Marked

by Jasmine Derriman

  A whole tug finally pulled me over and I landed flat on the ground and I saw Isaac fall backwards. I moved myself gently off the ground and our eyes met. I didn’t know what he was thinking, what he was feeling right now, but I could only imagine he felt more than he could handle. So much pain for his know his father, for protecting me. I felt like a lot of his pain was my fault, and all I did now, was hurt him.

  “Oh, Lily thank god.”

  My head snapped towards the voice and I realised it was Rhys, rushing over to me. The moment he got to me he helped me to my feet.

  “Oh, god, he didn’t get to you, he didn’t get the dagger?” I asked desperately as I noticed scraps and a forming bruise or two on his right arm.

  “No, no,” Rhys shook his head. “Lily, look around. The moment Odon fell…they all ran. It’s over.”

  I took a moment to look around and I realised he was right. The two big golden doors laid open and other than us good guys, there was no one else in the room. I turned back to Rhys who had a small smile on his face. He knew this was a victory whether he understood what was happening or not. I smiled a little too and then flung my arms around him. He immediately tugged me tightly and I shut my eyes as I pressed my head into his shoulder. It was over.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  When all the bad guys had fled they left the portal gate open for us to get out without a problem. We didn’t all just walk out immediately. Eve wanted to check Henry’s room. She was under the impression he knew Odon was up to something and that maybe he had left something that could help. Seth chose to stay with her and help, and for a minute I thought Isaac did too.

  I took my eyes off him for a second and next thing I knew he was gone. Isaac wasn’t in the room anymore and once Eve and Seth had left, it was just Rhys, Hadley, Felix and I left. Neither Hadley nor Felix seemed surprised that Isaac had suddenly disappeared and they decided to get me out of here as quickly as possible.

  It didn’t feel right when I stepped out into the forest without Isaac, but we kept walking onto the car with Rhys by my side. I get him into the car before I do and I walked around to the other side of the car where Hadley stood waiting for me.

  “Where did he go?” I whispered to her.

  She shrugged a little and looked around. “He could be anywhere.”

  “We should find him,” I stressed.

  “Let him be,” Felix said, walking up from behind Hadley. “You know how bad he is with dealing with emotion…and right now, well I can’t even imagine what he’s feeling. He just needs to be alone; he’ll come home when he’s ready.”

  I saw no point in arguing with them because I realised they were probably right. I knew how Isaac was with emotions and I knew he wasn’t good with it, and I couldn’t even imagine what was going on in his mind if I could barely understand what was going on in mine.

  I kept seeing flashes of Odon’s face, the way he would look at me, the way he could throw me around like a rag doll. What was worse though was I could see the look on Isaac’s face when he realised that he wasn’t lying, and I had never so much pain in Isaac’s eyes, and I knew it wasn’t something that I wasn’t going to forget any time soon.

  “So…what happens next?” I asked slowly leaning forward in the back seat to talk to Hadley and Felix.

  “Well,” Felix answered slowly. “We’re going to take Rhys back home…and then you.”

  “Me?” I said surprised as Felix turned around in the passenger seat.

  “Oliver has been talking to your Uncle,” Hadley explained from the driver’s seat.

  I felt myself immediately sink back down into my chair. “He knows, doesn’t he? He knows what I am…and he is too?”

  Felix’s eyes looked up and then down as he hung his head a little and nodded at me.

  “I should’ve guessed,” I muttered. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? Family ties and all I suppose.”

  “If you’re worried-,” Felix started to say.

  “No, I’m not worried,” I shook my head. “There’s nothing he can say to me anymore…I don’t even care if he sees me like this.”

  “I can heal some of those cuts if you’d like?” Felix offered.

  I shook my head again. “No, they’re not bothering me, I’m fine.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was lying or not to be honest. The cuts and the bruises I could feel forming all over my body really weren’t bothering me like I expected, in fact I could feel my body working to fight the pain. Being an Insigne meant I was built to fight and little things like bruises weren’t going to hurt me, my body fought it so I could fight it too. To be fine though, didn’t just refer to my physical pain, but the emotion pain, well I didn’t think I was ready to face up to any of it yet, and I didn’t know if I could.

  We stopped at Rhys’ first and I got out of the car to walk him to his doorstep. Unlike me, his clothes weren’t torn, and he wasn’t bleeding, in fact he looked like he barely got touched, which made me feel better than I thought it would. His face though, the way he looked at me as we stood at the top at the top of the stairs. That look, I could barely even bring myself to understand it, or to even look at it.

  “You know, we have a lot to talk about,” Rhys muttered as he put his head down slightly.

  “I know, and we will,” I said. “Not now though.”

  “But-.”

  “Rhys.”

  Rhys and I shared a very common nervous habit. We both tended to fiddle with our own fingers, picked at our nails or something, and right now Rhys was so focused on his hands he wasn’t looking at me. I put my hand on top of his hand I moved his hands apart so I could put his hand into mine. Rhys took a moment and reacted but when he did he squeezed my hand tightly.

  “I will explain everything to you, I swear to you, okay?” I told him. “Now isn’t the time though. You need sleep…I need sleep. There is no way I could tell you everything right now no matter how hard I tried. So tomorrow, I promise.”

  Rhys nodded at me as he finally looked up to meet my gaze. “I’ve…I’ve never seen you like that, Lily. I mean…you fought him…you were so strong,” he said. He then caught me by surprise and smiled at me. “I always knew you were different, Lily… I just never imagined…it was anything like this.”

  It was a relief when I actually laughed in response to him. “Tell me about it.”

  “Well…well I guess you need this back then.”

  He still held my hand as he used his free hand to move his shirt aside and after a second I finally saw it emerge from his belt. Whether or not I thought this dagger was some stupid weapon, it was my job to protect it, and before I thought what I was protecting was just the dagger itself, but it was so much more than that. I was protecting the power it had, and the destruction it would cause if it fell into the wrong hands

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  I hugged Rhys before I left and we both stayed in that hug longer than we expected but even once I was back in the car neither Felix nor Hadley seemed to mind. Hadley and Felix muttered to each other from the short trip from Rhys’ house to mine.

  “You can come by tomorrow, get your stuff if you want?” Felix suggested as I got out of the car and talked to him through the passenger window.

  “If that’s your sly way of asking if I want to come over tomorrow and check if Isaac is there…I’ll take it,” I told him.

  Felix pulled out a weak smile. “There’s no grantees he’ll be back…I can’t even imagine what he’s going through right now.”

  “I know,” I nodded.

  It felt weird to walk to the steps back up to my apartment again. I didn’t think I had been away from home for longer than a month before, but I didn’t think that’s why it felt weird. I almost felt like I wasn’t entering the home I once knew, it felt like a whole different world, a world of lies and secrets that my uncle had kept from me. I didn’t think my brain was ready to process the life of lies my uncle had created. My brain had a limit of what it could process and I had defin
itely reached my limits.

  I hesitated for what felt like ten minutes before I finally opened the door to the apartment. I recognised the smell of the apartment as I opened the door and it all hits me like it should be some warm fuzzy memory, but it hit me like glass. I may have recognised the smell of usually dirty clothes or just a musty smell that I had no idea where it came from, but for a second, that felt like all I remembered. Seeing my lounge room so dark and empty brought a shiver down my spine.

  “Oh, finally.”

  I jumped in surprise at my uncle’s voice. He walked around the divider between the lounge room and the dining table and stood near me but I didn’t let him get close. I thought I expected my uncle to look okay, to look healthy, he had no reason not to, but from one look at him I saw darkness under his eyes and his usually clean shaved face forming a beard.

  “Finally?” I questioned. “You barely had any idea that I wasn’t here.”

  “Now, Lily, let me just explain,” My uncle said cautiously holding up his hand.

  “Explain?” I asked with a bit of a nervous laugh as I walked towards him only to walk past him though. “You think I need you to explain anything to me? I know what I am, I know what I can do, and for once I know what’s real and what’s not real. For one, those therapy sessions you felt the need to send me to just make me appear to be some crazy psycho; I know that’s not real anymore.”

  “Lily-,” my uncle took a moment to try and speak.

  “No, there is nothing you can say to me right now that makes that stuff feel okay to me,” I told him, looking at him.

  “There was a reason that I did that, if you just let me explain,” my uncle said softly.

  “Let you explain? What could you possibly says to me right now?” I asked him. I realised I got way more worked up then I expected.

  “I did it all at your parents request, they didn’t want you to know,” my uncle said desperately.

  “Great load of help that turned out to be,” I said sarcastically. “I really can’t deal with this right now, I just can’t. It’s been a long day and I’ve had enough happen to me today, and I can’t do this right now, and I need to go to bed, okay?”

  I was stubborn when I got into fights, and really stubborn when I knew I was right, and right now, I was right. I couldn’t deal with it though, not now. Every second I thought or spoke to my uncle I felt my brain pound more and more with every word and I couldn’t take that. I pretty much slammed my bedroom door shut and let myself lean against the door once I was in the sanctum in my room, but even then I wasn’t sure if I felt safe here.

  My room looked like it had been so untouched since I had left. The draws to my wardrobe still hung open with clothes pouring out of them after I desperately packed a bag, as well as just pieces of clothes lying in a ball on the floor. My bed was unmade, but I barely ever made it so that didn’t surprise me. My school books where just spread across my desk and I realised that school felt like a thing of the past to me. It wasn’t important now.

  I sat down on my bed and started to pull off my shoes. I felt a great struggle occur within my body movements. My legs were starting to feel stiff and painful; actually all of me was starting to feel my muscles tighten as my body caught up to what kind of day I had had. I didn’t even want to deal with the pain of just getting my shoes off, so I didn’t even both to get undressed. I paused before I go to lie down in my bed with the realisation that the dagger sat in my belt. As I pulled it out I wondered where I should put it, and I almost wanted to sleep with it because I didn’t want to let it out of my site. That was silly though, so instead I put the dagger into the top draw of my bedside table.

  When I finally pulled myself under the covers I didn’t think I was going to fall asleep. I could feel all my thoughts running through my brain at a million miles per hour. I couldn’t stop seeing Isaac’s face, seeing the pain. I couldn’t stop seeing the rage in Odon’s face, or the blood from when I had stabbed him in the arm. I couldn’t stop seeing the dead bodies, bodies I hadn’t even see, but bodies I knew exist. Death, destruction, power, and pain…it was all there.

  I woke up in such a sweat I scared myself. I barely even realised that I had fallen asleep but at some point I must’ve just passed out. I dreamt it though, I dreamt about all of it. I let out a sigh as I tried to move but found that it was more difficult than I could hope for. Every single muscle in my body tightened with every movement I made and I felt like I had been forced to run a ten mile run and then do a hike, but I guess I had been through worse.

  Despite my aching muscles and inability to move fast I forced myself out of bed and out of my bedroom. I realised that my uncle was not in the house, and I knew he must’ve been at work. I put myself in the shower, something I desperately needed to do. I took one look at myself and I knew I didn’t want to look. My bruises were so dark and they were so big they were just painful to look at, but even more painful too touch.

  The hot shower loosened my muscles a little and washed whatever blood had been left on my skin. I put on a fresh clothes and fixed up my hair, but I realised nothing could hide the obvious battle scares I’ had accumulated. I wasn’t surprised to see the time when I walked out into the kitchen. I nearly slept all day; it was afternoon, nearly one in the afternoon. A glance at my phone showed me that Rhys had tried to contact me this morning which didn’t surprise me. I couldn’t see him though…not yet anyway.

  For a while I wasn’t sure I knew where to go, how to get to Isaac’s from mine, but evidentially a part of me must remembered because before I knew it I was standing outside Isaac’s building. I didn’t know if he was going to be there, and even if he was I didn’t know if he was ready to talk, but I just wanted to see him. See his face and know he was okay.

  I knocked lightly on the door actually scared of who was going to answer, and then moment I saw Felix I felt a moment of disappoint, only because it wasn’t Isaac.

  “Hey, I wondered when you’d get here,” Felix said, holding the door open for me to walk past him.

  “I…I slept all day,” I told him as I stepped into the apartment. “I didn’t mean to. I guess I was just…exhausted.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Felix shrugged. “Yesterday was…”

  “I know,” I nodded as he struggled to find the right word, but he didn’t need to find a word to describe what we both knew we were feeling.

  “Where… is everyone?” I frowned looking around at the empty lounge room. “I thought everyone would stay here.”

  “They did,” Felix answered. “Hadley is hiding in her room at the moment. Eve and Seth came here late last night but they left again early this morning, they have a lot to deal with.”

  I nodded and I felt myself swallow as I took a moment to look back at Felix’s eyes. “Isaac?”

  The corner of Felix’s mouth curved into a small smile, he was not surprised I asked. “He staggered in early this morning, I heard him. Went into his room and hasn’t let.”

  “You haven’t talked to him yet then?”

  “I don’t think I could, Lily. I don’t even know what to say to him. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going on through his head right now,” Felix admitted to me.

  I sighed. “I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on his head.”

  “You should talk to him though,” Felix said quickly. “Or at least try.”

  “And what makes you think that he’ll listen to me?” I frowned.

  Felix shrugged a little as he avoided my eye contact for a moment but eventually spoke. “He cares about you, Lily, and…I don’t know, I just know that there’s part of him right now that wishes you were by his side.”

  “I don’t know if can even think straight myself,” I admitted with a sigh, “but I want to see him…gosh, I need to.”

  “Then go.”

  I felt awkward to hesitate at Isaac’s bedroom door only because I knew Felix was watching me. I was unsure of whether to knock or just walk in to be honest, but whe
n I thought about if Isaac was likely to answer a knock on the door I decided it was probably best to just walk in and with a slow turn of the handle eventually that was what I did.

  I felt anxious as I stepped into Isaacs’ room and it was only because I worried he’d kick me out, yell at me, when all I really wanted was to just see his face. I didn’t see his face though, not right anyway. In fact he barely noticed me walk in. I was able to quickly survey the room, look at the state of it. A lot of my stuff still occupied his room, especially on his desk. All the stuff I desperately wrote down when I was trying to understand Annabeth’s diary.

  Isaac though was leaning against his window sill and he didn’t even notice my presence until I shut the door behind me and let the door click shut. He jumped at the sound and turned his body around to see him. I tried to read the emotion on his face, I was usually good at that, but at this moment his expression was so blank that I wasn’t sure he was even feeling any emotion. It was clear to me he hadn’t slept. It was easy to tell from the dark circles under his eyes and the state of his hair and clothes, it only made me more anxious.

  “Hi,” I said lightly when I realised he wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Hi,” he responded slowly.

  I didn’t even know where to start, what to say to him. A usual good starting to a conversation was something as simple as ‘how are you’ but I felt like that definitely wasn’t an appropriate question for the time being.

  “You slipped out so quickly yesterday I barely noticed it,” I told him awkwardly.

  “Ah…I know,” Isaac nodded slowly. “I just…I needed to…think, or try to think.”