybe Ava would be able to lighten him up a bit. He needed a release, and not the kind Eislyn had addicted him to.
He’d even ceased fighting me in our training rings. Apparently, I was too unpredictable and he “couldn’t afford any new injuries.”
As if the last one had been the consequence of my actions. He should’ve warned me at the beginning that fractures were off the potential outcomes list.
Plus, only two of his fingers had dislocated. He should’ve tumbled on his ass, not his side. Fault didn’t fall on me because the man had forgotten the proper techniques for falling safely.
“I climbed down a shaft so dark it felt bottomless, and you couldn’t tell me we were meeting Zola?” Kali’s shoulders rose and fell in such a controlled manner my mouth watered.
Oh, how I adored her rage.
I flicked her nose. “Surprise.”
The crease between her black eyebrows deepened, begging me to succumb to its song and trace its contour until it smoothed out.
Zola laced her fingers, the sun-spotted skin paper-thin. “I guess Zion forgot to inform you of who I am.” She gave me a stern look.
“I could never forget.” Lightly clutching her shoulders, I kissed her dry cheek. “I barely contained myself from wrapping you in a bow as a gift to Kali.”
Zola shook her head, her gray hair glowing in the dimness.
Rusted lanterns secured to the cavern’s domed walls failed to illuminate the space sufficiently.
“As peculiar as you are, in the end, you’re a good man, Zion.
” She patted my chest, right where Ilasall’s military usually had their knives strapped across their pectorals.
“Please take care of him,” she told Kali.
“You’re getting soft with age, Zola.” I hooked my thumbs in the loops of my fitted cargo pants, a standard fit for the city’s soldiers. According to Kali, I had to look like one: foreboding, imperious, and ready to get my hands dirty.
Now, the latter was set to occur in a few hours. I couldn’t return to our compound without someone to occupy me for the night. Certain urges could be satisfied only by the sharpness of my knife and the blubbers and wails of my playthings reverberating off the earthy-smelling walls of our basement.
And then, naturally, I would taste my pretty birdie until her gasps and moans morphed into a melody loud enough to awaken the people residing on the floor below us.
Which also signaled it was time to flip her onto her belly, stuff a pillow under her hips, and sink into her tight pussy to lure out more of her enthralling screams.
Zola’s smile widened. “And I bet you’re getting hard from whatever you’re daydreaming about right now. I may be old, but I can still feel things.” Laughing, she strolled off, toward the large table in the center of the chamber.
Feelings. Such an odd term to describe your world falling apart. Like the night Ilasall had invaded our compound twelve years ago, when Zola and her partner had been shoved into Ilasall’s military trucks and taken to the city for fertility testing, never to be reunited again.
“Zola. A bow. A present to me.” A heavy sigh rocked through Kali. “You can’t gift a person, Zion.”
“I already did. Don’t you remember the guard who’d let you pass the city’s gates for a price, and who I tied to the table in our underground? For you?”
“He was a pig, not a person.” She unzipped her leather jacket, revealing a skintight soldier’s uniform shirt underneath. “Filth doesn’t count.”
She had a point there.
“That gives me an idea.” I seized her hip, and my thumb slithered under the hem of her pants. “Why don’t I make you count the number of times in a row I can—”
“Do not”—she covered my mouth, her curves molded to my front so perfectly I had to bite my tongue to keep my sanity in check—“finish that sentence.”
Locking her flush with me, I licked her palm restricting my speech. Lush and scrumptious, like the rest of her.
Edible.
A clearing of a throat dragged my eyes from her blush. The pink was such a stunning shade I pondered if I could bottle it and use it as paint to draw on my playthings later on.
“Ahm, hi.” Arlo approached us, dressed in a pair of loose gray pants and a matching turtleneck, casual for once.
The last time I’d seen him, he’d boasted a guard’s outfit, including a black helmet that hid his now exposed dark, tight curls cropped close to his scalp.
“I’m Arlo,” he introduced himself to Kali.
“I remember you,” she said. “A friend of Ava’s. You guided us through the inside of Ilasall’s wall a few months ago.”
The black-banded contact who continuously risked his life to help us achieve our goals, choosing to spend his miserable days in the city despite knowing what kind of freedom could await him in our compound, or Damia’s, or Conall’s.
All he had to do was traverse the tunnels sprawling underneath Ilasall to find freedom.
“Glad I made an impression.” His crooked nose reflected the candlelight spilling from the lanterns.
Kali’s eye corners crinkled. “Keep it to yourself, or Zion will try to one-up you.”
“I won’t.” I kissed her temple. Which was not the same as kissing her nose. She didn’t wipe it afterward, and a glower didn’t scrunch up her sharp features. I made a mental note to lick the slope of her nose tonight. Her sputtering and ticklishness were addictive. “I’m always up for you.”
“Yes, yes, we’re all aware.” Ava popped out from behind us, her pointy chin held high as she rounded Arlo. “I live a floor below yours, you know. I have ears.” She draped an arm over his shoulders. “Now stop torturing my poor friend, who Zola sent to tell you she’s ready. It’s painful to watch.”
Arlo rubbed his forehead. “I need a drink.”
“I may have smuggled something in my jacket.” Ava steered them toward one of the ragged tables, the wooden surfaces branded by countless rings of condensation and gouges from gods knew what.
A few steps away from us, she paused to gesture at the center of the chamber, where a middle-aged, stocky man was helping Zola climb onto a bench and then a large table.
“Now, I’ve got Eli nestled in the corner, the broody prick that he is today, so why don’t you give him a show as a pick-me-up? ”
I poked Kali’s high bun, the hair tie barely holding her strands together.
The mass wobbled, and she batted at my hands. “Stop it. I need to concentrate.”
What she actually needed was to get out of her head. And my expertise did encompass a field called distraction.
So I did the one thing you could in such a situation: bent down and threw her over my shoulder.
Her yelp drew the multitude of curious gazes toward us, effectively silencing the crowd. The rebels perked up, their interest as to why we’d organized this meeting spiking.
“Zion,” she seethed, rucking up my dark green shirt, searching for leverage to push off my back.
The neckline of the fabric dug into my throat, and I stroked her smooth ass. “Be nice. We have a performance to run,” I said, striding to the table Zola had commandeered as a makeshift stage.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Kali yanked my shirt down, her smugness palpable—the material sliced my throat.
The cloth affected my vocal cords as I strained to say, “Getting me hard in public?”
My grip on her upper thighs tightened, mimicking the zipper of my pants. The city had made it a point to make their military uniforms as uncomfortable as possible.
“That’s not—” She buried her face in my lower back. “I give up. You’re impossible.”
The warmth of her breaths permeated the synthetic fabric that was supposed to be moisture-wicking, but instead, trapped your sweat. The cavern had become a furnace from the sheer number of people gathered.
“Impossibly handsome, you meant,” I pointed out.
Her groan stretched my cheeks impossibly wide. It also inspired me to keep her upside down while Zola droned on and on and on about preparing for the battle to come, counteracting Ilasall’s propaganda to start a civil war, and how we had to time our attack on Ilasall just right.
If Ilasall caught a whiff of our plans, it would affect Conall’s and Damia’s compounds too. Coriattus’s and Ardaton’s military would raze them to the ground while we ravaged Ilasall.
Basically, she gave a repeat of everything we’d been aligning for the last twelve weeks.
Boring.
Because when you had a squirming bird in your grasp, the choice of who to focus on was clear as day: your catch. So I spent my time toying with the backs of Kali’s thighs to distract her while we awaited our turn to speak.
Most people had an innate ability to detect rehearsed words and a tendency not to heed them.
Spontaneity and a natural flow, raw emotion, these were the spears that could penetrate the most heavily guarded minds, bend them to your will and convince their owners’ feet to meander the path you wanted them to go on.
“…our leaders have ventured out here to meet us, at the risk of their lives.” Zola scanned the herd of the rebels filling the cavern to the brim.
“Though Gedeon couldn’t”—she inhaled sharply, the sound of it reverberating off the domed ceiling—“join us today, our unity hasn’t been breached.
The opposite—it’s been fortified. His partners have stepped up to continue his work, our work, so we can stand together, fight as one, and earn our long overdue peace. ”
Nails clawing my back suddenly dropped limp. Kali’s leg muscles relaxed—
She was losing consciousness.
And I couldn’t have my sweet meal passing out on me.
Carefully, I lowered her until her boots grazed the limestone and she found purchase on the ground. She teetered, flushed and unseeing, and I pressed her close to me.
But as seconds ticked by, the pounding in her head ebbed away. Observing the throng studying us, she swallowed. “They won’t respect me now.”
“Oh, they will,” I reassured her. Opposing her was not an option they could so much as consider. Not on my watch. “I’ve never shown a sliver of affection to someone publicly before. You’re the first.”
Okay, that might have been a small lie. A minuscule one. I’d savored Gedeon jumping me at Vice that night. But it’d been different. This was deliberate, while that evening had been an…unexpected explosion.
I tucked a silky strand behind her ear. “You keep me sane. They see it. And that, the effect you have on me, is what will make them bow.” I’d slit their hamstrings if they didn’t.
“Not once have I stood here so calmly before. They usually give me a wide berth, but today,” spinning her around, I splayed my hands on her belly, “their eyes are fixed on us. On you.”
I nuzzled the artery pulsing in the column of her neck, the beat steady and strong, and smiled at her squaring her shoulders. Kali…
She bowed to no one.
Nearing the end of her speech, Zola looked over at us. Her silver braid slid over her black jumpsuit, the immaculate fabric and its straight edges creating an aura of competence and a keen mind—a highly valuable skill to possess in your arsenal.
But despite our countless propositions to smuggle her out and bring her to live in one of our compounds, she’d repeatedly refused. Claimed her place was among her kind—the unlucky souls born in this cursed city. Raised by their schools, but too independent to submit to Ilasall’s doctrine.
“Zion,” she announced so solemnly my spine straightened. I pulled the leather jacket off Kali’s shoulders right as Zola finished, “and Kali.”
The same short man with bulging muscles—meh, too much for my taste; nothing compared to the sculpted planes of Gedeon’s back—helped Zola get off the table.
“May I?” Zola extended a palm to Kali.
Such a simple gesture, but godsdamnit, Zola could put anyone at ease. Even me. She had a way with words, not a hint of deceit in them.
Perhaps that was what compelled Kali to agree, and Zola took her hand between hers. “Don’t fear the stage. Speak from your heart, and they will believe you.”
“It’s not their attention I’m wary of.” Kali’s fist clenched at her side. Half-moon indentations would mark her palm if I uncurled it. “It’s bearing the responsibility of their deaths.”
“The load isn’t light. I know it. I’ve witnessed many of us leave this world over the years.
” Zola patted Kali’s hand. “But it’s not about the loss.
It’s whether the benefits outweigh the risks.
And freedom to live out your days as you wish—it’s worth everything.
It’s why we are here, and why they’ll listen to you.
Or, as Gedeon once told me, ‘they say hope is the last thing to die in a person, but hatred burns even brighter.’” She stepped aside, motioning to the temporary stage. “Go kindle it.”