Awakening

by Rebel Miller

  “Halls, Kira,” Tai said tightly. “I knew one day your mouth would get you into trouble.”

  I pursed my lips. I couldn’t blame him — I’d thought the same thing myself. I too thought my support for exploration would get me tossed out of the Judiciary, if not the Realm. “She seemed to want to determine my motivation behind the proposal,” I explained. “I don’t know. She started out by asking me if I was a sympathizer of the factions and whether I knew what their interests were.”

  Tai and Gannon glanced at each other.

  “Could she know about Paol?” Gannon asked Tai.

  Tai frowned. “It’s possible she checked on Kira’s background and knows she has a missing aunt originally from Argon,” he said grimly. He ran a hand across his jaw then eyed me. “This is why I warned you to lay low, Kira,” he said.

  My mind started to spin.

  Gannon cursed and turned to me. “How did you respond?”

  “I told her no, of course.” They stared at me expectantly. “I told her that I only want what’s best for the Realm and its citizens. In the end, I think she believed me. In fact, she said so.”

  “I wouldn’t trust the Corona as far as I could throw her,” Gannon muttered, surprising both Tai and me.

  Tai clenched a hand. “I don’t like this.” He looked to Gannon. “She must suspect something. Why else would she want to meet with her?”

  Gannon shook his head, searching my face thoughtfully. “I don’t like it either. It could be that she simply wanted to ensure you weren’t using Realm Council to serve the interests of the factions, but … that kind of inquiry is something she would order her protectors to make. There’s nothing to be gained by inviting you to a private meeting. In fact, if she thinks you’re truly involved with the factions, she’s only showing her hand going this route.”

  I watched as their minds processed the information. Perhaps it was meaningless, but as they sat there worrying over me, I felt compelled to tell them everything the Corona said and even insinuated.

  “She … also asked about my relationship with you.”

  Tai’s eyes sharpened. “She thinks you’re in a relationship with us?”

  I shrugged, truly uncertain what she had been getting at. “The way she was speaking, she suspects I’m with you,” I said, looking at Gannon.

  Gannon scowled and cursed under his breath once again. “I’ll fix this, Kira.” He grabbed my hand, drawing it on his lap, his face full of apology.

  I cocked my head.

  “Fuck.” Tai got up abruptly. Looking ready to punch something or someone, he jabbed a finger in Gannon’s direction. “Because of you, her name is sullied at the highest level, both as a sympathizer and as an opportunist.”

  Gannon glanced down at our hands, his mouth tight. It occurred to me that they thought I was angry and ashamed about the Corona’s suspicions, that I was upset enough to not want to speak with them and ignore their messages.

  Tai started to pace, his hands digging into his hips. Meanwhile, Gannon continued to take on the weight of unnecessary guilt.

  “I had a choice,” I said adamantly to Tai. “I chose to be with Gannon just like I had a choice in getting involved in the proposal and saying what I did to the Corona.”

  Gannon looked up. “So why didn’t you come to me after the Realm Council meeting?” he said. Tai stopped wearing a path in the carpet.

  This was where things got sticky. I knew without a doubt that if I told them about Gabriel, they would take it upon themselves to do something rash, jeopardizing their reputations and livelihoods even more on my behalf. That’s why I had been avoiding them: they were already doing enough.

  Gannon’s blue eyes narrowed in on me, his hand tightening around my own. “Answer me.”

  Damn that tone. I bit my lip, a shiver of need for him moving through me despite the circumstances. “Gabriel,” I said simply.

  “This is your superior?” Tai asked.

  I nodded.

  “What about Gabriel?” Gannon asked as Tai came closer to the bed, his large figure looming over me.

  “After my meeting with the Corona, he … accused me of manipulation. He thinks I’ve been trying to overthrow him or climb the Judiciary ladder. I don’t know, but he pretty much said that I was an opportunistic whore who didn’t know her place.” My hands started to tremble as anger poured through me. I remembered him standing over me, a vindictive gleam in his eye as he forced himself against me. My breath started coming in short bursts. After a few moments of deep restorative breaths, I managed to calm myself. Then I realized that neither Tai nor Gannon had said a word. I glanced up to find them looking at me with equal amounts of unrestrained hostility.

  “He … Gabriel Minister called you a whore?” Gannon said slowly as if he was only just understanding. “The man everyone knows uses his cock more effectively than his brain?” His lip curled.

  I winced.

  Tai leaned down, looking me straight in the eye. “What else did he do, Kira?” I ducked my head, but Tai placed a finger under my chin and gently tilted my head back up. Still I looked away.

  “Look at me.” Tai’s voice was cool, but I knew he was anything but. I dragged my eyes to his and knew I couldn’t tell a lie. Tai could see right through me, and Gannon was getting pretty good at doing the same.

  “He hit me,” I said and put a hand to my cheek, remembering the feel of all Gabriel’s rage coming at me in the assault.

  There was a beat of silence.

  “He did what?” Gannon asked, his voice as deceptively cool as Tai’s. Tai leaned back into a stand.

  They’d heard me, but I repeated it a little louder, committing to it. They gave each other dark looks as I wriggled blood into the fingers that were in the death grip Gannon’s hold suddenly had become. Gannon quickly released my hand and stood up, turning away from the bed. He scrubbed a hand tightly across his mouth then stood staring at a large chest of drawers with his hands braced on his hips. Tai stared at me, his arms crossed like a bulky shield in front of him, but I could see his mind was elsewhere, turning things over, calculating.

  After a few tense moments, Gannon faced me, but not before tossing a swift and meaningful glance Tai’s way. Tai seemed to understand what it meant, because he responded almost as quickly with a curt nod.

  “I never liked that prick and now I know why,” Gannon murmured as he came to sit beside me once again. “What else did he say?”

  I eyed the two of them.

  Did they think I was a fool?

  “Please,” I said. “Don’t do whatever you’re planning to do. I don’t want you involved.”

  Tai actually laughed.

  Gannon leaned in. “What else did that asshole say to you?”

  I sighed. “He said someone in the Senate got me the job at the Judiciary, otherwise I wouldn’t have been there.” I decided to leave out the fact that Gabriel suspected that Gannon and I were intimately connected. There was no need for Gannon to feel some irrational guilt about that as well. More importantly, I didn’t need to fan the flame of animosity in both him and Tai toward Gabriel any higher.

  Tai huffed. “You got that job on your own merit,” he said. “For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve wanted to work in the Judiciary, and you worked hard to get there.” I wanted to kiss him for his blind confidence in me.

  Tai, more than anyone else outside my family, would fully understand how alarming my family’s duplicity was. While he had been at only a few of our family occasions over the years, he was almost like a son to both Da and Uncle. He was sure to be as astounded as I was by the truth about my biological father. My lips trembled, so I pulled them inward, trying to keep it together.

  “What is it?” Tai sat down on the bed, concern deepening the colorful mosaic of his eyes. A horrible sound bubbled up from deep inside me. All of a sudden, Tai pulled me into his lap, holding me close as I sobbed with everything I had. I hadn’t cried when my family told me about my parentage, but I wept unrest
rained as Tai held me in his arms. Gannon cursed in the background, and I felt the bed shift as he got up. Tai tightened his hold when Gannon came to a crouch at our side of the bed, not willing to let me go.

  “Kira,” he said, his voice laced with worry. A hand ran down my back. I could tell from the pressure and stroke that it was Gannon. “Let me help you.”

  “Tell me,” Tai said, close by my ear.

  I calmed down after a moment, or maybe it was a few minutes — I couldn’t tell. Gannon looked like he was only barely holding back from hauling me out of Tai’s arms. I needed to reassure him I was okay, so I gave him a watery smile. It did nothing to remove the strain around his eyes.

  I readjusted my position on Tai’s lap and reached out to Gannon, tentatively placing a hand on his chest. “Don’t get angry,” I said, resulting in his look of concern dropping into a wary one. “I need to speak with Tai alone?”

  “No.”

  “Please. I —”

  He stood. “Damn it, Kira. After everything, don’t you dare shut me out!”

  “It’s about my family and the Senate. I can’t put you in this position.”

  “I choose to be in this position!” He reached for me, but I leaned away, deeper into Tai’s constrictor-like hold. “So, it’s like that?” he said.

  “No, it’s not,” I rushed out, feeling my heart sink at the thought that he would believe I was rejecting him. “I just can’t ask you to protect my family any more than you have.” I struggled to get out of Tai’s arms, but he held me firmly against his chest.

  “Kira, just tell him,” Tai said. “We’re both in so deep, what does it matter at this point?”

  Both Gannon and I looked at Tai like he had grown a third eye.

  Gannon recovered faster than me. After a deep breath, he gave Tai a reluctant nod of gratitude for the unexpected support. Meanwhile, Tai himself seemed a little surprised by his own remark. His mouth was set stubbornly.

  I inhaled deeply. “He wasn’t too far off,” I said, feeling the pang of hurt I was fast becoming familiar with since my family had revealed their lies.

  “Who?”

  “Gabriel.” I looked between them. “A senator did get me the position at the Judiciary. It was my father — my real father, that is. It was … Khelan.”

  Tai blinked as Gannon frowned.

  “Khelan is your father?” Tai asked, eyes wide in disbelief.

  I nodded, my throat closing up again with the threat of tears.

  “And he’s a senator?” Gannon asked cautiously.

  “Not anymore.” I told them the story Khelan had shared with Rhoan and me about being in love with Ma, leaving the Senate and Argon to be with her and me, everything up to my call with him, when he told me about the hidden reference to Tholos in my aunt’s letter.

  “They told Rhoan and me,” I said, “because they were concerned about what would happen if my aunt and uncle were found. The secrets could come out, and they didn’t want me to hear it from anyone but them.” It made me wonder whether they would have told me otherwise. My eyes stung. It would be hard to get passed this feeling of betrayal.

  “Fuck me,” Tai said on a breath. He looked at me, stunned as much as I had been the night before. He searched my face and used his thumbs to wipe away the trail of my tears. “Between this, that fucker Gabriel and the Corona … no wonder you drowned yourself in solumen. Your attack must have been epic.” He looked into my eyes, understanding and sympathy shining brightly in his own.

  I sniffed with a rueful smile as tears slipped down my face.

  Then I froze. It was Gannon’s silence that made me turn quickly his way, a shot of anxiety winding its way through my chest. Had he finally realized how much he was putting on the line for me? What I saw turned my anxiety into confusion. Gannon was staring at me as if was for the very first time.

  He reached out and ran his fingers across my lips as he scanned my face. “All Above, you’re a senator, Kira,” Gannon said, excitement flaring in his eyes.

  Tai’s hold on me fell slack.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I wrested myself from Tai’s hold and crawled over to sit across from Gannon.

  “You’re a senator,” he repeated in wonder.

  I shook my head. “No, I’m not. My uncle — father — was.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You were born to a senator.”

  “And a subordinate,” I felt the need to remind him.

  “One senator is all it will take,” he pressed.

  “All what will take?”

  “Her father was a senator who was in hiding when she was born,” Tai interjected through clenched teeth. He, at least, seemed to understand where Gannon’s train of thought was headed. “As soon as he went missing, he would have been delisted as a senator.”

  Gannon ignored him, cupping my face in his hands. “I can make an appeal for your Senate status. You could be exempt the same way a child born to a subordinate woman who was raped by a senator would be,” he said, hope brimming wildly in his eyes.

  I exhaled as if I had been punched in my gut.

  Gannon closed his eyes, regret creasing the lines around his eyes and mouth. “I didn’t mean to imply that your mother was rap—”

  “You fucking asshole,” Tai growled.

  I cut a sharp look at Tai. “Stop it. You know what he meant,” I said, yet there was still a bitter taste in my mouth.

  Tai made a disgusted sound then leaned around me to point a finger at Gannon. “You file for her as a senator, then you out her father as well as her aunt and uncle. You put everyone in danger,” he snarled.

  Reason and logic crept over Gannon’s face, deflating him. “I wasn’t thinking,” he said, slowly lowering his hands. The color of his eyes faded into a shadowy blue. I wondered at the feeling of defeat that tugged at my own heart.

  “I’m going to see if there are any updates from my team.” Tai stood up, giving Gannon a disdainful look. “I know you want her, Chancellor, but there’s no way you can have her.”

  * * *

  For some reason I was startled when I stepped out of the shower some time later to find Gannon in the bathroom as well. I was in his house, after all. Watching him, I realized it wasn’t his presence that had unsettled me so much as the quiet intensity cloaking him.

  I pulled a towel from its hook as he crouched in front of the row of cabinets beneath the wall-to-wall mirror and vanity. He ran his hand over the fronts of the cabinets, making their doors slide open and shut as he rummaged through their contents.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a time-lapse kit, would you?” he asked, not looking at me, his shoulders set rigidly.

  Since Gannon had just come from Dignitas One, which was hours ahead of our time on Prospect Eight, I figured he more than likely he hadn’t slept well, if at all, over the past two days and was looking for a way to regulate his sleep patterns.

  “No, I didn’t think to bring a lapse kit.” I wrapped the towel around me then said, “Perhaps Talib has one?”

  “I sent Talib home hours ago. I’ll have to do without.” He stood and finally glanced at me in the mirror, his hair hung this way and that over his brow. “Or maybe a drink will work.”

  I frowned as he turned on his heel and walked out of the room. He was angry.

  I fought the urge to trail after him. He probably needed time to process everything just like I did. Perhaps I should have given him some space? Anyone would be out of sorts after hearing my story. I was adding complications to Gannon’s life that he didn’t need. Halls, he was in line to become high chancellor! What was I thinking unloading my troubles on him?

  I decided I would leave after I got dressed. He would give me a fight, but I would go nonetheless. He obviously had no care for his own welfare, so it would be up to me.

  Glancing into the mirror, I took in my haunted expression. My hair was a glistening, wet mass on my head. I took a comb to it, careful not to work the curls too much or they would become frizzy; too
little, and they would remain a tangled mess.

  My whole life is a tangled mess, I thought wryly.

  I was becoming a full-time job for these two men. As I moved the comb through my hair, my mind drifted to the exchange I’d had with Tai just before I showered. I had found him packing his gear in the sitting area, his moves economical and focused.

  “Where are you going?” I’d asked.

  Tai paused, then resumed without looking at me. “I have something I have to take care of,” he threw over his shoulder.

  “Does it have anything to do with my Uncle Paol?”

  “No,” he said without hesitation.

  “Will you come back?” I stood behind him, my fingers interlaced tightly in front of me.

  He shrugged. “Why would I?”

  “Because I’d like you to.” It wasn’t a very good answer, but it was the truth.

  He turned to study me, his gaze flickering toward the stairs. In the dimness of the room, the gold flecks flashed in his eyes.

  “I see how you look at him,” he said, stepping into my space.

  “How?” I hedged, staring at the metallic buttons of his coat.

  “You know how.” He waited until I raised my eyes to his. “That’s mine, Kira. I own that look,” he said.

  I shook my head. “It’s not the same.”

  “It’s too damn close.”

  I remained silent. I didn’t want to fight. There would be no winner in the end. Tai’s eyes were mirrors to the conflict of emotions that was as agonizing to him as it was to me. As usual, Tai was trying to be everyone’s hero, doing and saying the right thing. But sometimes he slipped up, like now. His jealousy showed me how much he wanted me, but he wasn’t willing to do anything about it.

  Scared I would frighten him away, I leaned up slowly to place a chaste, placating kiss on his lips. I didn’t know what I expected his response to be, so surprise rattled me when he gripped my upper arms, deepening our kiss. I curled my fingers into the folds of his jacket, drawing him closer. I made a needy sound as he licked the seams of my lips, applying a slight pressure to open them, and I enjoyed his familiar taste and feel as his tongue abraded mine. After a few moments , he pulled back with a look of frustration.