The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3)

by Alicia Kat Vancil

  She was right, that they had grown longer since the last time I had seen her—about an inch a month so that they were now about four or five inches long, curving around to just past my ear—but she shouldn’t have known that.

  Travis’ jaw dropped open, and then his head jerked toward Connor. “Your sister’s a Truth Seer?!”

  “A what?” Connor asked in alarmed confusion.

  “Oh, gods, this is bad. Very, very bad,” Travis said as he covered his mouth with his hands, nearly hyperventilating.

  “Hey! What did you call her?” Connor nearly shouted as he grabbed Travis’ shoulder and jerked him around to face him.

  “A Truth Seer,” Travis repeated, too shocked to even be irritated.

  “What the hell does that mean?!” Connor snapped angrily.

  “A tiny portion of the human population—and when I say tiny, I mean really frakkin’ microscopic—has kenshanathea. It’s a genetic mutation that allows them to see us,” Travis informed him as he finally jerked his shoulder out of Connor’s grasp.

  “So they can see us?” I asked in alarm, unable to keep my eyes from darting around the crowds of parents and kids filling the Japantown Mall’s common area. Completely unaware that three daemons was among them.

  “Actually, it’s kinda worse than that. Most of our abilities don’t work on them,” Travis admitted uneasily in a low voice.

  My eyes drifted back to Travis. “When you say most…?”

  “Shields, influence, memory modification, none of it works.”

  “Well…fuck,” I breathed out, my eyebrows shooting up.

  “Is my sister in danger from you people?” Connor asked with narrowed eyes as he moved Bianca slightly behind him. His brilliant red coat acting as a warning.

  “No. Truth Seers have been protected by Karalia law since 1898,” Travis stated as if the idea that we would hurt Bianca was insulting.

  “And what happened before that, huh? Did you kill them?” Connor asked with a growl.

  Travis looked back at him with fire in his eyes. “We never hurt them,” he stated firmly.

  “Then what was the law to protect them from?” Connor pressed, not backing down.

  Travis opened his mouth and then shut it again, looking away. “From being imprisoned in mental institutions. Some of them still end up there, but it isn’t because of the Karalian government.”

  Connor just looked at him in disbelief, his mouth hanging open. “For speaking the truth?!”

  “It wouldn’t be there first time in history,” Travis mumbled nearly under his breath.

  “Excuse me?!”

  Travis whipped around to face Connor. “Hey, we’re not perfect, you know! But we’re not the only ones to blame here. You humans have persecuted people for being different just as much as we have, if not more!”

  The two of them stood there breathing heavily and looking like any second they were going to start throwing punches. And I just groaned inwardly. For once, I wished the three of us could go out somewhere where part of the outing didn’t involve an almost-fistfight.

  Chan-rin looked between the two of them before she tugged on the sleeve of my black kimono top. “Chan-rin can see Aku and Big-Big Brother’s horns. Does Chan-rin have kenshanathea too?”

  Travis sighed heavily and then looked away from Connor toward Chan-rin. “No, Chan-rin, you’re a daemon so you can’t have—” Travis stopped abruptly mid-sentence, a look of horror spreading across his face.

  TRAVIS

  “What—what’s wrong?” Patrick yelped, his black-blue eyes filled with panic.

  I looked at him, then at the others, then reached out and dragging him a few yards away to an empty corner of the Japantown Mall’s common area.

  “Travis, what the fuck is going on?” he said under his breath as he leaned in closer.

  “Chan-rin is a Marked One, she shouldn’t be able to see our horns at all.”

  I wanted to kick myself for not realizing it sooner. It was so obvious it had practically been screaming at me. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “Well yeah, I mean I couldn’t—” he stopped talking, and his eyes darted back to Chan-rin.

  “But she can,” I pointed out, the full horror of it all finally settling in like the bone chilling cold of winter rain. “Furthermore, The Embassy barrier—”

  “Should have made her sick,” Patrick finished as he ran his hand down his face. “Shit.”

  “And that’s not all,” I continued. “She shouldn’t have any abilities at all. Those don’t awaken in Marked Ones until they start going through the Change.”

  Patrick looked at me, his eyes frightened and uneasy. “And there’s no way this could happen, you know, naturally, like through a mutation or something?”

  I just shook my head. I was going to be sick. I had known the Kakodemoss had experimented on them all. That they had chipped them, tattooed them, and kept them locked up in a facility nearly all their lives. But somehow, the realization of what that actually meant had never really occurred to me. What must it have been like to know nothing outside of that life? Outside of that horror?

  “The bad people, they hurt Aku, and Kira, and Chan-rin. They hurt Aku the most.”

  I had always thought I’d known what evil meant. It was a simple enough concept we all learned at a very young age. But I realized now that I hadn’t had a frakking clue what evil truly meant. What it truly meant to be a monster. But I did now. Whoever had done this to them was a monster.

  Pure and simple.

  A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Nightmares

  Wednesday, October 31st

  NUALLA

  Fractured fairytales danced in front of me. Some monsters, some heroes, the flashing lights passing over them like wicked fairies as they danced through the night. Wolves and maidens, dragons and princes, each interpretation of the storybook characters more inventive than the last.

  I searched the crowd of dancing bodies for Nikki and Shawn from beneath my black-feathered mask as I leaned my elbows back onto the bar behind me and sipped my drink. I had lost them about an hour ago in the fray of painted wings, glitter, and ripped fishnets in every color imaginable.

  “Interesting choice,” a male voice with a distinctly Kaigan Midoraian accent drawled next to me. A human would mistake it for Irish, but it was definitely Kaigan Midoraian. Unlike Karalia, Kaigan Midora was one of the regions that did not require their citizens to ever attend human schools, and thus they kept even more apart from the human population than we did.

  “The drink?” I asked before turning toward him.

  “The costume,” he replied before taking a sip of his own drink. His hair was thick and black and cut similarly to Travis’ in that the edges of it fell into his eyes, which were a brilliant lapis blue. Eyes that were deeply serious, but with a mischievous hint to them that made my heart beat faster.

  When I just continued to stare at how completely gorgeous he was, a crooked grin spread across his lips. “’Ello, I’m—”

  “Damian! What the bloody hell are you doing? We’re supposed to be working!” A slight blond guy, who was probably nineteen or twenty, but looked no older than sixteen, shouted as he came up on the other side of the dark-haired stranger.

  With a deep sigh, the guy with the brilliant blue eyes, set his glass down. “Feck, James, I’m doing me job.”

  The blond guy—James—folded his arms across his chest. And even in this light I could tell that his hair wasn’t the same pale blond that Nikki and Shawn’s was, but a less common orangey-golden blond. “How exactly does doing your job involve drinking at the pub?”

  “I’m blending in,” Damian said with a grin before picking up his drink again, and taking another swig.

  “You have no idea where she is, do you?” James pointed out skeptic
ally.

  “I…no…but I’ll find her,” Damian stammered before pointing at James with his glass. “It’s not me fault it’s jammers in here.”

  “You’re bloody hopeless,” James sighed, rolling his eyes in exasperation.

  “If you’re so concerned, you bloody go look for her. Or feck, James, look for her friends,” Damian shouted back at James before he turned back toward me. “Now where was I? Oh, right. I have a wager for ya, love. If I can guess what you’re dressed up as you’ll let me buy ya the next drink. Deal?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and then finally gave up and blew out a puff of air that ruffled the feathers of my mask. Why the hell fucking not? A free drink was a free drink, right? “Deal, but—”

  “There always is,” he said with a crooked grin before gesturing for me to continue.

  “You only get one guess,” I said, practically daring him to object.

  “Ho, she has you now, Damian,” James said with a snort as he lifted a pint of beer off the bar. Then he looked conspiratorially at me. “He likes to think he’s brilliant, but really, he’s a plonker.”

  I really had zero clue what a plonker was, but I was guessing it was something in the neighborhood of idiot.

  “Well, aren’t you cheeky tonight,” Damian said haughtily to James before he eyed the drink in James’ hand. “I thought you were off the drink tonight, sahavi?”

  “You weren’t wrong when you said it was jammers in here. Do you really think with all these people in here, they’d let me keep standing here not ordering somethin’?”

  Damian only shrugged in response and looked like he was about to say something before deciding he better not. He shifted his attention back to me as he swirled his drink around his glass. “One guess, hmm?” He looked up at me with narrowed, calculating eyes before the mischievous grin slid back into place. “I’ll shake to that,” he said, offering me his hand.

  I reached out to shake his hand, but paused just before I slid my hand into his. “Just a heads up before you get ahead of yourself. There is no way in hell you are getting in my pants tonight.”

  Damian considered me for a moment, his eyes searching mine before his head cocked to one side. “But you’re not wearing any pants.”

  I glared at him. “If you really don’t know what I mean, I’m walking away right now,” I stated flatly.

  “Feck, fine, I accept your terms,” he said, as he extended his hand a little more toward me.

  “Good, so what’s your guess?” I asked cockily as I slapped my hand in his, because there was no way in hell he was ever going to guess right.

  “You’re Von Rothbart’s daughter Odile, the Black Swan,” he answered as he leaned against the bar so he was facing out toward the dance floor.

  I just gaped at him, my hand falling like a dead weight against my leg. “How did you—?”

  “Dad’s Irish, Mum’s Russian, and oh, does she love the ballet,” he replied with a devilish grin as he finished off his drink, and turned back to the bar so one of the bartenders could refill it.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s cheating.”

  “I hardly consider being dragged to the bloody ballet every month cheating,” Damian replied with a snort and a crooked smile. “Now what ya drinkin’, love?”

  “Fine,” I said sourly. “I’ll have a—”

  “Bullshit!” one of the bartenders called out as he slammed a drink down in front of someone who was on the other side of James.

  “No, seriously, I read she’s been screwing the older brother for four years now,” the guy next to James nearly shouted in a drunken slur.

  “There is no way,” the bartender countered as he folded his arms across his chest.

  “I don’t know, Arius Nualla is pretty damn hot. I don’t think I’d mind playing second fiddle to a little brother if I could keep banging her,” another guy next to them said, joining in on the debate. And that’s when it finally hit me that they were talking about me.

  “How dare they say things like that about the Arius,” James growled under his breath as he made to lunge forward.

  “James, leave it be,” Damian said firmly as he grabbed James’ shoulder and jerked him back.

  “But—”

  “James, go find her before she hears this,” Damian ordered as he shoved James in the opposite direction of the guys, and pulled a cell from his pocket.

  “Too late,” I said in a low voice as I clutched the edge of the bar with my left hand.

  Both Damian and James’ heads whipped in my direction. “What?”

  But I didn’t answer them, I was shaking way too badly with anger, embarrassment, or horror—I wasn’t sure which. Or if it was just all of them mixed together.

  “Hey, pictures don’t lie,” the first guy stated as he spun his phone around on the bar for the bartender to take a look. “And you have to wonder who’s that royal baby she’s supposedly carrying actually is.”

  The bartender put his hands to his mouth and took a step back. “Oh gods, that’s messed up.”

  “Hey, if I was one of those brothers, it’s what I’d be wondering,” the guy said with a slur as he pointed with his drink.

  I finally lost it, and slammed the flat of my hand down on the bar. “She never slept with him, that’s all a bunch of lies!”

  “Oh now you’ve done it, Mike,” the second guy said as he slapped his friend on the back.

  “And I bet you also think the Arius Nualla is still pure and innocent?” the first guy—Mike—said mockingly with air quotes as he looked over at me.

  “No, far from it actually. But I also know she’s not sleeping with Travis either,” I countered defiantly.

  “And how would you know, girly?” Mike said with a condescending, smug smile as he gestured at me with his glass.

  “Because I’m Arius Nualla,” I stated through gritted teeth as I ripped the feathered mask from my face.

  The eyebrows of everyone listening shot up, and Mike’s friend started coughing up a storm, apparently swallowing his drink wrong. “Oh, you are in sooo much trouble, dude” he taunted Mike as he continued to pound his chest and cough.

  Mike ignored him, and looked me up and down appraisingly. “So say you are her, huh. What’s the real story if you aren’t fucking them both?”

  I just stared at him in stunned horror, unable to believe that he had actually just asked that.

  “You bloody wanker, how dare you talk to the Arius like that!” James growled as he launched himself at Mike.

  “Piss off, punk. I’m not Karalian, I can ask her whatever I fucking want to!” Mike snapped as he shoved James away like he weighed nothing.

  James hit the floor so hard he nearly bounced. But after a few startled blinks, James looked back up at Mike from his new location on the club floor with a murderous glare in his eyes.

  “Geez, you’re light. You sure you aren’t a girl or something?” Mike scoffed as he looked down at James.

  Without taking his eyes away from the phone in front of him, Damian’s hand shot out and seized Mike by the shoulder. “Lay off him.”

  “Fuck you! Why the hell should I?” Mike countered savagely.

  Damian finally pulled his eyes from his phone and tightened his grip on Mike. “Trust me, sahavi, you want to find someone else to bother.”

  The two of them had a silent staring match before Mike jerked out of Damian’s grasp. “The truth’s out there whether she likes it or not,” he spat as he and his friend turned and disappeared into the crowd.

  “I didn’t sleep with Travis,” I stated in a numb voice, watching them go.

  Damian sighed, and picked up his glass. He looked at it for a moment, and then tipped the remainder down his throat. When he lowered the glass again he spoke, but all the playfulness in his
voice was gone. “I think you and your past need to have a meeting, Arius Nualla, because pictures don’t lie,” he stated as he looked down into his empty glass.

  “Pictures?” I choked out.

  Without looking at me, Damian slid his phone across the bar.

  I picked up the phone, and looked down at the screen. A slight, dark-haired girl and tall blond-haired boy were making out pretty heavily in a hallway. And even though the hallway was dark it was still light enough to allow you to see how tightly their bodies were pressed together. To see how firmly he was gripping her hips and how her fingers were digging into his shirt as she pulled him closer. And then it finally hit me like a slap in the face that I was the girl in the picture and Travis was the blond-haired boy. I mean, I could tell from the shape of our bodies that the picture wasn’t recent, but it was still unmistakably us.

  I slid my finger across the screen to flip to the next picture and nearly dropped the phone. The girl’s legs—my legs—were wrapped around Travis’ waist and my back was pressed up against the wall. My fingers were knotted through his hair, and his hands were under the edge of my skirt cupping my—

  “This is photoshopped,” I said in a shaking voice as I stared down at the pictures. The longer that I stared at them however, the more my heart began to race and things began to flicker behind my eyes. Like lights in the distance.

  “I think you and I both know it isn’t,” Damian said in a quiet voice.

  I shook my head and tried to take a deep breath. “No, this isn’t right—”

  Warm hands cupping my face. Someone’s hot breath whispering my name into my ear. My back pressed up against a wall.

  “I…I’d remember if this had happened,” I stammered feebly.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “You think I’m beautiful?”

  “Nualla, I have always thought you were beautiful.”