“I went to the crophouses every day after that. But I never saw you again. I didn’t even know who you were. You ran before I could ask.”
“You looked for me?” I ask. Father never let me out after he heard what had happened. But I never told him about Julian.
He shrugs, suddenly shy. “I would have liked to know who I saved.”
“Those boys knew me.”
“I rarely go to the market. I rarely leave the Tower. I was... lucky that day.”
“You? Or me?”
He holds my gaze. “Me. I was lucky.”
My cheeks warm and I break away from his gaze. “Do you live in the Tower?”
“My mother was Chancellor Evan’s sister, so yes, I do. I like it there, I guess,” he says, but his voice faltered at the word was. His mother is dead.
The door slides open behind me.
“Lissa,” Slate calls. I turn. His eyes are bloodshot. “We have to go.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Trust me,” he says quietly. He drugged me, he killed Father. But he let me live after he saw me in the Chamber. He let Julian live after taking him in.
Take chances, Father once said. I stand.
“Lead the way.”
I follow Slate back through the hall, which opens to a foyer. Sunlight filters in through the two windows ahead of me, the door to the outside between them. There’s a series of cupboards along one wall and an old seating area pushed against the other. Slate motions for me to sit.
“But… I thought we were leaving,” I say.
“First, I-can you please sit down?” He asks. I sit. The color has drained from his face.
“You need to understand that Gage wasn’t your father,” he says slowly.
I don’t speak.
“What he did was wrong and I’ll always hate him for it, even if he was my brother,” he continues. I keep my face carefully neutral. I don’t want to tell him he’s repeating himself.
“Do you know who my father is?” I ask. I still don’t know if I should trust him, but I can always give him a chance.
He doesn’t answer right away. He stares at me with an expression I can’t place and it makes my chest tight. He whispers something, his voice so soft, I’m not even sure he spoke until the words register in my mind.
“Me. I’m your father.”
My mouth opens, but shock has stolen my voice. All I can muster is a dying wheeze.
How many times had I looked at Father and wondered why we were so different? How many times did I repeat his last words and wonder if they are true? Father never lied.
“Y-you expect me to believe you?” I ask anyway, finally understanding why he wanted me to sit.
“No,” Slate says, voice crushed in sorrow. We have the same hair, I realize. But then, couldn’t we have the same hair if I was his niece? “I want you to believe me, but I know it will take time. And proving.”
“You killed your own brother.” I don’t want a murderer for a father.
He shakes his head. “There’s so much you don’t understand yet. There’s more to this than you, me, Gage, and the blood we share.”
“What more can there be?” I say, but he’s already leaving. Running, almost.
“Stay here,” he says quickly. “I’ll be back.”
I lean back against the rough cushions and breathe. Inhale, exhale. Could Slate really be my father?
Restlessness makes its way into my veins, so I stand and pace the room. I keep hearing Father’s last words: You are not my daughter. And Slate’s proclamation: Me. I’m your father.
A small portrait on the wall beside the cupboard catches my attention. It’s covered in shadows, almost as if Slate wants to remember and forget at the same time.
I cross the room. The colors are vibrant and alive, made by Jute, no doubt. Only they have such materials, close to what people had on Earth.
The portrait itself is of a woman, sitting on a throne that seems plain in comparison to her. A robe of navy blue, accented in gold, is wrapped around her slender shoulders. Her skin is a flawless, pale ivory. Her lips are a brilliant red. My mind flashes to the blood on Father’s shirt and a shiver trembles up my spine. The woman’s features are sharp, from the slant of her nose to the line of her jaw. But her eyes are what catch my attention the most. They’re odd, the color reflecting everything around her, even paler than Slate’s gray. I lean closer.
“Beautiful, isn't she?”
I straighten and turn. A ghost of a smile crosses Slate’s lips. He scratches the side of his head.
“And cruel.” Pain underlines his words. His eyes drift to the portrait, and finally to some distant place.
“Who is she?” I ask.
He looks surprised. “You don't know?” I shake my head. All I can think is: this man could be my father. “The queen. Queen Rhea.”
“Of the Jute?” I ask. He nods.
I turn back to the portrait and carefully trace the billows of her lush robe. I’ve never seen a Jute before. In my mind they were feral, ugly creatures and all they wanted was to see me dead. But she is the opposite of that, cruel or not.
“She's been ruling for decades. Jute live long lifespans.”
“Have you,” I pause. “Met her?”
He laughs softly. “I have.”
I want to know more. I want to know why he laughed. Why he chose now to say he is my father. Why, why, why.
“We can leave now,” he says after a moment, without meeting my eyes. I have time, I decide. I can ask him later.
When we step outside, the ground is as dark as fresh blood. The Tower’s shadow casts everything in a hushed gloom. From its nearness, I estimate we’re roughly twenty rows from my own house, where the Tower is far enough that I don’t have to worry about it. Mostly soldiers live this close to the spiral of pure black, with dark windows glinting like watchful eyes. Soldier houses are longer than ours, though they’re still small with sloping roofs and red doors.
Everything on Jutaire is red.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
In answer, he looks up to the Tower. I stop.
“No,” I burst out. “I’m not going there.” Chancellor Kole is there. Power is there. I don’t want to be mixed in this anymore.
I committed a crime last night.
Then it hits me: Slate is trying to take me in.
He sees the thought strike and lunges for me, sending a flurry of dust and sand flying between us. I stare at his hand around my wrist.
“You wanted answers, Lissa. I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. Could the desperation in his voice be an act? “Please. Everything you’ve been taught is wrong. The Chancellors aren’t the bad guys here.”
Then who is? I want to ask. Instead, I ask something else, something that instantly makes me feel selfish.
“Will you tell me why I was raised by your brother?” I stumble on the word brother. But my words do nothing to acknowledge his claim of being my father.
“Yes.” He drops my hand and starts walking. I sigh when he doesn’t elaborate and follow him, because he will give me answers.
“Why is it so important that I come?”
A door slams far behind me and I turn to see Julian jogging toward us. Beside another house, kids laugh and run in the dust. They’re all jutting bones and sun-kissed skin.
Slate takes the time to choose his words carefully. “Gage’s death triggered a lot of irreversible things—including attention that’s zeroed in on you. You’re special, Lissa. No one else can safely breathe oxygen and Jutaire’s air.”
“But Julian?” I ask. I hold my breath.
He shakes his head sadly. No. I really am alone.
“Then, what am I?” I ask softly.
“Would you believe me?” He counters as we pass another row of houses. We’re almost there. I can see the Tower door. He sighs when I don’t answer. In truth, I don’t know how to answer.
“You’re half-human, half-Jute. The only hybrid on Jutaire.”r />
I stop walking. Half-Jute. Half-Human. Half, not whole. I am nothing.
I wrap my arms around myself and think of Father, Gage, who said nothing. Who didn’t think I was worth being truthful to. Julian catches up to us and Slate keeps his distance, watching me with his hands fisted by his sides. My limbs weaken at the possibility of him actually being my father. With the possibility of hope. Of not being alone.
“Tell me,” I whisper.
The day of my birth was supposedly the night of my death. My skin was tinged a sickly blue and my eyes were swollen shut. For as long as they watched, I didn't take a single breath. This was why there were no other hybrids. They all came to this world like I did, blue and unbreathing. They were buried before they had a chance to live.
Slate set out with Gage to lay me to rest. There was no funeral—I came to this world dead, who was there to mourn me?
Slate left me there in his grief. He couldn’t bear to look at his dead child any longer. Gage stayed behind. He knew more than anyone on Jutaire and when he checked for my pulse, he felt it. When he rested his ear on my chest, he knew the heart inside was beating, even if barely.
But Gage never told Slate. When Gage couldn't keep Slate away from his house, Slate saw me. Gage said he had an affair and that I was the result. Though Slate didn’t think such a thing was possible, he believed him. How could he think his daughter was alive when he saw her still body?
“I never knew until I took him in that day,” he whispers. There are tears running down his cheeks, glistening with the rays of the midday sun. Our shadows waver.
“Why did you leave me there?” I ask. I'm afraid my voice will break, but it’s smooth and even. Encouraging.
He closes his eyes. And when he opens them again, he isn't here. He's elsewhere, seventeen years ago. “You were dead. Everyone said you were dead and I…I saw it too. I was young, barely seventeen. I trusted my older brother more than anyone, more than myself, because he was so learned.”
Julian places a hand on Slate’s shoulder and Slate smiles sadly. I almost forgot Julian was here.
“He didn’t want to hang,” he says, looking at me. I push away the pain making its way to my heart. If I let it stay, it will grow, spread. Consume me. And there is no turning away from such grief. “He begged me. He wanted me to give him a bloody death.”
My breath hitches, snatched away by his words.
“So I did.”
The confession is whispered. So soft, so inaudible. But in my ears, they boom, they echo and they pound.
“But why? Death is death,” I force the words from my mouth. Julian glances at Slate and I get the sense that he knows why.
Slate shakes his head and continues walking, as if moving forward will rid us of our pasts. “It’s not. You have to understand, there are some things worse than death.”
I stare at him, but he continues staring ahead as if he doesn’t notice me.
“Then my mother, who is she?” I ask.
He bristles, but doesn’t stop walking. His hand is on the Tower door when he finally answers me. “She’s gone.”
I can tell he’s lying. And if I can tell he is lying now, whatever he said before was true.
Maybe he really is my father.
Maybe I’m not truly alone.
The inside of the Tower is nothing like the outside. Everything is blinding white, from the floors to the walls, and surprisingly empty. I expected to see soldiers roaming the halls, to hear doors slamming and voices echoing.
The same shimmering ten-pointed star emblazoned on the Chamber’s wall is here too, ingrained in the white floor. It’s white too, and hard to see unless you really look. I wonder what it means, but I don’t feel like asking. There are more important things to worry about.
Like my father being alive, and me being the only one of my kind.
Slate leads me to a room with nothing but a shaggy brown rug thrown in its center. My fingers itch to straighten it, to align the edges with those of the room’s, but I clasp my hands together when he turns to me.
“I’ll be back soon. This is pretty much the only room where you’ll be left alone,” he says with an apologetic smile and closes the door behind him.
I sink to the ground. The shag of the carpet brushes against the skin of my ankles that peek from beneath my pants.
I’m in the Tower, the last place I ever expected to be. Julian is alive. The man who I thought was my father could be my uncle. The soldier who killed the man I lived with for seventeen years could be my father. A shuddering breath escapes my lips.
I peel the mask off my face and rub at the spot where it itched against my skin, inhaling the sweet air. Oxygen doesn’t fuel the Tower.
The air is a reminder: I’m half-human, half-Jute. Translation: not human, not Jute.
I am nothing. I belong nowhere. My lips part in a silent cry. My eyes burn.
The door opens and I quickly wipe my eyes and press the mask back on. But it isn’t Slate with his sympathetic gray eyes. It’s Julian. The only three buttons at the top of his shirt are unbuttoned, his chin shadowing a v-shaped portion of his neck. He sits down and doesn’t speak.
“Are you like me? Half-human, half-Jute?” I break the silence first. He isn’t wearing a mask. I know Slate said otherwise, but I want to hear the answer from him.
“Yes and no.” He sounds distant, like he’d rather talk about anything but this.
“There can’t be a yes and no,” I pause and my brow furrows, “we must be the same.
He sighs and clenches his jaw.
“We're similar, but not the same. Jute women are stronger than men. Their genetics are different. Your mother is Jute, mine was human.”
“Oh,” is all I say, because I don’t understand why that makes us different. His eyes soften at my voice.
“You’re supposed to come with me.”
“Where?” I ask, standing. A part of me just wants to hear his voice, the softness of it, the stillness. I trust him, I realize. He’s saved me twice, and I have to believe that means he will never hurt me.
“You'll see.”
I follow him down the hall. His shirt clings to his shoulders and he walks almost soundlessly, despite the boots hidden beneath his dark pants. When he opens a door, a smell hits me, tangy and acidic. Like blood.
But when the light flickers on, I don’t see blood. I see metal. Weapons of every shape, size and lethality line the walls. I step inside and turn a full circle. Weapons to my right and left. Targets straight ahead. Carpet across the floor.
“Metal isn’t scarce, is it?” I say dryly.
He shakes his head, but doesn’t say anymore. Why was he in the Chamber last night?
I run my hand along the weapons lining the walls. There are daggers in various sizes. Some with the most intricately carved handles. Staves tipped with blades and jet-black bows with metal arrows. I’ve never seen so many weapons. Weapons are for killing. For protecting.
What do they need protection from?
“Why did you want to show me this?” I ask slowly.
He stills and turns back to me, a knife in either hand. “This room. It's where you'll spend the majority of the next month or so. In training.” He sounds confused.
I stare at him. “Training? I don't need to train for anything. And I’m not staying here.” I’m going home, I don’t say.
He sets the knives down and steps closer, eyes narrowed. “But—how about Slate? I thought, now that you know he's your father—”
“Being my father has nothing to do with training. Or living here. Biological or not, he will never be Galileo.”
Julian's eyes flash. “No, he won't. Because he isn't.” There’s a dangerous edge to his voice that makes me ignore the logic of his words.
“I've gone seventeen years without him. I have no need, no reason-” I can’t say the words I want to say. I don’t know what to say.
Because really, I'm afraid. Afraid to trust another person the way I trusted… Ga
ge. And I’m afraid—what if he isn’t my father?
We hear it at the same time. The shift. The sharp inhale. I jerk my head to the door as Slate takes a step back, face contorted in a sorrow and pain.
And worse, understanding.
“Wait!” I rush after him. “That isn't what I meant.”
“No, you're right.” Slate turns and smiles sadly at me. His lips tremble, a testament to how much I mean to him, the daughter he didn’t know he had for seventeen years. He reaches for me, but his hand freezes midair. “I will never be Gage.”
His body shudders when turns and sulks slowly down the hall. When the pain edging into my chest becomes too much to bear, I turn too. Guilt and regret heat my face.
And I run.
I ignore Julian's frantic calls as my feet echo down the hall. I shove past a surprised soldier and throw open the door before hurrying down the steps.
I have no reason to train. I never had to worry about being safe. But I never should have said what I said.
“Don't you want to know who's after you?”
I jump. Julian stands right behind me, eyes ablaze. My heart races. It relishes every moment when I am alone with him. My heart feels too many things at the wrong times.
“No.” I surprise myself with the force of my voice.
He stares at me before clenching his jaw. And finally, finally, he turns away without a word.
Rejection. That’s what I feel like a heavy weight in my chest. And guilt.
I walk, weariness underscoring my every step. Despite the pang I feel when I realize I probably won’t see Julian or Slate again, I have no intention of returning again. Ever.
Far to my right, somewhere unseen, is Jute territory. Was my mother as cruel as the Jute are supposed to be? Or was that another lie Father—Gage—told me?
Maybe the Jute are like us. Maybe my mother cried for my blue corpse, as Slate did.
He cares for me – I can see it in his eyes, in his tears, in the pain burning on his face. Somehow, I know he isn’t bluffing, just as I know he lied about my mother being gone. I never saw so much emotion in Father. Slate is what Father was not. I stop walking.
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