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

by Alicia Kat Vancil

  “I’m fine Nikki,” I lied on a heavy breath that sounded like an exasperated huff.

  “Okay,” she answered but I don’t think she believed me.

  I didn’t believe me either.

  I stood on shaking legs and leaned over the sapphire blue foiled glass vessel sink, sucking in deep breaths of air. Then I looked up into the dark wooden framed mirror. My face was flushed, but thank the gods my eyes didn’t betray that I had been crying. I smoothed my hair back into place, and took a few more deep breaths. Then I reached down and picked the blue and white plastic stick off the floor, and shoved it and its box so far down in the bathroom trash that no one would ever find it.

  And then I squeezed my eyes shut, counted to three, and pulled open the bathroom door. I walked past Nikki without saying anything even though she arched both her eyebrows at me. I padded down the two flights of stairs to the second floor, and paused when I saw a Protectorate coming up from the first floor.

  He bowed his head as he paused in front of me. “Arius.”

  I raised my chin just a fraction of an inch, and walked swiftly past him. There were at least three Protectorate on the property at all times now. And one always patrolling the house. The bathroom and my bedroom were the only places now where I didn’t feel like I was on display.

  Don’t let them see you cry. Don’t ever let them see you cry. I repeated like a mantra in my head as I made my way toward father, Alex’s, study.

  As I reached the door to the study, I paused and looked down the hall to the door at the end. It seemed darker than before, like a light was out even though it wasn’t. And then I realized what it was that made it seem so unusually dark. No light was leaking out from under the door. Because it was Draya’s bedroom and she was dead and she was never coming back.

  I swallowed hard, and whipped my head back to the door in front of me as I pushed it open. Roy was peering out the window down through the glass ceiling of the conservatory. His hair looking like spun gold in the afternoon light coming through the window. He didn’t turn when I entered, obviously lost in his thoughts.

  “You wanted to see me?” I finally said after the silence in the room started to bother me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been in my dad’s study.

  At the sound of my voice, Roy finally turned. He looked terrible, like he hadn’t been sleeping a whole hell of a lot. But then again, neither had I.

  “Hello, Nualla,” he said in a gentle voice. Not the voice he used at The Embassy, but the one he had used at backyard parties when I was a kid. He didn’t say anything after that, just let the room fall to silence again.

  “Nikki said you were looking for me?” I prompted.

  He shifted his weight uneasily, and slid his hands into the pockets of his deep charcoal gray suit. It was as close to black as most daemons’ clothing ever got, because black was the color of death. “You’re going to have to perform the award ceremony tomorrow.”

  “Why? Is Alex not back from the summit yet?” I asked as I looked away from his denim-blue eyes, folding my arms under my chest. Eyes the exact same color as his son Shawn’s.

  “Nualla, the summit ended two weeks ago.”

  I jerked my eyes back to him. “Then where is he?”

  “We…don’t know,” Roy admitted uneasily.

  “You don’t know?!” I asked in stunned disbelief, my hands falling to my sides. “He could be dead right now, and you don’t even know!” I could feel the panic raising up, my heart starting to beat rapidly against my ribs.

  Roy put his hands up in a reassuring gesture. “He is not dead—I know that for certain—but I also don’t know where he is.”

  “How do you know he’s not dead?”

  “He sent me this en route back from the summit,” Roy said as he handed me a folded piece of ePaper.

  I snatched the message, and unfolded it quickly.

  If anyone is to understand loss, it is you, sahavi. And so you will understand why I must go. Why I cannot find what I need here. I am sorry to place so much on you, but please safeguard our people in my absence.

  —Alex

  I just continued to stare down at the message with wide eyes. “My dad’s…playing hooky?”

  “Basically,” Roy admitted with a grimace.

  I swallowed hard. I couldn’t really blame him—I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I had run away from less.

  “Okay, so why do I have to do the ceremony? Why can’t you do it?” I asked as I finally looked up from the message.

  “Because I can’t,” Roy stated adamantly.

  I narrowed my eyes at him in confusion. “Why not? I thought you took over Alex’s duties when he wasn’t here.”

  Roy sighed heavily, and leaned against the edge of the huge, carved mahogany desk. “It is true that in the absence of the Chancellarius the grand high councilor becomes the Speaker of the Grand Council. However, I only take over the Chancellarius’ other duties when there is no adult heir to take his place. And being that you are over eighteen…”

  “It means I have to do it.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I probably should have been performing a lot of tasks for Karalia in the last few weeks, but Roy had been doing all he could so I wouldn’t have to. But with something as public as this ceremony, there was no way I was going to get out of it. I was going to have to step up, and take my place as the future ruler of Karalia.

  I opened my mouth, and then paused as realization hit me like a slap in the face. Draya had probably been taking over for Alex in his absence for the last three years, and I hadn’t even known. She hadn’t said anything about it—ever.

  But I also hadn’t asked.

  I tried to swallow down the lump that had formed in my throat. “What do I have to do?” I asked in an uneven voice.

  Shattered Dreams

  Friday, November 2nd and Saturday, November 3rd

  PATRICK

  Every breath felt like someone was grinding shards of broken glass into my heart. Oh gods, I missed her so much.

  I traced my fingers across her face, but it wasn’t really her—just pixels on a screen. Cold and perfectly smooth, and nothing like the real thing.

  I had spent night after night laying here for hours, alone in the dark, staring at those pictures of us. Those memories captured in a flash. The screen my only light until it ran out of battery. And then I would plug my phone in, and close my eyes and fall into dreams or memories. Though I was no longer sure which it was anymore. But now I was awake again, staring into the darkness.

  Gods, I wanted to die. Why wouldn’t the universe just let me have it—death. Why did it insist on keeping me here—in this place without her. What had I ever done that was so horrible to deserve this? This ache that I couldn’t drown out no matter how much I drank.

  And as they always did, with a cruel ironic bite to their words, the whispers answered me back with my own words, I stabbed Nualla with a tantō blade made of titanium.

  I rolled over, and curled up into a ball. Hugging myself so tightly it hurt, and tried not to make a sound as the tears spilled down my face. Because I had lost her—that other half of my soul—and I was never going to get her back again. And some dark corner of my mind whispered, You always knew you would lose her.

  Usually I argued with the whispered voices, pleading my case within my own head. But I had stopped having the strength to argue with them a while ago, and so they rushed in, cutting my heart raw with their words.

  I had told Connor the hard facts after Travis left on Halloween, but I hadn’t told him how I felt. How very much not okay I was right now. How I was barely holding it together. How afraid I was. Afraid that I had been wielded like a knife. Afraid that I had killed. Afraid that large portions of my memories—if not all of them—were fabricated. Afrai
d that I was nothing more than a construct of clever lies. Afraid that Patrick didn’t even exist, and never had. That everything that was me was just a cheap mask pulled over someone else’s face. Afraid that someday I would wake up and everything that was Patrick would be gone.

  NUALLA

  I woke up screaming. Again.

  It was essentially the same dream that I had been having for over a month. The same one that left me soaked to the skin in sweat, shivering on the floor in a tangle of blankets. But each time the dream just got more horrific—more twisted.

  The tears poured down my cheeks and I just laid there in a sobbing heap on the floor, because I didn’t have the will to get up. Every night was a battlefield, and I was just too tired—too weary—to continue the fight anymore.

  I had started to remember more than just the night Patrick had stabbed me. More than the day of the attack. Other things that I wasn’t completely sure were real. And they were all bleeding together into a dark net that captured me every time I closed my eyes. But this dream—this nightmare—had been worse than all the others before it.

  I had been wandering in the rain, searching desperately for something as I walked down the deserted wet streets. Everything had had the crisp sharpness of reality, not the foggy, unsettling vagueness of a dream.

  I could smell the distinct scent of wet pavement. Feel the clinging dampness of my clothes as they gripped against my skin. Hear the cacophony of tiny drumming that was the rain bouncing off the surface of the ground. But it was the lack of other sounds, like traffic, and dogs barking, and terrible rap music, that made my heart slam faster against my chest.

  And then they were there—the bodies—spread out in all directions. Trails of crusted acid green, snaking down their cheeks from their eyes, noses, and mouths. Mouths that were hanging open in horrible, silent cries. The people—my people—were staring up at me from cold, dead eyes. Eyes veined through with green.

  I took a step back as I stared down at the haunting, pleading eyes. And then another until my heel bumped into something. I turned back to where I had come from, and looked down at the person laying at my feet. Her hair was a tangled blond mess beneath my shoes, her cheek the thing I had bumped into. The girl wasn’t dressed like the others in street clothes. No, she was dressed in a black kimono. A single black eight-pointed star stitched into the fabric over her heart.

  I stared down at her, shaking so badly I could barely stand. She looked so very familiar.

  As I stared at the girl, something gray like papery snow started to settle onto her. I looked away from her face, and held out my hand to catch whatever it was that was falling from the sky. I pinched the gray, dry snow between my fingers.

  Ash?

  I looked back down at the blond girl who was all but covered in the ash, all but her face. And then I realized the dead blond girl looking up at me was my sister.

  Draya!

  A scream ripped from my throat as I leapt away from her, and I turned, slamming into something soft but solid. I looked up into a pair of black-blue eyes hiding behind a tangle of wet curving black hair.

  Patrick?

  He reached out, and slowly traced the tips of his fingers down my cheek. And then his hand drifted to my shoulder where he gripped my shirt, pulling me toward him.

  “You should have run,” he whispered into my ear, his lips brushing my skin as I felt it again—the resistance of my body as the blade pushed through it.

  And then he released his hold on me, and I dropped to the ground.

  Cold, so very cold.

  There was a dark sadness in his eyes as he looked down at me. And disappointment. And I stared up into those eyes even as the world grew black and meaningless, and tried to push just one word past my lips.

  Why?

  There was the tiniest of creaks and my bedroom door opened slightly, but I didn’t move.

  “Nualla?” Nikki asked into the darkness in an uncertain voice.

  I didn’t answer, just continued to cry into the cold surface of the wooden floor.

  “Nualla—are you okay?” Nikki asked in a startled, frightened voice as she crouched down next to me.

  I just cried harder, because I was so frakkin’ far past “okay.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as she pulled me into her arms.

  I opened my mouth to tell her everything. About what it felt like to have a blade shoved through you. Or the true horror of walking through a sea of bodies, and having your best friend almost die in front of you. But I knew I would never be able to put words to the nameless terrors that haunted me every time I closed my eyes. And so I said nothing.

  “I know I’m not her, but we’ve… You’ve always been like a sister to me, Nualla, and… I want you to know I’ll always be here for you. To listen, or hold you, or tell you your skirts are too damn short,” Nikki promised in a quiet voice as she stroked my hair.

  I snorted out a bark of a laugh that sounded more like a wounded gasp.

  “Let’s get you off the floor at least, okay?”

  I nodded, and tried to swallow down another sob.

  Nikki helped me back up onto the bed, and sat down on the edge next to me. After a long moment she asked, “Do you want to go back to sleep?”

  I shook my head. No, never. Not back to those dreams.

  Nikki looked down at my trembling, cold hands. “What if I stayed with you?”

  And the irony of the reversal wasn’t lost on me. Every time Skye had been out of town when we were growing up, Nikki had always shared the big king-sized bed with me. Whether it was because she had been scared or lonely, I didn’t know, because I had never asked. All that had mattered was that she needed me. But now it was me who needed her.

  “Okay,” I managed to say past the lump in my raw throat.

  Nikki climbed into the bed, and pulled the covers over both of us. And I curled into a ball on my side, trying to force myself to close my eyes. I could feel the warmth of the blankets against my skin, but it wasn’t helping to stop the shaking.

  Nikki wrapped her arm around me, and held me close. And in that moment I missed Draya so much it hurt. Not because she had ever held me like this growing up, but because she was gone, and she’d never be coming back.

  I cried into my pillow until my throat was raw, and still Nikki never let go of me.

  Viliyata

  Saturday, November 3rd

  NUALLA

  I ran the tips of my fingers over the names etched into the cold black granite. Unable to keep my hand steady because of the pain in my chest. But also unable to stop myself from touching their names.

  Arius Andraya Galathea . Emily Galathea

  They were gone—really gone—and they were never coming back. The girl who had been my older sister, and the one I had idolized as if she was.

  As I traced the letters, my vision became blurry, and the names on the black wall all blended together like dirty snow falling on a dark night.

  The statue was beautiful despite what it represented. A fifteen-foot replica of the Daenarian fountain sculpture in the main entrance lobby of The Embassy. The water flowing from her hands into a small pool below like falling stars—or tears. But unlike the original, this one was in black granite stone with a wall behind it cut into the shape of a lotus. Black, because black was the color of death.

  “Arius Nualla?” someone said in a hesitant voice from behind me.

  I turned, blinking back the tears that were stinging my eyes. It was Brienne, my dad’s secondary aide-in-training. Her dark, coffee-colored skin seeming even darker against her simple matte charcoal-gray kimono. She was standing at the base of the steps that lead up to the memorial, clutching a tablet in one arm.

  “It’s time,” she stated simply.

  I nodded as I turned back for
one last look at the names. Letters etched into stone, the only lasting proof of their existence.

  TRAVIS

  I leaned against the large floor-to-ceiling windows that made up one wall of my living room, and looked down at the courtyard below. A girl was down there, standing in front of the large lotus petal walls. And I knew who it was, even from here. I’d have known her anywhere as sure as I knew my own soul.

  “I can remember all of it now, you know. I couldn’t before, but I can now.”

  Those words should have made me the happiest person alive. Those and the ones she had said in the hospital when I woke up—that she loved me. But they only made me feel anxious, confused, and guilty as fuck.

  I had been in love with Nualla nearly my whole life. But it was like the moment we had made that pact—that moment she had offered me her life in return for my own—that I had felt things start to change. Almost as if in that moment her hold on my heart had started to loosen. And it was sickeningly frightening to realize that she was no longer the one that wandered into my dreams.

  But it wasn’t just the memories of her naked form pressed up next to mine that left me feeling guilty. It was the fact that I had failed her. Her, and Emmy, and Draya, and every other person who had died that day. And there was no way to tell her how very sorry I was. That if I had worked harder—faster—I might have finished KARA before— Before they died. Before she died.

  “Can we get coffee before we head over?” Patrick asked with a yawn from behind me.