by Rebel Miller
“Are you ashamed of him?” I asked Ma quietly.
“Kira. Don’t,” Rhoan threatened from across the table.
Ma looked between Rhoan and me, confusion in her eyes.
I leaned toward her. “Why are you treating him like some illegitimate child?”
Ma blinked then looked at Da and Uncle, who had frozen mid-banter.
“Is that why you sleep with him but don’t acknowledge him?” I continued, resentment pouring from every fiber of my being.
The room shut down. My comment had taken a vacuum to the space, emptying it of all air and cheerful energy.
Uncle Khelan stared at me. “Kira, this … joke,” he said cautiously. “It’s gone far enough.”
“Kira, shut up!” Rhoan yelled at the same time.
“No!” I responded, feeling another righteous swell in my anger. All the week’s tension and fears came down, oppressing me, forcing me to speak. I turned to Ma again. “If you want him, then have him. Why hide? You’re not hurting anyone, except him.”
The color left Ma’s face.
Rhoan dropped his head in his hands, resting his elbows on the table. After a moment, he looked back up at me and shook his head slowly, the skin around his eyes pinched.
Ma sat in a shocked stupor, looking at Da and Uncle with a lost and, I wasn’t ashamed to admit, satisfyingly guilty expression.
“What are you saying, Kira?” Da eyed me from the corner of his eye, his face flush.
“You know as well as I do.”
Suddenly, Uncle lunged forward in his chair, slapping the table with his palm. “Speak plainly, girl!”
I jumped. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Uncle’s eyes snap with such anger before, at least not directed at me.
I wrapped my arms about my waist and looked over at Rhoan, who had plaited his fingers in front of his mouth, resigned to the path I had forced us down.
“I told her,” he said, “that Ma was in a relationship with both of you. I saw you all years ago. You didn’t know I was there. I put the pieces together.” He pierced me with a look that promised reprimand. “It’s none of our business. She should never have said anything.”
Ma inhaled swiftly, her shoulders stiff and close around her ears.
“I saw you as well,” I muttered.
The air around us hung thick and heavy. Rhoan slumped back in his chair with his arms crossed. His role fulfilled, he was apparently willing to let this drama to play out.
“You’ll apologize to your mother, Kira,” Uncle said in a low voice. “No matter what you think you believe, you should never speak to her in that tone.”
“If it’s true,” I said, “then she should own up to it. All of you should.”
“Kira, stop this,” Da said, his voice clipped.
I looked between him and Uncle. “You’re allowing this? I thought you both were men of honesty.”
“Leave this alone!”
I opened my eyes wide. Da never raised his voice. Still, I wasn’t daunted.
“So you admit it,” I said, amazed, looking at Da. “I was the fool who thought it was against your will.”
Suddenly, Uncle stood up and stalked over to my side of the table. “Leave this room! I don’t want to see you until you’re ready to apologize to your mother and the rest of this family!”
“No,” I said with a firm shake of my head. I couldn’t believe that Uncle Khelan would try to toss me out, that he had the audacity to do that in my family home. “You think you have the same rights as my father or mother? Well, you don’t. The way she casts you aside should tell you that!”
If I had stabbed him in the chest, he couldn’t have looked more hurt. He crumbled into a hunch and took a step back, holding onto the side of the table to steady himself, his face full of profound suffering. Ma held a hand tight over her mouth, eyes glistening with the threat of tears.
My brows furrowed. Their responses made no sense.
“Halls, Kira. You’ve said enough.” Rhoan came up to me quietly and pulled at my arm. “Let’s just go to the study for a moment and cool down.”
“No!” I wrenched my arm from his grip. “I want the truth.”
My family stared at me, wary and shocked.
“We have to tell them.”
It took me a moment to register the calm voice that cut through the silence. Da repeated his words. He was looking at Uncle, and I had never seen him look so resolute.
“We knew the time would come,” Da said. “With what’s happening with Marah and Paol, we need to tell them.”
Ma shook her head slowly as she stood up. “No, Hugo, please.” She looked beseechingly at Da, but his resolve not melting, turned to implore Uncle Khelan. “Not yet. Not now.”
Uncle Khelan lowered himself into his chair, looking at Da. He thinned his lips and turned away, deep in thought, before he directed tortured eyes to Ma. “Okay,” he said.
Ma cried out and fell to her knees before Uncle, tears falling quickly to her cheeks. “Please! They won’t understand. She’ll hate me.”
I could sense Rhoan’s confusion. It matched my own.
Uncle placed a hand gently on her cheek. “We did what we had to do,” he said, his words laden by some obscure meaning.
“No,” she cried, sobbing outright now with her face on his lap.
Rhoan and I looked at each other. Surely our accusation hadn’t warranted all this.
“Ma,” Rhoan said, stepping forward, reaching out to carefully place a hand on her shoulder. “You must know we’ll love you no matter what.”
Ma’s whole body shook as she cried as if her life was ending. Alarmed, I knelt down beside her.
“I’m sorry, Ma. I didn’t mean it.” Guilt flooded me as I admitted to myself that I had been taking out my anxieties and fears on her. Tears stung my eyes and I wrapped my arms around her shaking body. “I won’t bring it up again if that’s what you want.”
She managed to pull an arm free from under her head to grasp my arm. Uncle Khelan ran a hand over my hair.
“Rhoan, Kira, sit down,” Uncle said, his voice rough with emotion. He had to say it again before we moved.
When we were reseated, he cupped Ma’s face in his hands once again and placed a soft kiss on her lips, which served to calm her a bit. She rose and sat beside Da, who stared off now into the middle distance with no emotion evident in his gaze save, perhaps, for resignation. Ma clasped her hands so tightly on her lap, they shook.
Uncle sighed. “Your Da is right. With all that’s going on, it’s best to tell you now,” he said.
Over the next hour or so, Uncle told Rhoan and me about how he and Ma had first met during a trip she made to Argon Four, when Rhoan was only a toddler. He recounted how they fell in love and struggled through conflicting emotions about becoming involved. Da added a detail every now and then, saying that he’d never expected his newly committed partner to fall in love with someone else and how much of a fight he gave Uncle. He’d resented Ma until he realized that her love for him wouldn’t wane. With a sad smile, Ma told us that her love for Uncle was as strong as her love for Da. After Uncle moved to Prospect Eight, he slowly — and strategically, for his part — became a part of their lives. Though Da and Uncle still had moments at odds, these were fewer and fewer as the years passed by. They managed to form a friendship that seemed to work and, more importantly, supported Rhoan and me.
While it was a moving and meaningful story, I soon grew impatient. “Multiples are common,” I said with a glance between Ma, Da and Uncle. “No one would care about you being part of that type of relationship.”
They glanced at each other. It seemed that none of them was sure who should continue the story.
Uncle Khelan took a fortifying breath. “When I left Argon, I left more than just my family and friends, everything I knew, behind — everything I would be happy to give up again for your Ma. I left a privileged life that was grooming me for a promising career as part of Realm leadership.” He sighed heavily. “I left the Senat
e.”
“What?” Rhoan leaned forward.
I’d heard him, but I couldn’t fathom that what Uncle Khelan was saying was true. “The Senate?” I asked, expecting him to say no.
“Yes, I am — or rather was — a senator.”
It was a beat before Rhoan spoke. “No one leaves the Senate,” he said, incredulous.
“Oh, they do, and they have,” Uncle said. “I’m not the first, and I probably won’t be the last.”
“But how?” I asked.
“By doing what I’ve been doing for years, hiding as a member of the Subordinate caste. I had to leave. I couldn’t be with your mother any other way,” he said, looking at Ma. For the first time, I understood his stifled, quiet expression. So many times I had seen him glance at Ma, just that way, and I’d never understood why. It was a mixture of hope, withheld affection and regret.
“So …” Rhoan said slowly. “That means Aunt Marah is a senator too.”
“Yes. As you know, about fifteen years ago, my parents died in a crash. Marah was thirteen at the time. I had never met her, but she was my sister. She had no one else, so I brought Marah here. I had to list her as a subordinate.”
“Otherwise, people would wonder why you were housing a thirteen-year-old member of the Senate caste,” Rhoan said, filling in the blanks.
“Exactly,” Uncle confirmed. “Paol knows. When they got married four years ago, she told him despite my requests that she wouldn’t.” He shrugged. “Paol won’t say anything. He would die before he let anyone harm her. Plus, he’s a subordinate. They wouldn’t be allowed to be together if she wasn’t listed as either a subordinate or a protector. And now, with Adria … he has many reasons to protect her and his family.”
“But what about you?” I said. “If you’re hiding as a subordinate, you could still be with Ma freely. It wouldn’t attract any undue attention.”
“My family is from Septima, Kira,” Ma reminded me. “They don’t support the multiple relationships. When I tried to tell them about Khelan, my parents threw me out of their house. They threatened to disown me. Khelan and Hugo didn’t want me to suffer that disgrace. I didn’t care too much about it, but then you were born. I didn’t want to bring any shame to you. I didn’t want my family to disown you.”
“You mean you didn’t want them to disown Kira and me,” Rhoan said. I could see his mind processing the information.
“No.” She sighed heavily, looking at me. “Just Kira.”
I frowned.
Rhoan glanced between Ma and Uncle Khelan and said, “Holy shit.”
I tried to catch on to what he seemed to have realized.
Uncle Khelan knelt in front of me. “Kira, I never imagined telling you this under these circumstances. I guess I couldn’t bring myself to imagine this at all.” He clasped my hands within his, his hold unsteady. “In addition to my love for your mother, I moved to Prospect because of you. I couldn’t fathom a world where I wasn’t with my daughter.”
“Your daughter?”
Ma knelt beside him and put her hand over ours. Her eyes were flushed with a fresh well of tears. “Khelan’s your father, Kira. Your biological father, that is.”
I stared at them, my brain unable to comprehend the levels to which they would go to hide the truth.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered, dumbfounded. “Stories of being a senator and me being your daughter. Just tell me the truth.” I felt my own tears rush to the surface.
“It is the truth, Kira,” Da said from across the table. He scrubbed his hands over his face. When he looked at me, I could see he had been wiping away his tears. “I’m so sorry.”
I stood up abruptly, shoving the chair back behind me. “Stop it!” I yelled. The chair clattered to the ground.
Ma stood too, hands held tightly in front of her chest as if in prayer. “We were trying to protect you, Kira,” she rushed out. “If Khelan were found out, then you would be cast in the same light, as a dissident of the Realm. We didn’t want you to be hurt by our decisions, so Hugo took you as his daughter.” She paused, her face a distraught mess of tears and fear. “It was the only thing to do.”
Uncle remained crouched, his head in his hands. I took an unsteady step away from him. “Kira,” he said, looking up at me, his own face drenched with tears.
Rhoan stepped closer to me. In his eyes I saw the same war of emotions I was feeling.
I looked at each of them frantically. “You’re serious, aren’t you? All Above, you’re serious.”
I felt it then. Inhaling deeply, I tried to find air but instead found a dense mass of cotton lodged in my throat.
“I want to go now,” I managed on a strangled breath, but I started to wheeze as I tried to inhale anew.
Da stood, bringing Uncle Khelan — my father? —with him.
“Kira, sit down,” Da said, gripping my shoulders. Absently, I heard Ma rush to the kitchen.
I shook my head, shrugging off his hold. “No!” I choked out. “Rhoan … I want to go.”
Rhoan glanced about the room quickly. Thinning his lips, he shoved past Da to collect our bags from the sitting area. He returned only a second later. “Let’s go.”
Ma ran back into the dining room, carrying a glass. “Kira, here, drink this, sweetheart. It will help.” Her eyes begged me to take the glass.
I refused it, but Rhoan took the glass and forced it to my wheezing mouth. Before I could turn my face away, I tasted the acrid taste of solumen, a medicinal herb that usually helped calm me during such attacks,
“I — I want to go … now!” I spluttered. My eyesight was starting to narrow dangerously.
“Rhoan, take her,” Khelan ordered evenly, his face etched with a map of mangled emotions.
Rhoan led me away swiftly as I tried to block out the sight of Ma crying in Da’s arms.
* * *
That was message twenty-eight.
I was lying on my bed, hours later, head on my folded hands, watching the hypnotic flashing message light on my comm. I had placed it on my bedside table directly in my line of sight. Two new messages had arrived since I had put it there, while I wrestled with my emotions. The happy jingle from the monitor at the end of my bed taunted me for the second time.
Gannon and Tai were trying all modes of communication to reach me. They were probably frantic with worry at this point. I had been avoiding them because I didn’t know what to say. I needed to sort out my thoughts following Gabriel’s abuse and his ludicrous allegations. After learning the life-altering news about my father, I wasn’t sure I would figure things out any time soon.
I desperately needed to talk to someone about Gabriel. I couldn’t speak to Sela. It would only put her and her family in a terrible position. I trusted Gannon with all I had, but I couldn’t add more to his list of infractions on my behalf. He was a senator who was full of integrity; he would feel obligated to remove a blight on his caste. I supposed I could speak to Tai. No matter if he and my brother were at odds, Tai loved my family, even if he didn’t love me. But like Gannon, how much more secrecy was I going to demand of him?
I sat up and was about to seek Rhoan out when yet another call came in on the monitor. This time I activated it, setting my expression mutinously.
“So what do I call you now?” I asked. I read in his expression obvious relief that I had answered his call.
“I would love nothing more than to have you call me father, but …” The man I had known as Uncle my entire life ducked his head and ran a thick hand across his eyes. When he looked up, it was with profound sorrow. I understood from the little he had said that I couldn’t call him Father or Da because of the questions it would raise and the danger it could bring. “You can,” he said, “call me just Khelan, if you prefer.”
I frowned. It sounded so foreign to me, but I wouldn’t — couldn’t — carry on the farce of calling him Uncle when it wasn’t truly a term of affection, only a word that supported a lie.
“Your Ma and Da,” he s
aid, “they love you very much. Any anger you have should be directed at me. I was the one who came into their lives and wouldn’t let go.”
“Ma had a choice.”
“Yes, and thank the gods she chose to include me in your family — our family.” He sighed. “I know you don’t want to hear this now, but … but I’m happy you know. I hadn’t realized the burden I was carrying for so long. I had gotten used to it. Now that it’s lifted …”
“Now that it’s lifted, you’ve placed it on my shoulders.”
“Would you rather we didn’t tell you?”
“I would rather I had never been lied to.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “One day, I hope you will come to understand the choices we had to make.”
“I never will,” I said automatically.
He exhaled deeply.
I dropped my gaze to the quilted blanket on my bed. “I — I need some time to process this.”
“I know. We know,” he added. “Your Ma, Da and I understand that. We’ll give you some time. We just wanted to be sure you were okay after your attack.”
“I’m fine. The solumen helped. Rhoan forced me to drink a gallon of it.” Rhoan and I had been up for hours after we’d arrived home, talking things through. I had stopped wheezing and feeling as if my chest would cave in, but before going to bed less than an hour ago, Rhoan had given me another strong dose in fear of another attack.
Uncle Khelan — Khelan — eyed me sadly. “Then I guess I’ll let you go. I’ll check on you during the week. Maybe I can stop by your offices after work and we can talk, just you and I?”
I held silent, refusing to commit to anything.
At his mention of work, though, a puzzle piece clicked into place. “It was you who got me the position at the Judiciary, wasn’t it?”
He froze before glancing away. “I suppose this is a time for all truths to come to light,” he said, then looked back at me. “Yes. I found a way to get your name to the top of the list. I still know the ins and outs of the system.”
“Gods, when do the lies end?” I said, scanning his face. “I don’t deserve it. I’ll have to leave my job.”
“You will do no such thing,” he said. “Do not discredit the work you’ve done. You got that proposal approved by Realm Council. The Corona asked to meet with you, not with anyone else. You deserve to be there. Do you think Gabriel or any other senator rose to their positions on their own? You should be there as much as anyone, maybe more so.”