Chapter 35 Gedeon
GEDEON
Asilver car screeched to a stop before me, the wheels as spotless as the gable-roofed house Conall had assigned to us behind me.
As the front passenger’s window lowered, a bright flash of teeth met me, and I cursed my luck. I knew that look of Damia’s all too well.
An omen of trouble to come.
“Well, hop in.” With her dark forearm resting on the window frame, she clacked her nails on the passenger’s door. “Don’t you glare at me. It’s already noon. We gave you plenty of time to sleep in.”
That they had. Awakening this morning to the bitter aroma of coffee Kali was making in the kitchen while Zion lay sprawled beside me, trapped in the duvet, a sheen of sweat gracing his forehead, had been so idyllic despite our unresolved issues that I had feared I would crumble from the sense of peace.
A blond beard popped up beside Damia, and Conall waved from behind the wheel. “Hey, man.”
“They will survive a couple hours without you, Gedeon,” Damia said, twisting the handle to raise the window. “Now get in or we’ll leave you here standing like a dumbass.”
Shaking my head at her theatrics, I climbed into the backseat.
The brown seats gleamed in the sunlight, the leather obviously recently conditioned, but at least the car was comfortable.
Which could not be said about the majority of vehicles in Conall’s past. You had to leave it to him to find the shiniest instead of the most practical car possible.
His obsession with shiny objects might have also inspired me, Damia, and Zion to cause a string of incidents with sparkly confetti bombs over the years.
One in each car Conall has ever owned, to be precise.
“What’s that?” Turned in his seat, Conall jerked his chin at the giant bag I had hauled in with me.
The paper crinkled as I plucked out the ridiculously large jar and placed it on his lap. “Your wedding present.” I knocked on the glass, but the tightly packed gold, purple, pink, green, and blue flakes didn’t swirl. “To upgrade your car.”
Horror leached all blood from his already pale complexion. “No.” He shut his jaw as though his whisper could detonate the container. “Please, gods, no. I finished restoring this car, like, two months ago.”
Damia threw her head back, cackling. “You should’ve told me. I still have like three cans of those tiny red stars from the last time.”
“Keep them for his next purchase.” I patted Damia’s shoulder, the knitted pattern in her sweater as twisted as Conall’s features. “If this explodes—and it just might—we will likely need to dip into your storage to resupply.”
It had taken me three days to procure enough confetti to fill the five-gallon jar. A feat that would have been impossible without Jayla’s and Tarri’s help. Where they had hoarded this many sparkles, I had no clue, but them sacrificing their treasure had put me in their debt.
Almost thirteen years leading this compound, yet their sinister plans scared me more than facing Ilasall.
“By the way, thanks for the coffee beans.” Smuggling coffee out of Ilasall was a struggle, and if not for Conall’s contacts working in a warehouse in Coriattus, I likely would not be able to pamper Kali and Zion with the sickeningly sweet concoction of coffee and milk and sugar they loved so much.
“No worries,” Conall mumbled, side-eyeing the jar. Trepidation undeniably kept the realization that this was a regular jar and not one rigged to burst the instant he pressed the speed pedal at bay.
“It’s a glass jar, Conall,” I explained as I secured my seat belt. Death by a fear-of-confetti-induced car crash was not how I wished to leave this world. “If you don’t hit anything on our way, the sparkles will remain inside it.”
“Somehow, I don’t believe you.” He opened his door—
“Na-ah.” Damia rested a palm on the jar’s lid. “If you leave this car, I will personally oversee that all five gallons of sparkles coat every single inch of your car.”
Positioning the container between Damia’s feet in the front passenger seat, Conall groused, “I hate you both. This is the worst wedding present in history.”
She patted his cheek. “We love you too.”
Sighing, he shifted the gears, and we flew down the dead-end street. A dozen one-story houses stretched on both sides like blocks of sky blue, brick red, and snow white.
As we navigated the roads in Conall’s compound, the concrete apartment buildings eerily similar to those in the cities, I asked, “So what is this about?”
All I had to go on was a special task I had evidently been assigned. One that required Kali and Zion to be picked up by Conall’s security team later on.
Damia swiveled to me. “We’re kidnapping you.”
Conall’s reflection in the rear-view mirror grinned at me. “You know, like you did with Kali.”
I licked my upper teeth. “That’s different.”
“Yup,” Damia said. “You’re coming with us willingly.”
“And conscious,” Conall added.
I rubbed at my face, but it only fueled their snickers.
“Okay, okay, we’ll be nice.” Damia rolled the window open halfway, and crisp spring air invaded my lungs. “Conall will tell you what’s happening if you explain yourself.”
I swept away the hair tickling my forehead. “Explain myself?”
The leather seat squeaked as Damia swiveled toward me. “This.” She motioned up and down my torso. “Yesterday, it was blue. Today, white.”
The t-shirts. Luck had graced me this morning, granting me assistance in avoiding wearing the pink abomination everyone had seemed too keen on yesterday.
Yet that had been the extent of it.
I should not have left Zion and Kali alone for three months, because those weeks had been enough for him to influence her. None of the t-shirts he’d packed for me had remained in the closet this morning.
Except one.
“It’s called clothing, Damia,” I deadpanned. The t-shirt would not be that bad if not for the… No, there were no words to describe what was on its back.
At least my leather jacket had stayed intact and now served as a cover-up.
“Sure. We can pretend everything is normal.” Damia tapped the giant jar, and her nail clacked on the aluminum lid.
“One confetti bomb, one man who’d sworn never to settle down and who is also getting married today, one suspicious t-shirt, and one bastard who’s finally admitted his feelings to his second-in-command. Yup, today could not get any weirder.”
Changing into a lower gear, Conall met my eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Took you long enough.”
I fiddled with the three buttons at the top of my cotton t-shirt. He was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it.
Sparing me further nagging, he slunk past people carrying wooden crates brimming with dishes and utensils, their clinks and clangs accompanied by greetings and shouts creeping in through Damia’s open window.
But then Conall cleared his throat. “It was painful to watch, honestly. You have been running after Zion since we were teenagers, Gedeon.”
A grunt was all the response he was going to get from me. I was not in the mood to discuss the mess of my life.
Driving past the square set up with haphazardly scattered wooden tables along the edges, Conall slowed to a snail’s pace.
“It’s true. You had a thing for him since I don’t know when.
He didn’t even try to hide it, but you, my man,” his eyebrows rose in emphasis, “were terrible at lying to yourself.”
My molars ground. “It was not that bad.”
Damia’s snort nudged Conall to go on. “Remember when you met my partners for the first time? You literally chased Zion for stealing your coffee and then tackled him because he’d stuffed the goods into his pants.
I had to beg Nissa, Aanya, and Dain not to say anything about it to anyone.
” Our car slowed to a crawl as Conall weaved between the mass of bodies running from and to their central square.
“In case you weren’t aware, you still owe me for that.
I had the most insufferable night of my life afterward. ”
At the memory, my lips curved up. Zion had laughed like a maniac when I had wrestled him to retrieve the coffee bag. The ring of his mirth had enveloped me in an embrace, the echoes collecting beneath my ribs and nestling in.
Conall parked near the junction of two streets not far from the plaza. As he shifted the gear into neutral, he calmly said, “I want you and Damia to tie our wrists today.”
My hand froze on the buckle of my seat belt.
Weddings were a peculiar custom. Not many dared to complete it as it meant inseverable bonds. You would be forever marked as part of a group in this life and the next.
Granted, such a belief was just that—accepting something as truth without proof, not a certainty, although a beautiful one.
But it was the solidification of a commitment that some sought. Being asked to steer the ritual, to bind someone to their partners, was an honor of the highest order. To serve as a guide meant the trust your friends had placed in you ran deeper than blood.
Rolling her window back up, Damia supplemented, “That’s why we abducted you. Me, to be honest. I want to rehearse the ceremony so we don’t mess it up in front of everyone.”
I stared at Conall. “Are you sure?” was all I managed to croak out.
While Damia climbed out of the car, he turned in his seat.
“Gedeon, you’re part of my family. You’ve always been.
Since we were little kids. I wouldn’t want anyone else but you and Damia to do this.
I want it to be you both who secure the knot.
” He fixed me with a look. “You can be a real asshole sometimes, so hopefully, this will also inspire you to consider not leaving those around you in the dark.”
The ball in my throat was dissolving too slowly for my voice to work.
“It’s obvious how much you hurt them,” Conall said. “Kali stares into nothing when you’re away and gapes at you in disbelief when you’re near. Zion touches you any chance he gets. He’s unable to keep his hands off you, as if he’s afraid that you’ll disappear if you let go.”
I tugged at the neckline of my t-shirt. It was getting too hot in the car.
“I understand you did what you had to, that you did it for them, so they’d have a united army to command instead of disorganized factions, as your compound has overgrown, but I cannot imagine what it was like for them both to lose you.
Man, that news smashed me in the face like a brick, and they’re in love with you.
I don’t even want to consider what it’d be like to lose Dain, Aanya, or Nissa.
Just thinking about it makes my chest feel like it’s splitting apart.
But Zion and Kali had to actually live it… ”
That brick Conall had mentioned? It lodged in my throat.
I had fucked up. Badly.
“That’s right.” Conall patted my knee. “Now, before I lose you completely, let’s go. Damia’s glowering at me, and though I’m a grown man, she still scares me sometimes.”
I followed him out of the car, oblivious to the multitude of residents rushing past me in their preparations for the celebration. Sometimes, outside perspective was all you needed. Like a smack on the back of your head to shock your system.
I had some groveling to do.
Walking backward down the sidewalk, Conall flicked his intricate braid to fall down the length of his spine. “On a lighter note, you’ve changed. In a good way.”
Taking a longer stride over the pothole in the cracked concrete, I fell in step with my friends. “I look the same.”
Except for the t-shirt.
Although a heatwave had decided to scorch us today, I was not taking my leather jacket off. Death by dehydration or drowning in your own sweat sounded better than revealing the sentence embroidered on the back of my clothing.
Damia nudged me with an elbow. “You speak differently.”
“Walk easier,” Conall pointed out as he swiveled to allow a boy to pass. The teenager’s tumble of dark curls bounced on his shoulders as he hurried toward a family lingering outside a clothing shop.
Perhaps I should pay a visit to the establishment as well.
“Ooh, I know another,” Damia exclaimed, and I prayed for the walk to wherever we were going to be cut short. “He doesn’t brood so much anymore.”
Conall clapped my shoulder. “Shit, man, you smile more.”
That I did.
The question was, would those smiles remain in my arsenal, or would they run dry after we stormed Ilasall? Because I could not deny the source of my smiles, and if the city’s forces erased it… This t-shirt would become all I had to remember them by.