The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) (12 page)

The Choice Is Yours

Thursday, November 8th

PATRICK

“H
ow long were you listening?”
I asked, a bit on edge.

“Since you both came in,” Kiskei replied as he jerked his head toward the entry hall.

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“Because I wanted to see if you could figure it out,” Kiskei answered, the smirk still firmly in place. The playfulness of the expression making him seem so much younger.

“Well we did, so…why are we here?” I asked as I let my eyes trace the room again before they returned to him.

The grin slipped from Kiskei’s face like a passing shadow. With a heavy sigh, he pushed off from the wall and walked over to us. “Because I have been charged by our
chancellarius
to assemble and train a new team of
amurai
for the region of Karalia.”

And then it finally hit me—that Kiskei was a Warrior of Kalo. And in that one moment, they stopped being legend and became very,
very
real.

I shifted my weight uneasily and looked over at Shawn, who looked about as giddy as if someone had told him there really was a Hogwarts.

“Okay…” I said, looking back at Kiskei. “So why are
we
here?”

“You’re both here because your curiosity got the better of you,” Kiskei stated, a small bit of the smirk returning. “But in all seriousness, you both received those messages and keys because you both, along with a few others, have been selected to join the Warriors of Kalo for the Karalian region.

“Are you messing with us?” Shawn breathed, clearly too stunned to believe it could be true.

“No Shawn, I’m not,” Kiskei replied, looking over at him.

Shawn whispered something that could have been Daemotic, or a sci-fi curse word as both his hands covered his mouth.

But I was far less thrilled at being asked to become a trained killer again. And I might have been crazy, but I could have sworn I heard a voice in the back of my head laughing bitterly.

“Give me one good reason why,” I said as I looked at Kiskei sharply.

Shawn turned toward me quickly. “Are you
crazy
?! Why wouldn’t you want to be—?”

“Shawn, he needs to decide for himself,” Kiskei said, cutting him off. Then he turned his eyes toward me, seriousness coating them like a glove. “I can give you three. One, you’d be good at it,” he stated holding up a finger. “Two, you, more than anyone, have an ax to grind with the Kakodemoss,” he continued, holding up another finger. “And three, it’s in your blood,” Kiskei finished, holding up a third finger.

“Because the Kakodemoss messed with me?” I asked with a defensive edge to my voice.

Kiskei held my glare, unflinchingly. “Because your mother was Amurai…
and
your father.”

I just looked at him. “What?”

“Amurai aren’t just born by accident, Patrick. The gene is passed down from parent to child. And in your case, it came from
both
your parents.”

Some part of me knew it was true, but I still couldn’t stop myself from saying it. “Prove it.”

Without hesitation, Kiskei pointed to the far wall just above the weapons racks. The first half of the wooden surface of the wall was covered with long lines of tiny, curving symbols. Softer and gentler than Japanese characters, but more clustered than Arabic. Daemotic. The language of our people. And that’s when I realized the small markings I had dismissed earlier as decorations were actually names.

“If you look toward the end, you will find both your parents names on there,” Kiskei stated as he tipped his head back toward me.

I stared at the wall for a few moments before I looked back at Kiskei.

“You said it’s genetic, so there’s a chance we could not be one, right?” I asked Kiskei as I ran my hand back through my hair. Trying desperately not to reveal the fact that I wouldn’t be able to find their names no matter how long I looked, because I still didn’t know the Daemotic alphabet well enough.

“True,” Kiskei conceded. “Your brother, for example, is not an Amurai.”

“Right,” I agreed quickly. “So how do you know
we
are?”

“There’s a test,” Kiskei answered before he reached into his pocket and pulled out something silvery and smooth as a river stone, an acidy green tinging the air around it.

I just stared at him in horror. He was holding a piece of titanium in his hand as if it was nothing special. His expression giving no hint of the pain he should have been feeling in that moment. And then I looked closer at his hand. It should have been covered in blisters. Just touching titanium for us—well,
most
of us anyways—was like sticking your hand in a pot of boiling water. But Kiskei’s hand looked perfectly fine.

My eyes darted back up to his, and he stared back at me, unblinking. “Amurai possess a slight immunity to titanium. Not as good as yours, Patrick. But enough to give us an edge over everyone else.”

“What does…what does that mean exactly?” Shawn stammered as he stared at the titanium, wide-eyed.

Kiskei’s eyes shifted to Shawn as he answered, “You will never get the burns from touching it. But more importantly, getting cut isn’t a death sentence.”

Both Shawn and I just gaped at him. “What?”

In answer, Kiskei pulled his shirt up with his free hand. His body was covered with silvery-green scars. More than I had ever thought anyone could have. Large gashes and tiny nicks that cut across his skin almost like tiger stripes. And I couldn’t stop my hand from reaching up to trace the indentation of my own scar. The bullet crater just shy of my heart.

Just one of those scars should have been fatal to him. And even though the angry redness of the skin around each of them told me they hadn’t healed even half as well as mine, I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was still very much alive.

“This test won’t work on you, Patrick, since we all know you’re already completely immune,” Kiskei pointed out as he let his shirt fall back down. “But, Shawn is another story,” he stated as he held the smooth piece of titanium out toward Shawn.

I looked over at him quickly. “Shawn, this is crazy! You don’t have to do—”

“Yes I do,” Shawn stated adamantly as his head whipped in my direction. And I could see it in his eyes—just how scared he was. He, out of anyone I knew, was meant to be a Warrior. I knew that sure as anything. But just because you were
meant
to be brave didn’t make you magically fearless.

Shawn held my stare for a moment longer as he swallowed hard, and then he moved lightning quick. As his hand shot out and grabbed the smooth, stone-like piece of silvery titanium, I couldn’t help but cringe. Waiting for the scream of pain. But it never came.

Shawn looked just as surprised as he stared down at the piece of titanium in his hand. The acid green tinge to the air around it rising up like steam.

“It doesn’t hurt, does it?” Kiskei asked Shawn calmly.

“No it…it’s a little bit too warm, but…” Shawn stated unsteadily before he looked up at Kiskei. “But it doesn’t burn.”

“Congratulations, you just passed the test,” Kiskei announced as he held out his hand to take the piece of titanium back. Numbly Shawn dropped the piece of titanium back into Kiskei’s outstretched hand, still clearly in shock.

Kiskei looked down at the piece of titanium briefly before he slipped it back into his pocket. “There will be a training and test period before you are sworn in as Amurai. But before we get too far into this, I need to make one thing very clear. Even if you go home and decide that this is not the life you would like to lead,” Kiskei said to both of us, but I got the distinct impression he was saying it mostly to me. “I need you both to swear to carry the truth about the existence of the Amurai to your graves.”

“I swear that the words spoken in trust shall not fall from my lips, lest I be struck down by She, Most Brightest in the Sky,” Shawn swore, his hand above his heart, head bowed, without missing a beat.

Kiskei nodded at him, and then turned his attention to me. I stared back at him for a moment while I considered whether I honestly believed if Daenara would really shoot a lightning bolt at me if I ever broke this oath. And whether Kiskei really would prevent me from leaving until I said it. I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to find out.

“I swear that the words spoken in trust shall not fall from my lips, lest I be struck down by She, Most Brightest in the Sky,” I repeated, the words flowing easily from my mouth as if it was something I had said a thousand times.

Shawn gaped at me in confused wonderment and even Kiskei looked at me with an odd, curious expression. But they couldn’t have felt as uneasy about it as I did. It was getting worse with each day—this feeling that I wasn’t me anymore, that I was becoming someone else. Someone I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.

Kiskei continued to stare at me for a few more silent moments as if he was studying me before his focus expanded to included Shawn. “There’s only one more thing I need to ask you both before I let you leave here tonight.”

“Which is?” I asked, immediately a bit suspicious.

“If it is your intent to join the Amurai,” Kiskei replied, his eyes still fixed firmly on the both of us.

He flicked his eyes to Shawn, and Shawn nearly choked. “You’re kidding right? Of course I want in.”

Kiskei nodded and then turned his attention to me. “Patrick?”

And I just looked at him in stunned disbelief. “You mean we have a
choice
?”

Kiskei stared back at me, his eyes deadly serious. “There is always a choice, Patrick.”

“It doesn’t exactly feel that way,” I grumbled as I looked away from him. For months now, it had felt like I was chained to a set path, unable to go anywhere but where fate was demanding I go.

“Not in what you
are
,” Kiskei said as he placed a hand on my shoulder, and I looked back up into his eyes. “But in what you
become
.”

I held his stare for a long time before I finally sighed, and hoped to hell that I wasn’t going to regret this.

“Yeah, I’m in too.”

The Ghosts of the Past

Thursday, November 8th

TRAVIS

I
walked into Club Lunaris, my
mind a maelstrom of questions and fears, and ran smack into someone.

“Sorry,” I said as I reached down to pick up the drink tray I had knocked out of her hands. “I should really look where I’m—” The girl standing in front of me was pale as snow. With loose spiraling black curls, and unusual periwinkle-blue eyes with silvery flecks in them. Like moonlight reflecting back at you in the night. “—going.”

“Well, just be glad it was empty,” Kira said with a hand on her hip.

“Hello, Kira,” I said, letting all the air out of my lungs.

She looked up at me appraisingly. “You know, you’re like the only person who never mistakes me for her.”

“That’s because I’ve known Nualla nearly my whole life, and you aren’t her,” I stated flatly. I knew it wasn’t
her
fault—that they had been controlling her—but still, I just couldn’t bring myself to forgive her for trying to kill Nualla. For
nearly
killing Patrick.

Kira arched her eyebrows almost imperceptibly, but didn’t say anything.

“Look, have you seen your—have you seen Skye?” I asked as I looked anywhere but in her eyes.

“Over there,” Kira indicated with a jerk of her chin toward the back office.

“Thanks,” I said quickly, and walked off in the direction she had indicated before she could say anything else.

When I reached the dark hallway, Skye was just coming out of her office. She passed me, only looking up briefly before her eyes returned to the tablet in her hands.

“Hello, Travis Viliyata,” she said with a hint of a smile.

“I need to talk to you about Nikkollas Varrook,” I blurted out, and she stopped dead.

I watched the tension as it snaked its way up her shoulders before she turned. “I don’t know why you’d want to know about him, Travis,” she replied, a fake smile plastered across her face that might have fooled someone else. But I knew the smile wasn’t genuine, because the feelings flowing off of her were like a punch to the heart. “He was a friend of ours growing up, but that’s about it, really.”

I should have just left it at that, but I just couldn’t.

“I wanted to ask about him being Nikki and Kira’s father,” I asked in a firm, clear voice so she would know that I wasn’t going to just walk away from this.

Faster than I could blink, Skye slammed me up against the wall, her forearm across my throat. “
Who
told you that?”

“It was in their sealed birth records,” I squawked, my hands held up in front of me in surrender. For someone who was only 5'6" she was pretty fucking scary when she was pissed.

“If they were
sealed
, Travis, why did you
open
them?” she growled as her forearm pressed a little harder into my throat.

“Because Kira came up as a match for Nikki and we needed to know why,” I confessed without really giving a fuck if I wasn’t supposed to.

Skye continued to glare at me with narrowed eyes before she pulled away, and started to walk down the hall toward her office. When I didn’t follow, she called over her shoulder, “You coming?”

“Um…yes. Where?” I yelped as I launched myself away from the wall after her.

“I know you are about as likely to stop asking questions as all the stars going dark at once. And I can’t be answering them out here in the hall for the gods and everyone to hear,” Skye replied tersely as she walked into her office, and held her hand out expectantly in invitation.

I quickly trotted into the office, and she slammed the door closed behind us.

Skye walked over to her desk, and dropped the tablet unceremoniously onto it. Then she leaned against the desk, folding her arms under her chest. “Why are you asking about Nikk, Travis?”

“Well, a lot of things aren’t adding up. Like the fact that James Varris never existed,” I said as I folded my arms across my chest and stood a little taller. It was a guess, but I was also almost one hundred percent sure that it was the truth.

Skye opened her mouth to protest, but I jumped back in before she could even get a word out. “Don’t
even
try to lie to me, Skye. I’ve faked records before, and his weren’t even that good,” I said as I gave her a dubious look. “And there’s the
other
thing that gives it away, too.”

“Which is?” she replied with a scowl.

“You’re a
kyria
, Skye, and I still couldn’t find a single picture of your wedding. Not
one
.”

Skye let silence fill the room for several moments before she spoke. “You’re wrong, you know.”

“About which part?” I asked a little too harshly as I leaned against the wall. Because it felt like all I was doing was trying to outrun the secrets of the past before they swallowed me whole. And personally, I was so fucking tired of this bullshit.

“James Varris
was
real, he just wasn’t their father,” Skye answered as she hugged her arms a little tighter against herself.

“So who was he?”

“Doesn’t matter, he died long before any of us were here,” she answered with a deep sigh.

I waited for her to say something more but she didn’t, and eventually I just lost my patience.

“The part I’m not getting about this all is
why
you lied? I mean, what the frak happened that you couldn’t let anyone know Nikk was their father? I mean hell, if he was your
One
, why did you take someone else’s last name?”

“My daughters needed to be protected, so I took that name and moved back into the family estate. Everyone bought the story, and everyone forgot,” she finished as she looked at the floor, the fight seeming to leave her with every word.

I straightened up slowly as I furrowed my brow. “Protected from
what
?”

She looked up into my eyes and there was something there—some emotion I couldn’t quite place. “Loving someone has consequences, and we don’t get to choose who we fall in love with, Travis.
You,
out of anyone, should know that.”

I sucked in a sharp breath of air. She had known. Of course she had known. And she had meant it to sting. I had hurt her by dredging up a past she had thought was long buried, and she had lashed back at me like a cat who’d been stepped on.

I opened my mouth, but I never got the words out because Nikki pushed open the office door.

“Mom, Anton says half the shipment of Gypsy Moon was damaged,” Nikki said and then stopped dead as she saw me standing there in Skye’s office. “What’s going on?” Nikki asked as she looked between me and Skye.

I took one quick look at Skye, and made the split-second decision to lie through my teeth. “We were talking about maybe adding a KARA terminal to Club Lunaris.”

“Seriously?” Nikki asked, a bit taken aback.

“I’m still on the fence about it,” Skye lied as she eyed me covertly. Then her eyes darted to her daughter. “Ask Anton if he meant ‘damaged’ as in, ‘
during shipment’
or as in, ‘
someone dropped it in the storage room
,’ okay?”

“Sure, Mom,” Nikki replied as she eyed us both a little skeptically before she turned, and walked back out the door.

I moved to follow her, but Skye grabbed my wrist. I turned back around to face her.

“Don’t you tell her, Travis. Don’t you
dare
,” Skye threatened, her hand shaking a bit, her eyes full of fire.

“She’s gonna find out someday, you know. She’s not stupid,” I replied defiantly.

“And that’s my bed to lie in, not yours,” Skye countered, digging her nails into the wrist of my dark-brown Air Force style bomber jacket.

“Okay, I won’t say anything to Nikki or Kira,” I relented with a heavy sigh. “But if they ask, I’m not going to lie, either.”

“Deal.”

She finally released my arm, and I walked to the office door. And then I turned back, and looked at her. She was still leaning against her desk, her arms folded under her chest, looking as always like she had just walked off the silver screen.

“Skye?” She didn’t look up at me, just continued to look out at nothing. And because I knew Nualla so well, I knew she was trying to hold back tears. “I’m sorry.”

To my surprise, when I came out of Skye’s office and back into the club, Nualla was sitting alone in her usual booth in the corner, staring down at a tablet.

I stopped in front of the booth, and looked down at her. “Why are you here all alone?”

Nualla looked up at me quickly, and then slumped back into the blue velvet booth cushion. “Nikki’s working, Shawn’s busy, and—”

And she was still fighting with Patrick. No, not
fighting
.
Fighting
would mean that they were at least
talking
to each other. And they weren’t.

“—and I didn’t want to be home—it’s too quiet there. So I thought I’d come here,” Nualla continued, shrugging. “Should have known
she’d
be here though.”

I followed the line of Nualla’s eyes, and saw Kira talking with one of the bartenders, Justin, over at the bar. I let my eyes drift back to Nualla, and slid my hands into the pockets of my bomber jacket. “Can you really blame her for being here? She was just reunited with her mom.”

Nualla gave me a look of utter betrayal that I was even
considering
defending Kira.

“Whatever. It was a stupid idea to come here in the first place. I’m just going to go to the Coffee Press,” she announced with a frustrated growl as she stood, and shoved her tablet into her book bag.

“You could have called me to come hang out with you,” I pointed out.
I’m still your best friend, you know.

“
You
didn’t answer your phone,” Nualla snapped accusingly as she stomped past me.

Didn’t answer my—?
I patted my sides, and realized that I must have left it in my lab coat pocket.

Frak.

I trotted to catch up with her as she stormed through the night club. “Nualla, I’m sorry, okay? I left it in my lab,” I called after her.

She didn’t answer, just pushed through the back door and into the alley.

I reached out and grabbed her wrist as I followed her out the door into the cold night air. She whipped back around to face me, her lip quivering, looking on the verge of tears.

“Nualla, what’s wrong?” I asked, even though it was a stupid question. I knew
exactly
what was wrong. The world was moving along too quickly without her as if nothing had happened. As if everything was fine.

Nualla opened her mouth, and then shut it again silently. And then she looked away from me down at her boots, and ran her teeth over her bottom lip. “Travis, will you…will you come home with me?”

“What?” I asked, convinced I hadn’t heard her right.

“Not like
that
. I—I just don’t want to be alone…tonight.”

A life for a life
, the memory of my promise echoed in my head.

I sighed heavily, because I knew this was gonna come back to bite me in the ass. “Sure.”