Chapter 51 Kali
KALI
Gravel slowed our march to the three-story dwelling, the blocks of fresh ivory paint a stark contrast to the exposed maroon bricks.
Warm light bathed Damia holding the door open for us to pass. “Upstairs.”
As we entered the foyer, notes of wood and mint wafted from the wreath of pine and holly. I’d been told it was supposed to bring peace and longevity to the household.
“Everyone is on the third floor. In…” She cleared the hoarseness in her voice.
“Their bedroom.” Damia rubbed her wrist, over the bones where swirls of ink blended with her skin.
A few birch trees encircled her forearm, the blooming vegetation concealing the silhouette of a sparrow angling its wings in a landing position.
A leader’s tattoo.
Gedeon clutched the newel post, his knuckles as pale as the walls.
Tension emanated from him like air blurring above a fire.
His foot hovered above the first step of the staircase, the riser such a rich reddish shade it reminded me of poppies I’d seen a photograph of in a disintegrating book from Ilasall’s black market.
“Zion?” I pried his fingers off his bicep. He wouldn’t cease drumming a melody on the sheath strapped to his upper arm.
The habit seemed to steady him. Granted, usually it held him at bay only until he could wander into the training rings or find an enemy to play with, a new doll to beautify in streaks of scarlet, but now… He was looking everywhere but at the stairs and the two floors they led to.
His and Gedeon’s silence had become a poison disintegrating my airways. It’d escorted us the entire ride to Conall’s house and twined around my neck like vines of my tattoo did around my wrist.
Despite my begging, Zion had refused to tell us anything, insisting that we had to see it to believe it. Combined with Gedeon’s jaw verging on shattering, they’d imbued me with trepidation.
At least I could thank the gods Zion had covered his forearm. Already his blood had saturated the gauze concealing the path the lucky bullet had dug out.
Grimacing at the smears of mud we’d left on the mahogany floor, I took Zion’s hand in mine. “What is all this about?” I asked, masking my surprise at his clammy palm.
Something was terribly wrong.
He stared at a pair of large sneakers, the hue of seaweed thrown against the wall in the foyer, one shoe laying on its side, as if someone had kicked them off in a rush.
I gave Zion a short squeeze.
His vacant gaze dragged to mine, aimed at nothing. So empty that hollowness penetrated my chest, severed the tendons holding my heart, and sent it tumbling down to my heels.
“They’re expecting us,” Damia murmured. But her straight back resembled a veil of false strength. “We should go.”
With legs forged out of lead, Gedeon climbed up the stairs, not a glance at the three of us following his trail, Zion a walking statue beside me, Damia a guardian at our backs.
Two dozen steps, and we reached the second floor. Thin curtains fluttered in what looked like a spare room belonging to someone who loved to paint—an unfinished mural of daisies stretched across two walls.
Another round of twenty-four steps, and our hike came to an end—the third floor welcomed us with a hush. No one dared to speak a single syllable.
Leading us down the short hallway, Damia snapped the quiet. “Straight ahead. Their bedroom is the last one.”
Gedeon pushed the door handle down—
Broken furniture littered the space. Chairs lay in pieces.
Blocks of wood, which probably had once formed a desk, dotted the floor.
Drawers hung half-ripped out of bedside tables.
Sketches someone had made with a graphite pencil adorned the ruins.
Bedsheets stained in…red formed a heap at the foot of the bed.
Zion’s palm in mine ceased feeling solid. The world rippled as if I was underwater. Pressure plugged my ears, the sound waves rebounding off my eardrums, and I missed whatever Damia was saying to Nissa and Dain standing by a window.
Trudging across the room, step by step, I registered my surroundings in a count, one, two, three, and five, and twenty-five, and fifty-five, number after number, on a scale from one to an infinity of…
Loss.
Because the body sprawled on the bed was Conall’s.
Three dark splotches marred his linen button-up shirt, part of the matching sandy outfits he and his partners had worn during their wedding celebration.
He gazed into nothing, his complexion as pasty as Aanya’s, her…corpse slumped on the floor. A blotch of crimson soiled her calm expression—a circular hole in the left side of her forehead, right where Nissa had kissed her during the binding ceremony.
Conall had been stabbed, exactly how the sight of Gedeon falling to his knees beside his dead friend pierced my chest.
Aanya had been shot, similar to how Zion’s refusal to leave the doorway burrowed through me like the bullet had done to Aanya.
“What happened to Kali?” Nissa’s question pulled me out of the daze dulling my senses. Leaning against the windowsill, arms crossed, her stiffness as edgy as the strands of her short blond hair tickling her temples, she scrutinized me.
“Glass,” Damia shared, squeezing Dain’s shoulder as he rested his forehead against the window, his wild brown strands pulled into a bun, you would be better off calling a nest. “Zion said she was drinking water when they ambushed them. The soldiers blew up their windows from the outside instead of creeping inside for a closer fight.”
So Coriattus’ military had waited for Conall, Aanya, Dain, and Nissa to return home and then had sneaked in after them, utilizing the opportunity to rain fire on the unsuspecting targets.
I had to give it to them. They’d chosen to employ a smart tactic.
Only, it hadn’t been enough. Two bodies boasting pairs of black cargo pants, dark green shirts, and helmets strapped under their chins lay in a pile in the farthest corner of the room, obviously kicked away by an outburst of agony Nissa seemed to be harboring inside her.
Because there was no way she and Dain could be that unruffled, collected, cold when their partners had been brutally murdered.
That state of peace? It had to be the quiet before the storm.
Mute, Zion finally entered the room. I feared his legs would give out as he took a tentative step, but they held, and he took another.
And another. Closer and closer to Gedeon kneeling beside the bed, fisting the bloody sheets, tracing Conall’s tattoo marking him as a leader, and then doing it all over again. And again. And again.
Zion lowered to the floor beside Gedeon, the former’s expression one of stone, inscrutable, blank, and the latter’s so twisted it resembled…the state I’d been in after I’d learned of Alora’s death.
I’d been deeply intimate with the emotion shoving my men to their knees.
Although it showed in different ways, it was a nightmare that ravaged you beyond recovery, nevertheless.
Even if you healed, if someone smoothed out the lacerations inside you, the scars would remain. A part of you would always hurt.
You could only hope someone would anchor you, nurse you back to life. Like Gedeon and Zion had done to me. And how now Zion pulled one of Gedeon’s fists away. How he laced their fingers together. How the simple gesture was enough to yank Gedeon out of the loop he’d been stuck in.
A thump shocked me out of my frozen state, and I swiveled in search of a disturbance.
My breaths stalled at the sight of Dain collapsed under a window. Wetness gleamed on his puffy cheeks, the paths his tears had left as distressing as Nissa’s impassive—
No, not anymore. Trembling, she inhaled and exhaled, in and out, in and out.
I instinctively moved toward her. “Are you okay?” I asked, then cringed at the dumbest question a person could’ve asked in this situation.
Ignoring Damia’s soothing whispers, Nissa schooled herself. Squared her shoulders. And then bared her teeth at me. “No.”
Although she was taller than me, her build screaming of fighting experience, the fake smile she flashed me exposed how small she felt right now.
“I’m sorry—”
Damia caught the small of my back, silencing me and spinning us away from Nissa and Dain, the two remaining partners of what mere hours ago had been a foursome celebrating their forever.
“I know you mean well, but this is not the time for offering solace,” Damia murmured. “Nissa will break down when no one is looking.”
I dug my heels into the floor. “But—”
“She thinks displays of weakness are something to be avoided.” Damia stopped us ten feet from the bed, from the two corpses, from my two men.
Before I could interject, she sighed. “When you’re part of leadership, everyone expects you to be strong, no matter what or who your adversary is.
Your people expect guidance, and so Nissa will provide.
But in private, that’s where she will lose it. ”
I willed myself not to look at the ink wrapping around Damia’s forearm. “And you?”
“When the war is over.” She pulled the sleeves of her cream cardigan down, concealing her tattoo.
“Until then, I have no choice but to keep going. I can’t afford to look weak.
Not now. My people need me. And I don’t mean just my compound, Kali.
They…” She surveyed Nissa stoically lingering beside crumbling Dain, then moved on to Gedeon and Zion hunched over Conall’s body, and settled back on me. “You—are my people too.”
Hearing her confirm I was part of their group, it…
It was going to take some time to sort out my feelings. The more than two decades of indoctrination Ilasall had subjected me to was still messing me up sometimes, despite everyone assuring me of their intentions at every turn.
But I wasn’t going to allow the city to stop me from eradicating the beliefs ingrained so deep in me I couldn’t find the roots of them. I was going to chop them off, one by one. Like you would axe the branches and twigs off an oak’s trunk.