Deciding Skies (Fate's Intent Book 2)

by Bowles, April

  “Oh, please.” Silas replied. “Everyone knows that you are and the master of them all, laying just there with a girl on him who is neither naked nor giving him some kind of sensual enjoyment which still evades me. Darius, what are you doing?”

  Darius didn’t even look over. He kept his position comfortable and voice just the same. “Just laying here. What’s it look like?”

  “Yes, I see but you’ve been gone for six months. Do you even realize how many hot young virgins turned sixteen and have been waiting for you to get back? If you start now, I’d say you can break all their hearts with time to spare before the year is out. It should be easy for you so you should get started.”

  “Do I look in the mood for any of that?”

  Silas took out a tiny sack from his pocket and tossed it over to him. “Well, here, take this. It’ll help change your mind.”

  I almost jumped when Darius’s reflexes reacted quickly and he caught the sack as it got to him, only to toss it right back. “Thanks but I don’t need your drugs, Silas. I’m fine.”

  “You’re clearly not fine. You haven’t even slept with her yet.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I have to point out the obvious but she’s still here. You don’t do that. So, just get it over with and I’ll come up with a good lie for you and clean up the tears you’ll leave behind just like old times.”

  “That won’t be necessary, thank you.”

  Silas laughed and I honestly couldn’t believe that I was still sitting here through this. He was talking like we were incapable of hearing him. “Really? Are you actually going to do it right this time? Take her out for a nice dinner then maybe a show at The Grand, I hear there playing tonight.”

  “You know? Maybe I will.”

  “What, are you fucking kidding me? Have you gone completely insane?”

  This was something I truly haven’t seen. Darius, somehow, was able to instantly change his emotion and got angry while moving Ruby off him to sit up. His eyes were focused straight on Silas and never moved. “Do I have to pull rank?”

  I looked to Silas and he gulped and took a step back. “No, sir. You’re just freaking me out, is all. Should I ask what happened on your mission?”

  The Great Seni Fighters looked at each other in the lingering silence. Surely they wouldn’t have said anything.

  “No.” Darius finally answered. “You know that’s not your business. I think we’re done here.”

  “But—”

  “We’re done here, Silas.” Zayden said. “And you never saw us.”

  “Of course, your majesty.” Silas bowed his head and left through the way he came.

  “Well, I really don’t know what to say after that.” I said, breaking the silence as I brought my knees up close to my chest.

  Jaylyn laughed. “Yeah, it’s still a little funny.”

  “What’s so funny? That we have morals to live up to? Well, except for him.” Troy replied, pointing over at Darius.

  “No. It’s just an unusual concept to have someone do that stuff for you.”

  “It’s really a time saver when you’re on the go as much as we are.” Zayden explained. “He just makes our lives a little bit easier.”

  I laughed. “On the go? Oh, yeah, like right now?”

  “Well, no. We just got back. We like to take a break sometimes and it’s not always sitting around here like this. We throw in an occasional guy’s night outside the walls.”

  “Guys night?” Ruby smiled. “What’s that like?”

  “Well, usually, we go to our favorite tavern, drink to the point of almost passing out followed by doing some incredibly stupid things, fall asleep—somewhere, wake up not remembering a damn thing and get lectured for the said stupid things we’ve done when we come home.”

  “Good times.” Darius smiled.

  “Wow, sounds like fun. You should take us.”

  “Ooh, sorry.” Troy replied. “No women on guy’s night.”

  “Well, no decent, respectable women such as yourselves.” Darius added.

  “Oh, how charming.” I joked.

  “Maybe we could do something else, if you’d like.”

  “Silas says they’re playing at The Grand tonight.” Troy said. “We could go there.”

  “Why?” Darius sighed. “We could just nap here.”

  Troy rolled his eyes and pulled a pillow from beside him and threw it at him. “It’s a better alternative, don’t you think?” He was basically just trying to get around from taking us on a guy’s night. I knew I wouldn’t have gone anyway. That’s the last thing I would want to see, a bunch of women hanging over them in a drunken state.

  “All right.” Zayden cut in before they started a fight. “We’ll go. Okay?”

  “Fine.” Darius muttered, still not seeming happy about it.

  “Your majesty, my lords.”

  Now someone else interrupted our morning.

  “Captain Willis!” Darius said loudly, making his tone of joy echo. “How’s it going?!”

  I snatched my head up and saw an all too familiar face, holding a stack of papers. I tried not to even breathe.

  “Just fine, sir. Your majesty, the deed for the southern colonies just arrived.”

  “Do I ever get five minutes of nothing?” Zayden sighed to himself as he took the papers and a quill pen. “Thank you for at least doing this for me. I just got back and I’m not ready to leave again just yet.”

  The Captain laughed a familiar laugh. “Of course not. It’s no trouble at all. As long as they’re signed by you, I don’t think they give a damn about who delivers it.”

  Zayden was flipping through the pages, signing each one but I had my stare on the man standing on the other side of him. He was tall with short brown hair and deep blue eyes. The white of his uniform shown off the sandy color in his skin and I have yet to look away. It was almost as if I couldn’t.

  I found myself getting to my feet with my eyes still on him. He stood firm, waiting for Zayden to finish and I began looking him over. His eyes finally moved to me when I was walking around him and he looked a little strange to see my behavior like I was inspecting him. “Can I help you with something?”

  “You all right, Love?”

  “Wow.” I came back around to the front of the Captain and I seemed a lot more delighted than I really was to see him. “Deven. You’re all—grown up.”

  His look became even stranger but he didn’t move his eyes from mine. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  “Do you?”

  The longer he looked at me, the less happy he seemed but there was also some panic in there. He grabbed me and pulled me behind him as if to shade me from all the other eyes. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.”

  I made him let go of me and kept my distance. “Relax. They know who I am.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Don’t act like you know me either.”

  “I know enough that you shouldn’t have come back.”

  I tried holding my emotion back, knowing the others were around me and I slowly lowered myself down on the edge of the couch while bringing up our horrible past. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Of course you’d say that.”

  “You know it wasn’t. I just—”

  “It was still your choice.”

  “I did what I had to.”

  “For your father? That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “I couldn’t just leave him.”

  “No, instead you left us. Must have been an easy choice for you. You don’t belong here.”

  My eyes were becoming glassy and Zayden handed the papers back to him. “You’re out of line, Captain.”

  “Forgive me, your majesty but if you know her, why is she here, breathing?”

  “How do you know her?”

  “Apparently, I don’t.”

  “Then I trust you’ll keep this quiet.”

  “Of course and I’ll take ca
re of these myself. I suddenly need an excuse to leave.” Zayden only nodded and Deven looked back at me. “Don’t even think about looking for them. No one wants to see you unless it’s hanging from a scaffold.”

  He turned around and walked out, leaving me sitting here with the others as a tear ran down my face. I thought of one thing first. “Thanks, Ruby.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a huge city. What are the chances? Pretty good for me and my recent streak of bad luck.”

  “Do I even want to know?

  I couldn’t look at Zayden when he asked. “No, probably not.”

  “You should tell him.” Jaylyn said quietly.

  I laughed only to keep from shedding more tears. “It wouldn’t change anything. It can’t.”

  “Well, making him find out on his own would be worse.” Ruby said. “Just tell him.”

  I paused and looked into Zayden’s curious eyes. “Is it important?”

  “I—can’t tell you.”

  “Stalling.” Ruby muttered.

  “No one is supposed to know! I’ve been obligated not to say a thing and so I won’t!”

  “Then can we?” Jaylyn asked with an innocent smile.

  Why did I even try? I find myself asking that question a lot lately and I had my eyes on the floor in front of me while my voice mellowed. “None of it matters.”

  “Still doesn’t mean they can’t know.” Ruby said.

  I sighed and laid my head on my knees without a reply.

  “Okay.” Ruby smiled. “Well, this is about her mother. She’s—Senian.”

  I didn’t look around to see the probably stunned faces to find out that awful truth.

  “What?” Darius muttered.

  “You’re a Senian?” Zayden asked.

  “Only half.” I corrected.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “How could I?”

  “I guess I don’t know but he was right, I don’t know you.”

  I didn’t want him to be mad and began to explain. “My name―is Adeleigh. I shortened it to Adele to equalize life changing events. My mother was born and raised here until she met my father. It was dangerous for her to leave but she did only it didn’t last forever. The war continued to grow and my father fell deeper into it. My mother hated that. She didn’t want that life for me. So, whenever he was away, she would take me here to show me that not everything was to be hated. She always stayed with her sister. Deven was her son, making him my cousin.”

  “Blood relative? Wow.”

  “I grew up differently than even he could understand, caught in the middle of two worlds. No one could really understand. My mother was the bridge that always linked me back here. When she died, it was broken and I could no longer live that life without her. My father drifted into a dark stage and I knew I couldn’t leave him. I was all he had left but I knew her family had to know. So, my father had some disguised soldiers bring me back here for the last time. I told them what happened and they reacted the same. They assumed I was to stay but when they saw who came with me that thought immediately changed.

  “I tried to explain why but they didn’t think of the war the way I did and said he didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t believe that. He was my father and he needed me. I turned my back on them that day. I was only seven years old when I put it all behind me and went back to Kalu for the last time as Adele. I was never supposed to come back here.”

  “What changed you then? I mean, you’re a killer now.”

  “It took a few years but my father somehow got over it long before I have. Looking at him now with his collection of women, it’s like she never even existed. I never liked to see that because I remember how in love they were. We moved around every few months the more he got promoted and I rarely began to see him. I actually planned to come back here around then and beg them to let me stay but something happened before I could that changed everything.

  “I was nine when my father was promoted to General and we moved again. I still wanted to leave until he introduced me to a family he knew nearby. It was a small family much like ours and they didn’t have a mother either. It was easy to relate for me and my will to stay in Kalu got just a little stronger.”

  “Was it one of them?” Troy asked glancing over at Ruby then down at Jaylyn in his arms.

  I actually smiled for the first time since I began. “It was Jaylyn. It didn’t take long for us to become close and then leaving got even harder for me when I started to school in that district and she introduced me to her best friend.”

  “Me.” Ruby smiled.

  I laughed while thinking back on that moment. “Yeah. First impression of the nine year old Ruby was like, what, are you kidding me?”

  “Oh, thanks.” Ruby laughed.

  The others laughed too but I tried to explain. “No, it was just weird for me. She was so different from anything I’ve ever known. Out of the three of us, she’s the one that was bred for this life. Born for a single purpose, to kill. She easily referenced everything to death and it was hard for me to understand at first because of the way I was raised.”

  “Well, you got used to it.”

  “In time I did and it was part of what changed me.”

  “But not the real thing.” Jaylyn muttered in a sad tone, changing the mood.

  “We don’t have to talk about that. I don’t want you to start thinking that way now that we’re actually here.”

  “I wouldn’t. You can tell them. It’s part of your story so you kind of have to.”

  I paused for a moment and looked over at Ruby. I didn’t know if it was really a good idea but she was right, it was part of my story; a big part. “Okay, well, it was within that same year that Jaylyn and Trever got the news that changed all of our lives. Their father, Bryce, was killed.”

  Jaylyn sat still as everyone glanced over at her and I knew she tried not to look upset.

  “It was hard on them and Jaylyn moved in with me then. Several days after the news, his body was sent to us. We were still only nine so my father wouldn’t allow us to see him but Jaylyn did because he was her father. I don’t want to describe what she saw. It’s too painful to say. Having to actually see it would have just been worse.”

  Jaylyn sat up from leaning on Troy and the topic of her father was starting to get to her even more. “He trusted the wrong people.”

  “Jaylyn!” I immediately got up and went to her side, putting my arm around her shoulders and leaning into her ear. “I said don’t. His death has already been avenged years ago.”

  Jaylyn sat quiet as Troy put down his leg and leaned forward, rubbing her back. “Is that when things changed?”

  “It is.” I answered, removing my arm from around Jaylyn. “That’s when I realized that everything my mother taught me, everything that she showed me was just a mask. His death opened my eyes to what the world really was and I made my decision. I would become one of them. We began our training years ahead of schedule because of it. It should be clear now why we can’t stay here.”

  “I told you not to worry about that.” Zayden sighed.

  I was getting a little angry and got to my feet. “And yet I can’t help but. Do you know what could happen to me if anyone were to find out what I am? My own people don’t even know. My father kept it hidden well over the years except for those closest to me. I’ve never belonged anywhere but I’ve already made my permanent choice as to where I’d stay.” I lifted the front of my shirt to my stomach, showing the Black Wings of Death marks on my hips. “Staying here is not an option. I was never supposed to come back. Especially like this.”

  I couldn’t stay in there another second. None of them could understand how this has always been for me. Being here now only made it worse and I had to just get away and keep to myself.

  Chapter 18

  Zayden

  She walked out without saying another word and I leaned back, sighing both in my mind and aloud.

  “Why don’t you just tell her?” Tro
y suggested in a tone sympathetic to my mood.

  I laughed in an emotionally distressed manner and looked up. “Tell her what? That I’d give it all up for her because I love her?” My smile faded. “She wouldn’t believe me.”

  I got up and left through the other entrance, not to hear a single reply from anyone about what I had said.

  I knew where she would have gone but I needed to take the long way and think. I always knew there was something about her and now I knew what that was. She had a Senian mother and even her true name sounded Senian; Adeleigh. It was beautiful but this news made some things in my plan change just a little. I knew more of why she kept saying it wouldn’t work. Perhaps she knew from experience of seeing it for herself or she just didn’t want to try but one thing was still for sure, I still wanted her and didn’t shy from letting everyone know it.

  “Zayden!”

  My train of thought was instantly clouded with the sound of my father’s bellowing voice and I turned to see him coming out of a room I had passed.

  “Yes, father?”

  “Where have you been?”

  “I was just—”

  “Never mind. A rumor has reached my ear that Adriane spent the night in your room last night and not her own. Is this true?”

  “It’s not going to work. I know that you told her to stay away from me and it was wrong of you.”

  “Wrong of me to protect your future?”

  “The future you want me to have! Not the future I want!”

  “There would be no future with that girl! Would you get it through your head?!”

  “But you like her! You said so yourself!”

  “Not enough to want her to one day rule by your side! She is not worthy of you!”

  “Just give her a chance, father. I know she will prove to be worthy.”

  “I will not. You will understand your place someday and maybe by then you’ll realize that beauty is no equal measure to worth.”

  He walked off just like that and I was left to watch him.

  My hate for my father’s continuous rejection was growing inside me, only fueling me to follow through on my intentions.

  “So sad to hear your father’s disapproval of the girl.”