Chapter 38 Kali
KALI
“It’s not going to be easy to hear.” The seriousness Gedeon exuded warred with the joy of the dancers twirling around us.
“Ilasall has raised you in their mold, Kali. Yes, you saw the cracks in it, slithered out like a weed through a fracture in the asphalt. But that mold the city had crushed you into since birth? It had already shaped you. Even after Zion and I got you out of there, the freedom wasn’t enough for you to unravel and take the form you should have had from the beginning.
” He rubbed his forehead. “When a bone heals improperly, you have to shatter it anew before setting the fragments together. Only then will the limb work properly again.”
Yet nobody talked about the inescapable pain. The agony of splintering apart. How the blessing of unconsciousness hovered nearby, but jumped back any time you reached for it, always staying out of reach, taunting you with its presence.
“That’s why I took you and why I won’t let you go,” Gedeon said. “I want to free you, Kali. I want to see you rain fury on the city that birthed you.”
Sometimes I wondered if Gedeon’s way of thinking was as skewed as my own.
I was damaged goods; I knew that, and although it required immense effort, I could accept the fact that I was glad they’d stolen me from Ilasall.
That, despite the difficulties, and our brokenness, we wanted the same thing: someone to plan your tomorrows with.
I cupped Zion’s cheek. His day-old stubble pricked me as I asked, “Why had you gone along with kidnapping me? Was it Gedeon? You never told me what or who convinced you to—”
“Because you were a creature stuck in a cage.” Zion took my wrist, his hold as soft as his tone.
“The moment I saw you in that clearing, I knew you were like me. A lone wolf, a stray without a pack. Manic and merciless. Not the blanket of grass, not the rustling forest, and especially not even Gedeon could contain the determination pouring out of you.”
My pretty boy. With a bloodthirst matching my own. His mind so far beyond logic and reason, it somehow had begun to make sense.
I brushed the fallen eyelash stuck near his nose. “How could you glean all that without even knowing my name?”
“I knew it.” As fast as a bullet, he licked the tip of my nose.
The night’s chill assaulted the moisture, but I didn’t wipe it off.
The ticklish sensation caused me to float while he continued.
“I followed you back the second night we found you in the forest. That guard at the gates said your name as you passed.”
The abhorrent man he’d gifted me to do whatever I wished with him.
Deep in his underground, he’d chained the pig to the steel table.
The same one Gedeon had hoisted me onto and ripped three orgasms from me, fulfilling his vow to pay me for the stitches I’d received because I’d tried to defend myself against them earlier.
That night had made me reconsider staying at their compound despite having arrived there against my will. Well, technically, unconsciousness had prevented me from expressing my will in general, so you could say they hadn’t known my wishes.
But I would be lying to myself. They’d done it for selfish reasons, but I was anything but selfless myself.
As we stood in the center of the stone-paved plaza, surrounded by a million dancers, the drummers changed the rhythm, increasing the frequency of beats until they weaved into an intricate melody, a symphony nudging your pulse to follow along.
Facing me, Zion leaned into Gedeon’s chest, free from tension for once.
I couldn’t help but admire my men relaxing in each other’s arms. The sight disintegrated any dregs of unease swirling in my gut.
Seeing Gedeon hold Zion like a lifeline warmed me from inside out. “Both of you—”
“Did you just…” Gedeon interjected. His forehead twitched, creasing and smoothing out repeatedly. “Fart straight into my dick?”
My eyes bugged out.
“Is that what it was?” Zion patted Gedeon’s hand resting on his throat. “Never happened to me before.”
Gedeon tightened his grasp. “I felt it ripple, Zion.”
My core contracted, and I covered my mouth to stop my cackle from escaping.
“You should blame these pants.” Zion picked at the loose material flowing from his waist, the black fabric tailored to hug his frame impeccably. “They’re too airy. Can’t contain anything.”
That did it. I cracked up, clutching Zion’s bicep for support as I doubled over.
Gedeon opened his mouth. Closed it. Did it all over again. “You know you are supposed to wear underwear, right?”
“Why? There’s no need.” Zion tapped one of the six buttons securing his pants. “This pair doesn’t have any zippers to protect my cock from.”
“That’s…” Gedeon sighed.
I buried my face in Zion’s shoulder to smother my laughter. My tremors elicited a hum from him, and he stroked my back, from my tailbone to my shoulder blades.
A graying woman skirted past us, catching my attention, her yolk-yellow dress skimming her ankles, her focus set on coiling the bloodied rope from the ritual into a loop.
“Oooh,” Zion exclaimed. “Aria, wait!” Wriggling out from between Gedeon and I, he hurried after her like a child chasing a teaspoon of caramel that the cafeteria in my school had sometimes added to our lunches.
“Where’s he going?” I asked Gedeon as Zion vanished in the crowd. The mass devoured his form, the majority of people here unfamiliar to me, and I rose to my tiptoes, failing to see over everyone’s heads.
“Kali.” Gedeon seized my waist. “He will come back.”
“But—”
“No buts.” He pushed me toward the bonfires forming a circle around the dancers.
The way he cleared a path for me, ensuring not a single elbow bumped into me, made me all giddy.
Sometimes, the brooding asshole could be the most caring person in existence. But only for Zion and me. As self-centered as that sounded, I reveled in it.
Depositing me near the calmest blaze, the wood mostly incinerated, the flames too minuscule to shoot out unexpectedly and terrify you with their intensity, he brought my palms close to the heat source. “Wait here.”
I wiggled my fingers to encourage the warmth to seep into my flesh. “Why?”
He scanned the throng. “I want to fulfill my promise.”
“What promise?”
“You will see.” Taking my nape, he planted a feather-light kiss on my forehead. The tingles it’d coaxed out doused my uneasiness as I watched him march away.
Everything was going to be okay, I repeated to myself. The light embers radiated drew me in, their pulsing glow reminding me of how little time we had left.
Thirteen days. A tad more than three hundred hours until we invaded Ilasall. Stirred up a civil war. Attempted to convince the residents to dismantle the city’s government.
We had less than two weeks to spend with our lives intact, our bodies warm, our blood a liquid and not a clotted labyrinth of frozen capillaries.
Once a dozen dawns had passed, on the thirteenth, the fifty-foot-high city wall would arise before us, and that would be it. Death or survival. Not a chance of a fate in between.
For twenty-six years, I’d dreamed of nothing more but to annihilate the vileness permeating Ilasall, to unshackle the poor souls trapped inside the city.
Less than six months had ticked by since my world had been overturned by two men, and now, a conflict had found its home inside me. Now, I questioned what was worth more, my dream or…
A family, the night breeze whispered into my ear.
A life, a hot lump of wood crackled out.
A future, a flame spelled out as it danced above a coal.
Now, I wondered if my old goals had ceased being enough.
Because I wanted more.