Page 99 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

The wheels squeaked as Gedeon shifted on the stool. “He followed us three everywhere, like the kitten my parents had adopted as a pet for me. They both never left my side.”

So that was the kitten thing. Zion had mentioned it would drive Gedeon crazy if I called him that. Now I knew why. He’d been stalking me, trailing me exactly like that kitten, like Zion had done with him.

But the way he’d said it, the way his gaze had softened at Zion as he’d spoken… There was more.

“I won’t go into details, but the two of us grew close, and he became my partner in whatever my parents would task me with for the following years while they raised me as their legacy.” Gedeon lowered his head into his hands. When he rose back up, shadows spun in his irises. “About twelve years ago, Ilasall launched their war. A few days long, but it was enough to slaughter plenty of families.” He curled his fists on the table, the glinting steel harshening his words. “But luck evaded ours. Instead of putting bullets in between their eyes, they tortured our parents for information about the compounds. In the middle of our central square, free for all to see.

“They raped our mothers repeatedly and laughed at their screams. Chopped off our fathers’ fingers one by one. Poured bleach over our parents’ eyes. Thrust hooks under their shoulder blades to hold them up and whipped their backs with spindly branches, not even bothering to peel the cracked bark off. Strike after strike mashed their backs into pulp. All the while, we observed the entire ordeal from a rooftop nearby, hiding. They had no idea we were their children. Our parents had taught us to keep our mouths shut.

“They refused to talk despite the interrogation, so soldiers left them to hang in the scorching summer sun with no food or water, guarded non-stop, their bodies swaying on the rusted hooks piercing their limbs. They died in less than two hours.Instead of saying goodbye, we watched them incinerate their bodies in a large fire that same day.”

Nausea crawled up my throat and mixed with abject horror at the sickening image he’d painted.

I exhaled the need to vomit, fixating on Zion’s torso marred with endless scars. The tiny one curled around itself like a shackle below his collarbone, the blotchy one under the left side of his rib cage mimicked a pool of bleach, the crisscrossing lines right underneath his right peck were shaped like gnarled fingers fracturing apart, and the fresh bloody slash across his stomach was reminiscent of a whip strike.

A distorted painting of what their parents had gone through etched into him.

“I’m sor?—”

“Please.” Gedeon’s tense voice cut me off. “Let me.”

His pleading furled around me, and my mouth bent to its will, refusing to make a sound.

He continued. “Later that day, luck switched to our side. We managed to push the city back. But during their retreat, the city employed one last tactic to break us. On their way back, they took the women they could catch with them. From what we found out later, to test for fertility and determine their future use.”

Zion’s grip on my hand turned crushing. I smothered a cry and hoped Eislyn wouldn’t have to tend to my broken bones.

Zion closed his eyes as Gedeon revealed, “One of those women was his sister.”

“No.” My voice came out as cracked as the bark from the spindly branches Ilasall had used to torture their parents.

“With my parents…gone, I was handed their place at the top.” Gedeon dragged a hand over his face. So much darkness crawled over his shoulders; I feared the lights in the infirmary would explode from the effort to keep it at bay. “We needed tobide our time and recoup. But during the first night of Ilasall’s retreat, Zion talked thirty-seven people into joining him and racing to the city in hopes of saving his sister.” The stool’s wheels squeaked as he stood up and began pacing the room.

Zion tracked his movements, a tic in his jaw.

As Gedeon hit the wall, his head dropped between his shoulders, their line so agitated it rippled.

Shivers skittered up my spine. As if sensing my need to move, Zion unlaced our fingers and gestured at Gedeon—a silent encouragement for me to traipse over to him.

I placed a hand on his upper back. “Should I not have asked?” Zion had already gotten injured because of me today, and now me making them live out the past again…

Gedeon’s head slowly rose. My tongue dried out at his haunted look as his eyes connected with mine.

“It’s me.” I pressed his palms to my cheeks. He’d caress them any chance he got. Couldn’t keep to himself. “You’re not back there anymore. It’s me and Zion. Here. Now.” I turned his head to Zion, to the evenly placed lines of blue thread on his stomach.

With heavy footfalls, as if each step seeped his strength, he followed me back to the table and slumped on the stool. Long seconds ticked by, one after another, and another, each dragging out the time they spent surveying each other. A silent conversation passed between them.

Zion rubbed at his chest. “I found my sister in one of the military trucks they’d brought them in. Its back was open, and she stood with…” he trailed off, his breathing slow and heavy, every breath deliberate. “Right when I called out her name, she plunged a knife under her ribs. She said she didn’t want to try her chances and would rather die than serve the city.” He paused to collect himself. “I kept telling her that she was safe, that I was there, that I was bringing her home.” His voice broke. “Therewas so much blood.” Zion covered his eyes. “She died in my arms.”

“I—” Lack of choice was a constant companion in our lives, but to witness someone be consumed by it enough to raise a hand against themselves… It felt familiar. Except I’d raised it not against myself, but against Alora. And it’d shattered me into pieces, each shard lodged deep in my heart, forming the bars of the stone cage encasing it, and if that was how Zion had felt, no wonder he’d developed an obsession for blood and sought a release in torture, finding the screams and begging of others cleansing, calming, steadying him as his sister’s last words echoed in his head. “I’m sorry.” I forced my tongue to form the sounds.

“It was a long time ago,” Zion said quietly.

“It doesn’t mean you forget such things.”

I did, Gedeon had admitted when I’d asked about the scars.

My head whipped to him. “What did you do to him?”