Chapter 37 Kali
KALI
“Leading will always be a gray area.” Conall tore the roasted potato wedge off his fork with his teeth.
The ritual of binding was long behind us, but the bonfires scattered in the center of their square blazed in full force, the heat levels sufficient to ward off the late evening chill.
“What isn’t?” I dropped my spoon in the short glass, the snowflake pattern carved into its sides as tangled as my emotions. For the life of me, I couldn’t decipher the mess the last few days had become. “Gedeon chose to hurt us. It was a conscious decision.”
Ignoring Conall waving a hand in front of his mouth as he tried to chew the steaming bit of food surely charring his tongue, Damia rested her fork on her plate, the white swirls in the navy ceramic as unsteady as my mood today.
“People tend to think that you have to choose between light and darkness, but not many realize that you can’t instigate change without dabbling in both.
It’s a precarious balance. Sway one way or another, and you’ll lose your footing,” she said, dabbing the napkin to soak up the bit of cream smeared above her brownish upper lip.
I could bow to whoever had made the dessert. The cocoa mousse had been so good it had mollified my lingering ire at Gedeon for abandoning me and Zion.
Spending twelve weeks believing I’d killed him had done its job on me. He’d hurled my trust off a cliff and into a bottomless canyon I’d once seen a picture of during geography lessons at school.
But the way Gedeon had silently pushed his dessert toward me after I’d finished mine… It had lessened the whirlpool storming inside me.
Damia went on. “Like Conall said, leading people, as compassionate as you can be as a leader, comes with a cost. A choice. You or your people. Those close to you or the greater good. You can’t have both.
” She rested her hand on mine to stop me from picking at the loose thread in the linen tablecloth.
I ceased fiddling with the fabric. “Priorities.”
“Yes.” She gave me a small squeeze. “But not like you think.”
Firewood splintered in a fire near us. The unexpected noise diverted my attention to Gedeon steering Zion through the throng with a hand on his lower back.
Practically glowing in the firelight, Zion pranced, his grin an indelible ink.
“Gedeon gave up everything, even himself, in hopes of creating a better tomorrow for you,” Damia said as her touch left me. The fallen night’s cold snatched the lingering warmth from her affection.
Gedeon and Zion joined the dancers, and the latter grabbed Gedeon’s belt to pull him close. I could feel Gedeon’s sigh even from thirty feet away as he swatted Zion’s hand away, undoubtedly muttering something along the lines of This is not playtime.
But the golden-haired man with a mind full of wicked thoughts, the same one whose snare I’d fallen in, simply wrapped his arms around Gedeon and glued their foreheads together.
The sight made my heart surge.
Gedeon’s directness sometimes made me think he was callous. But now I saw the proof his wounds had begun to heal, his scars softening from jagged spikes to blunt curves. Instead of running away, he held Zion close to him.
Zion flowed to the melody, his hips swaying as musicians switched the beat, striking the hand drums positioned between their knees harder and harder. A deep buzzing joined in as they hummed, and the rumbling emanating from their throats washed over me like the flames reaching for the night sky.
The song didn’t require words to depict the journey of searching for a balance between chaos and peace, destruction and creation, loss and discovery.
A faint breeze fluttered my loose pants, the fabric so thin the sensation resembled a caress.
The total opposite of Gedeon standing rooted in his spot like a tree.
“Yeah, he never did figure out how dancing works.” Folding her napkin into a triangle, Damia rested it under the raised edge of her plate.
“But he’s doing it for Zion.” She pinned me with a heavy look, and it pooled in my stomach like lead.
“I’m not defending Gedeon, but everything he does, however foolish it might be, is to give you a better life. He’d do anything for you.”
Errant locks of light brown floated around Conall’s chin as he stabbed his fork into the last potato wedge.
“He can’t help it, Kali. His instincts are screaming to protect you and Zion, to keep you alive and safe.
So when he saw an opportunity to increase the chances of your success in the war we’ve all been raised for or learned to seek, he took it. ”
Wiping a renegade drop of water from her chin, Damia returned her empty glass to our table, its one leg so short, a wooden block had been stuffed under it.
“Tell me the people back at your compound aren’t united.
Tell me that without his disappearance, without this lie, we could stand as we do now—strong, even with a lack of supplies. Depleted reserves. Traitors among us.”
As painful as it was to admit it, she was right.
The deficiencies had caused us to choose who to treat in our infirmaries and who to leave to suffer.
Yet that and the shortage of food hadn’t caused any riots, any protests or uprisings.
Grumbles, sure, but even at Vice, people agreed on standing as one.
That Ilasall imprisoning Gedeon had been the last straw.
That no one could have a peaceful life without dealing with the cities once and for all.
That the dream was worth all inconveniences.
That they had survived worse. Endured time and time again. And that it all had come to an end.
A single fight.
A single battle.
A single war.
The finish line purred to me that I should pick one of the alternatives for my future. Harbor the ache, let the lacerations Gedeon’s actions had left in me to fester, or let go of the hurt and build the future with the two people who’d stolen the ground from under my feet.
“His actions sometimes wound us too, but…” Conall rested his elbows on the table.
A clang rang out as he accidentally grazed his plate and his utensils bounced off the sage-green ceramic, the veins of an imprinted birch leaf webbing across it like a fractal.
“He’s flawed, like any of us. Only his imperfections arise from his innate inclination to prioritize others over himself. ”
Gedeon had once mentioned his days consisted of casting verdicts, punishments, sentences, or strategizing the next steps, the cursed loop endless. And I’d witnessed how he sacrificed his life for the better of his compound. How he never took anything for himself.
Until the end of last summer. The evening he’d kidnapped me.
And the winter. The month he’d broken down and welcomed Zion.
Scanning the throng, I failed to locate either of them. My back straightened—
“Dance with me.”
I startled at the deep voice, the cadence so familiar it cast a shiver down my spine.
A palm hovered beside me as Gedeon’s mouth contorted into his favorite shape—a smirk. “Dance with me,” he repeated. The slight sheen of sweat glinted on his forehead like the film of condensation on my glass of water Zion had decided to down.
Shuffling in my seat, I rested one thigh over the other—
The table rattled as my leg accidentally hit it. I flinched at the jarring clinks of dishes more than from the slight ache blooming in my knee.
“It’s okay.” I scraped the hem of the tablecloth, the imperfections in the seam snagging on my nail. “You can go enjoy yourself with Zion. I’ll wait here.”
I could swear the gloom the bonfires were fighting exploded in Gedeon’s eyes.
“I will say this once more, Kali. And keep in mind that I do not usually repeat myself, yet I’m willing to do it for you.
” He offered me his hand again. The glow from the burning sources illuminated the tattoo climbing up his wrist, the branches and trunks weaving around his limb.
A tiny silhouette of a bird sat perched atop the abstract forest, its beak closed as it gazed into the horizon. “Dance with me.”
I searched for a reason to say no. To keep the distance I wished to close. To collect myself and sort out the maze in my mind, the mist trapping my soul, the emotions so volatile I couldn’t pinpoint the start point to unravel them and recognize what I was actually feeling.
Toying with the waistline of my pants, the six buttons in place of a zipper about to pop off from the million snacks I’d devoured, I admired how Conall’s partners and their friends swayed with the music.
For one night, everyone had put their differences aside and stood together like the walls of buildings framing the square.
The curving railings on the balconies seemed to be forged from iron, the exterior recently painted in light shades.
The simplicity disarmed any alarms of potential danger arising from how exposed the space was.
Zion clutched the backrest of my seat. “Pretty birdie.” He toyed with the neckline of my black t-shirt, the clothing he’d packed with the goal of provoking Gedeon. “Our strawberry awaits us.”
Gedeon tugged his white t-shirt, the material taut around his chest and biceps, the clothing obviously a size too small. Somehow, I guessed Zion had purposefully ensured it.
But Gedeon hadn’t complained once. He’d worn the t-shirt and explained the meaning of the phrase Zion’s and Kali’s Strawberry to anyone who inquired, his voice stern and not accepting any derision someone might have been inclined to exude.
The seam of the tablecloth I was set on destroying gave way, and my nail slipped into the little pocket the folded linen had formed. “I don’t know how.”
“You have danced before, right?” Damia asked, waving Conall goodbye as he pushed off the table and sauntered to his partners huddling around a bonfire.
I ripped a short thread out, widening the gap in the hem. The sand-hued string floated to the ground as I confessed, “No.”