“I swear that the words spoken in trust shall not fall from my lips, lest I be struck down by She, Most Brightest in the Sky,” I repeated, the words flowing easily from my mouth as if it was something I had said a thousand times.
Shawn gaped at me in confused wonderment and even Kiskei looked at me with an odd, curious expression. But they couldn’t have felt as uneasy about it as I did. It was getting worse with each day—this feeling that I wasn’t me anymore, that I was becoming someone else. Someone I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.
Kiskei continued to stare at me for a few more silent moments as if he was studying me before his focus expanded to included Shawn. “There’s only one more thing I need to ask you both before I let you leave here tonight.”
“Which is?” I asked, immediately a bit suspicious.
“If it is your intent to join the Amurai,” Kiskei replied, his eyes still fixed firmly on the both of us.
He flicked his eyes to Shawn, and Shawn nearly choked. “You’re kidding right? Of course I want in.”
Kiskei nodded and then turned his attention to me. “Patrick?”
And I just looked at him in stunned disbelief. “You mean we have a choice?”
Kiskei stared back at me, his eyes deadly serious. “There is always a choice, Patrick.”
“It doesn’t exactly feel that way,” I grumbled as I looked away from him. For months now, it had felt like I was chained to a set path, unable to go anywhere but where fate was demanding I go.
“Not in what you are,” Kiskei said as he placed a hand on my shoulder, and I looked back up into his eyes. “But in what you become.”
I held his stare for a long time before I finally sighed, and hoped to hell that I wasn’t going to regret this.
“Yeah, I’m in too.”
The Ghosts of the Past
Thursday, November 8th
TRAVIS
I walked into Club Lunaris, my mind a maelstrom of questions and fears, and ran smack into someone.
“Sorry,” I said as I reached down to pick up the drink tray I had knocked out of her hands. “I should really look where I’m—” The girl standing in front of me was pale as snow. With loose spiraling black curls, and unusual periwinkle-blue eyes with silvery flecks in them. Like moonlight reflecting back at you in the night. “—going.”
“Well, just be glad it was empty,” Kira said with a hand on her hip.
“Hello, Kira,” I said, letting all the air out of my lungs.
She looked up at me appraisingly. “You know, you’re like the only person who never mistakes me for her.”
“That’s because I’ve known Nualla nearly my whole life, and you aren’t her,” I stated flatly. I knew it wasn’t her fault—that they had been controlling her—but still, I just couldn’t bring myself to forgive her for trying to kill Nualla. For nearly killing Patrick.
Kira arched her eyebrows almost imperceptibly, but didn’t say anything.
“Look, have you seen your—have you seen Skye?” I asked as I looked anywhere but in her eyes.
“Over there,” Kira indicated with a jerk of her chin toward the back office.
“Thanks,” I said quickly, and walked off in the direction she had indicated before she could say anything else.
When I reached the dark hallway, Skye was just coming out of her office. She passed me, only looking up briefly before her eyes returned to the tablet in her hands.
“Hello, Travis Viliyata,” she said with a hint of a smile.
“I need to talk to you about Nikkollas Varrook,” I blurted out, and she stopped dead.
I watched the tension as it snaked its way up her shoulders before she turned. “I don’t know why you’d want to know about him, Travis,” she replied, a fake smile plastered across her face that might have fooled someone else. But I knew the smile wasn’t genuine, because the feelings flowing off of her were like a punch to the heart. “He was a friend of ours growing up, but that’s about it, really.”
I should have just left it at that, but I just couldn’t.
“I wanted to ask about him being Nikki and Kira’s father,” I asked in a firm, clear voice so she would know that I wasn’t going to just walk away from this.
Faster than I could blink, Skye slammed me up against the wall, her forearm across my throat. “Who told you that?”
“It was in their sealed birth records,” I squawked, my hands held up in front of me in surrender. For someone who was only 5'6" she was pretty fucking scary when she was pissed.
“If they were sealed, Travis, why did you open them?” she growled as her forearm pressed a little harder into my throat.
“Because Kira came up as a match for Nikki and we needed to know why,” I confessed without really giving a fuck if I wasn’t supposed to.
Skye continued to glare at me with narrowed eyes before she pulled away, and started to walk down the hall toward her office. When I didn’t follow, she called over her shoulder, “You coming?”
“Um…yes. Where?” I yelped as I launched myself away from the wall after her.
“I know you are about as likely to stop asking questions as all the stars going dark at once. And I can’t be answering them out here in the hall for the gods and everyone to hear,” Skye replied tersely as she walked into her office, and held her hand out expectantly in invitation.
I quickly trotted into the office, and she slammed the door closed behind us.
Skye walked over to her desk, and dropped the tablet unceremoniously onto it. Then she leaned against the desk, folding her arms under her chest. “Why are you asking about Nikk, Travis?”
“Well, a lot of things aren’t adding up. Like the fact that James Varris never existed,” I said as I folded my arms across my chest and stood a little taller. It was a guess, but I was also almost one hundred percent sure that it was the truth.
Skye opened her mouth to protest, but I jumped back in before she could even get a word out. “Don’t even try to lie to me, Skye. I’ve faked records before, and his weren’t even that good,” I said as I gave her a dubious look. “And there’s the other thing that gives it away, too.”
“Which is?” she replied with a scowl.
“You’re a kyria, Skye, and I still couldn’t find a single picture of your wedding. Not one.”
Skye let silence fill the room for several moments before she spoke. “You’re wrong, you know.”
“About which part?” I asked a little too harshly as I leaned against the wall. Because it felt like all I was doing was trying to outrun the secrets of the past before they swallowed me whole. And personally, I was so fucking tired of this bullshit.
“James Varris was real, he just wasn’t their father,” Skye answered as she hugged her arms a little tighter against herself.
“So who was he?”
“Doesn’t matter, he died long before any of us were here,” she answered with a deep sigh.
I waited for her to say something more but she didn’t, and eventually I just lost my patience.
“The part I’m not getting about this all is why you lied? I mean, what the frak happened that you couldn’t let anyone know Nikk was their father? I mean hell, if he was your One, why did you take someone else’s last name?”
“My daughters needed to be protected, so I took that name and moved back into the family estate. Everyone bought the story, and everyone forgot,” she finished as she looked at the floor, the fight seeming to leave her with every word.
I straightened up slowly as I furrowed my brow. “Protected from what?”
She looked up into my eyes and there was something there—some emotion I couldn’t quite place. “Loving someone has consequences, and we don’t get to choose who we fall in love with, Travis. You, out of anyone, should know that.”
I sucked in
a sharp breath of air. She had known. Of course she had known. And she had meant it to sting. I had hurt her by dredging up a past she had thought was long buried, and she had lashed back at me like a cat who’d been stepped on.
I opened my mouth, but I never got the words out because Nikki pushed open the office door.
“Mom, Anton says half the shipment of Gypsy Moon was damaged,” Nikki said and then stopped dead as she saw me standing there in Skye’s office. “What’s going on?” Nikki asked as she looked between me and Skye.
I took one quick look at Skye, and made the split-second decision to lie through my teeth. “We were talking about maybe adding a KARA terminal to Club Lunaris.”
“Seriously?” Nikki asked, a bit taken aback.
“I’m still on the fence about it,” Skye lied as she eyed me covertly. Then her eyes darted to her daughter. “Ask Anton if he meant ‘damaged’ as in, ‘during shipment’ or as in, ‘someone dropped it in the storage room,’ okay?”
“Sure, Mom,” Nikki replied as she eyed us both a little skeptically before she turned, and walked back out the door.
I moved to follow her, but Skye grabbed my wrist. I turned back around to face her.
“Don’t you tell her, Travis. Don’t you dare,” Skye threatened, her hand shaking a bit, her eyes full of fire.
“She’s gonna find out someday, you know. She’s not stupid,” I replied defiantly.
“And that’s my bed to lie in, not yours,” Skye countered, digging her nails into the wrist of my dark-brown Air Force style bomber jacket.
“Okay, I won’t say anything to Nikki or Kira,” I relented with a heavy sigh. “But if they ask, I’m not going to lie, either.”
“Deal.”
She finally released my arm, and I walked to the office door. And then I turned back, and looked at her. She was still leaning against her desk, her arms folded under her chest, looking as always like she had just walked off the silver screen.
“Skye?” She didn’t look up at me, just continued to look out at nothing. And because I knew Nualla so well, I knew she was trying to hold back tears. “I’m sorry.”
To my surprise, when I came out of Skye’s office and back into the club, Nualla was sitting alone in her usual booth in the corner, staring down at a tablet.
I stopped in front of the booth, and looked down at her. “Why are you here all alone?”
Nualla looked up at me quickly, and then slumped back into the blue velvet booth cushion. “Nikki’s working, Shawn’s busy, and—”
And she was still fighting with Patrick. No, not fighting. Fighting would mean that they were at least talking to each other. And they weren’t.
“—and I didn’t want to be home—it’s too quiet there. So I thought I’d come here,” Nualla continued, shrugging. “Should have known she’d be here though.”
I followed the line of Nualla’s eyes, and saw Kira talking with one of the bartenders, Justin, over at the bar. I let my eyes drift back to Nualla, and slid my hands into the pockets of my bomber jacket. “Can you really blame her for being here? She was just reunited with her mom.”
Nualla gave me a look of utter betrayal that I was even considering defending Kira.
“Whatever. It was a stupid idea to come here in the first place. I’m just going to go to the Coffee Press,” she announced with a frustrated growl as she stood, and shoved her tablet into her book bag.
“You could have called me to come hang out with you,” I pointed out. I’m still your best friend, you know.
“You didn’t answer your phone,” Nualla snapped accusingly as she stomped past me.
Didn’t answer my—? I patted my sides, and realized that I must have left it in my lab coat pocket.
Frak.
I trotted to catch up with her as she stormed through the night club. “Nualla, I’m sorry, okay? I left it in my lab,” I called after her.
She didn’t answer, just pushed through the back door and into the alley.
I reached out and grabbed her wrist as I followed her out the door into the cold night air. She whipped back around to face me, her lip quivering, looking on the verge of tears.
“Nualla, what’s wrong?” I asked, even though it was a stupid question. I knew exactly what was wrong. The world was moving along too quickly without her as if nothing had happened. As if everything was fine.
Nualla opened her mouth, and then shut it again silently. And then she looked away from me down at her boots, and ran her teeth over her bottom lip. “Travis, will you…will you come home with me?”
“What?” I asked, convinced I hadn’t heard her right.
“Not like that. I—I just don’t want to be alone…tonight.”
A life for a life, the memory of my promise echoed in my head.
I sighed heavily, because I knew this was gonna come back to bite me in the ass. “Sure.”
The Illusion of Strength
Friday, November 9th
TRAVIS
I opened my eyes with a jolt, ripped from my own nightmare by a scream. My heart slamming into my chest, my eyes darted around frantically. I didn’t know where I was.
Soft light from a collection of eastern-style lanterns in the corner of the room made the gauzy curtains hanging from the ceiling around the bed look like ghosts. The darkness bleaching all the vivid blue color from them. Dark shadows from the trees outside the picture box window danced across the body of a girl next to me. Their thin, crooked shape looking like sinister hands reaching for her.
As I looked down at the girl, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her black tangle of hair spilling across the pillow, I realized where I was.
I let out a heavy breath, and ran both my hands over my face. And as I pulled them away I saw two shining eyes peering up at me through the darkness.
“Hey,” Nualla said softly.
“Hey,” I echoed, letting my hands slip back to the bed.
“Did I wake you up?” she asked as she sat up, her black hair framing her moon-pale face like dark water.
“No,” I lied, because I couldn’t bear telling her the truth. “A dream woke me up a little bit before you screamed.”
Nualla pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Are yours still about the night of the accident?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “But they’re also worse than they were before,” I admitted. She was the only person who understood—understood what it was like to walk through that sea of bodies. The only one who understood that that kind of horror changed you—changed your nightmares. Your fears.
“What are yours about?” I asked quietly.
“Of walking through all those bodies. All those people I couldn’t help. And being stabbed,” Nualla answered without meeting my eyes. “And Draya and Emmy dying,” she finished, tears starting to spill down her cheeks.
I opened my mouth to tell her that it was okay, but we both knew it wasn’t.
Nualla leaned against my side as the tears continued to fall silently down her face, and I wrapped my arms around her. Resting my chin on the top of her head, and holding her close. And I didn’t ask her any more questions, because that’s not what she needed.
I leaned back against the padded headboard, closed my eyes, and tried to fall back asleep. I don’t think I succeeded though.
What seemed like only moments later, the door to Nualla’s bedroom creaked, and my eyes flashed open.
“Nualla, have you seen my—whoa.” Nikki’s eyes went huge as they darted between me and her cousin.
I looked at Nikki and then at Nualla who was still out cold. Her head resting on my thigh, and her arm flung across me. And then I looked back up at Nikki guiltily. “This is so not what it looks like, I swear.”
NUALLA
I brus
hed powder across my cheek and then sighed. “It’s not a big deal, Nikki.”
“Not a big deal! You both were half-naked in bed!” Nikki said indignantly from behind me.
After Nikki had walked into my bedroom to find Travis in my bed, he had gotten up quickly and left. A deep red blush across his cheeks like he had done something wrong. Which he hadn’t, of course. But because of that blush, Nikki was convinced that he had.
“He still had his jeans on Nikki, he wasn’t ‘half-naked,’” I said, rolling my eyes as I brushed more powder over my face. “And nothing happened.”
“Why was he in your bed in the first place?!” Nikki asked, gesturing wildly with her hands.
Because I had needed him, and he needed me just as much. Because there was nothing wrong with being there for someone when they needed you. Because we had made a promise to each other.
I gripped the edge of the stone vanity counter with my hand. No matter what, I was never going to find the right words to properly explain the pact we had made. That it was different than the kind most of us made during the ceremony of One. That the tabloids were twisting me and Travis’ relationship wildly out of proportion. And that it was really starting to piss me off.
I threw the makeup brush back into the drawer, and slammed it shut. “Because I didn’t want to be alone, okay?!” I shouted as I whipped around to face her. “I’m sorry for wanting someone there when I woke up from another fucking nightmare,” I said scathingly, but the second the words left my mouth I regretted them.
Nikki just stared back at me, speechless.
“Nikki, I’m…”
She shook her head in disgust, before she turned on her heel.
“Nikki!” I called after her as I reached out, and gripped her wrist.
She wrenched it from my grasp and glared at me, hurt clearly visible in her eyes. “Why didn’t you ask me? You know I would have stayed with you in a heartbeat. So why?”
The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) Page 12