Chapter 21 Kali
KALI
“What about our friends, Gedeon?” I demanded. “What about Conall and Damia? Who knew about you? I won’t believe you were in this alone. It’s not like you.”
“Zola,” he listed. “Carys.” A faint smirk graced his beautiful face at my shock. “I see you have met her.”
Met her, trusted her as a guide in the catacombs, rejoiced in her support to stand by me. Which turned out to be fueled not by my actions and goals, but by whatever Gedeon must’ve told her.
“Who else?”
“The doc. A few of his team. They fixed me up.” He placed the scissors on the marble counter, the blades perfectly aligned to the edge. “Before you ask, Eislyn was not on it. No one you are familiar with knew. Except Zola and Carys.”
The chilly tiles made goosebumps climb up my legs. “And Zion.”
“Zion was in on the plan because he has dealt with loss before. He knows what it is and how to fake it.” Gedeon ran his fingers through my hair, again and again.
“This wasn’t premeditated, Kali. It just happened.
I saw an opportunity on the spot, right then in the clearing, and I took it.
I figured Zion would check with the doc if I made it or not, but he didn’t.
Couldn’t.” Gedeon met my gaze in the mirror.
“You need to talk to him. I can’t explain his reasoning to you. It’s his story to tell.”
One I was going to rip out of him if he didn’t spill it himself.
“What if Ilasall hadn’t ambushed us on that roof? What then? Did you plan on never showing yourself?” The accusation was one he deserved, but it made my heart shrivel, nevertheless.
“I would have joined you during the war, when it mattered.”
“And that would be?”
“Top of the Spire.”
My eyebrows furrowed. The highest glass building in Ilasall? The place where half a dozen people who led the six governmental divisions—Labor, Health, Nutriment, Welfare, Military, and Education—and the Head of Ilasall, the man ruling the city, lived and worked from?
Noting my bewilderment, Gedeon supplied, “I have certain suspicions.”
If looks could kill, the dirty one I gave him would have shattered the mirror. He had chosen those words on purpose—they masked an omission.
He picked up the comb once more. “They truly are merely suspicions. A while ago, Sadira discovered some interesting things about my biological parents. But I have no proof or a way to obtain it.”
“That’s the thing,” I seethed. “You didn’t even tell me about your parents. I had to learn from Damia that they weren’t… I don’t know, yours? How many things do you plan on keeping from me?”
“None.” His tone was firm enough to deter any further objections. “We never talked about my biological parents. They are not the ones who raised me. Rama and Aidan are the couple who took me in as a baby and who I considered my family.”
I mulled it all over while Gedeon untangled my strands.
“Tell me what you know,” I finally said.
“About my birth mother?”
“Yes.” Truth was what I sought, and if this was the only bit of it I could get, so be it.
“I have no recollection of her. My parents said a tall, dark-skinned, heavily pregnant woman had staggered into the compound one night, right when my father was returning home. She was screaming from the contractions, so he brought her into their house. My mother rushed off to find someone at the infirmary, but when they returned, the woman was lying in a pool of blood, barely conscious. She died minutes later.” He paused while brushing my hair.
“Nobody looked into her death in detail. She wore a green band on her wrist, so they guessed the run from Ilasall, the exhaustion, and the labor complications had drained her. She had the strength to invite me into this world, but not to survive.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“There was nothing you could do,” he said quietly. “I always called Rama and Aidan my parents. It’s easier this way.” Schooling himself, he changed the topic. “I cut just a few inches. Figured you would want to have enough to fluff it around.” He tugged on a damp strand of my hair.
I automatically tilted my head in that direction, and his smirk widened, the stretch of his cheeks beckoning my own to do the same.
“There it is. I could live off your smile alone,” he murmured, his lips ghosting down the shell of my ear and curling my toes. “Look at you. So strong.” He tipped my chin up. “Throne-worthy.”
As his hand found its home low on my throat, I leaned into him. His pinkie stroked my newest tattoo, the second of the two I had. Under my collarbone, a silhouette of a blackbird sat. It flapped its wings in a hopeless attempt to flee the pile of feathers twining around its talons.
“What is this?” he asked.
“It’s like the ink on your back.” Gedeon had marked the countless deaths of his people on his back, each soul a silhouette of a bird. “But this one is…” My mouth suddenly dried out. Fear of rejection caused my pulse to skyrocket. “For you.”
His hold on my throat tightened, restricting my airflow, yet I refused to raise my head. The tattoo was permanent, yes, but Gedeon’s reflection in the mirror…temporary. One moment here, and the next, gone.
“You willingly marked your body with a symbol of me?” he rasped, as if his voice had been dragged through gravel. Taking a step forward, he pressed so close to me that my hips dug into the counter. The veins in the marble glinted in the sunshine, oblivious to my inner turmoil.
“Answer me.” His grasp on my trachea eased, but my lungs didn’t bother to restart their work.
A joyous screech floated through the cracked-open window, jolting my diaphragm, and I searched for the source.
But this high up, the glass gave you a glimpse only of the flat, concrete-colored and brick-red roofs of our compound.
Cotton-like clouds swam in the bright blue sky, hovering above the mountains looming on the horizon.
“Kali.” Gedeon roughly spun me around until my ass collided with the counter. My towel fluttered to the tiled floor. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Everything.
“Do not,” he growled, “lie to me.” Crowding my space, he stared me down. “We talked about this. No more lies.”
“Okay.”
“Not okay.” The two creases above his nose deepened. “Come back to me. I can’t protect you if you get lost in your head.” He cupped my face, the touch so tender it unlocked the chains restricting my joints and lifted the mist clouding my thoughts.
I blinked. “You’re alive.” It was a statement, a declaration, a proclamation, a bout of fury well overdue.
A faint smile painted his reply. “There you are.”
“I’ve always been here. It’s you who’s been gone.”
That banished his joy as he staggered back. With my towel pooled around my feet, I was left on display. He scrutinized my body, lingering on my thighs and waist. His jaw feathered. “Where are these from?”
I almost laughed at his concern about the bruises marring my body. “It’s not important.”
“Who, Kali? Tell me who laid their hands on you right this second.”
“Who do you think? You were on the roof with us last night.” I folded my arms. “Sometimes, to win a fight, you have to let your opponent close in on you. Bruises are the price of it.”
Nothing was free in life. And the cost often took the shape of a human body. For years, I had paid it by bending over a table or kneeling for the depraved pleasure of others. At least now I could do it by sustaining injuries necessary to win a fight.
“See this?” I pointed to the wound on my cheek.
“You left it yourself. I remember what you said when you first took me, Gedeon. You threatened me. Promised that if I didn’t drop my weapon, you would mark me the same way I had done you.
” I clutched the edge of the counter, ignoring my nakedness.
It had ceased bothering me a long time ago.
“And that morning in the clearing? I’d slashed your cheek before stabbing you. ”
He rubbed at his face, his expression so twisted the sun itself couldn’t provide enough relief to untangle the contortion. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“No,” I said. “You wanted me to recognize you.”