The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) (13 page)

The Illusion of Strength

Friday, November 9th

TRAVIS

I
opened my eyes with a
jolt, ripped from my own nightmare by a scream. My heart slamming into my chest, my eyes darted around frantically. I didn’t know where I was.

Soft light from a collection of eastern-style lanterns in the corner of the room made the gauzy curtains hanging from the ceiling around the bed look like ghosts. The darkness bleaching all the vivid blue color from them. Dark shadows from the trees outside the picture box window danced across the body of a girl next to me. Their thin, crooked shape looking like sinister hands reaching for her.

As I looked down at the girl, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her black tangle of hair spilling across the pillow, I realized where I was.

I let out a heavy breath, and ran both my hands over my face. And as I pulled them away I saw two shining eyes peering up at me through the darkness.

“Hey,” Nualla said softly.

“Hey,” I echoed, letting my hands slip back to the bed.

“Did I wake you up?” she asked as she sat up, her black hair framing her moon-pale face like dark water.

“No,” I lied, because I couldn’t bear telling her the truth. “A dream woke me up a little bit before you screamed.”

Nualla pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Are yours still about the night of the accident?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “But they’re also worse than they were before,” I admitted. She was the only person who understood—understood what it was like to walk through that sea of bodies. The only one who understood that that kind of horror
changed
you—changed your nightmares. Your fears.

“What are yours about?” I asked quietly.

“Of walking through all those bodies. All those people I couldn’t help. And being stabbed,” Nualla answered without meeting my eyes. “And Draya and Emmy dying,” she finished, tears starting to spill down her cheeks.

I opened my mouth to tell her that it was okay, but we both knew it wasn’t.

Nualla leaned against my side as the tears continued to fall silently down her face, and I wrapped my arms around her. Resting my chin on the top of her head, and holding her close. And I didn’t ask her any more questions, because that’s not what she needed.

I leaned back against the padded headboard, closed my eyes, and tried to fall back asleep. I don’t think I succeeded though.

What seemed like only moments later, the door to Nualla’s bedroom creaked, and my eyes flashed open.

“Nualla, have you seen my—
whoa
.” Nikki’s eyes went huge as they darted between me and her cousin.

I looked at Nikki and then at Nualla who was still out cold. Her head resting on my thigh, and her arm flung across me. And then I looked back up at Nikki guiltily. “This is
so
not what it looks like, I swear.”

NUALLA

I
brushed powder across my cheek
and then sighed. “It’s not a big deal, Nikki.”

“Not a
big deal
! You both were half-naked in bed!” Nikki said indignantly from behind me.

After Nikki had walked into my bedroom to find Travis in my bed, he had gotten up quickly and left. A deep red blush across his cheeks like he had done something wrong. Which he
hadn’t,
of course. But because of that blush, Nikki was convinced that he
had
.

“He still had his jeans on Nikki, he wasn’t ‘half-naked,’” I said, rolling my eyes as I brushed more powder over my face. “
And
nothing happened.”

“Why was he in your bed in the first place?!” Nikki asked, gesturing wildly with her hands.

Because I had needed him, and he needed me just as much. Because there was nothing wrong with being there for someone when they needed you. Because we had made a promise to each other.

I gripped the edge of the stone vanity counter with my hand. No matter what, I was never going to find the right words to properly explain the pact we had made. That it was different than the kind most of us made during the ceremony of One. That the tabloids were twisting me and Travis’ relationship wildly out of proportion. And that it was really starting to piss me off.

I threw the makeup brush back into the drawer, and slammed it shut. “Because I didn’t want to be alone,
okay?
!” I shouted as I whipped around to face her. “I’m sorry for wanting someone there when I woke up from another fucking nightmare,” I said scathingly, but the second the words left my mouth I regretted them.

Nikki just stared back at me, speechless.

“Nikki, I’m…”

She shook her head in disgust, before she turned on her heel.

“Nikki!” I called after her as I reached out, and gripped her wrist.

She wrenched it from my grasp and glared at me, hurt clearly visible in her eyes. “Why didn’t you ask
me
? You know I would have stayed with you in a heartbeat. So why?”

I stared at her, unable to find the right words. Nikki looked at me a moment longer before she let out a huff and turned to walk away.

And I just couldn’t lose one more person. I just couldn’t.

“Because I needed someone who would understand,” I blurted out.

Nikki stopped, and turned back around slowly.

“Someone who would understand without…” Without me having to speak all those horrors aloud. Even if I could find the words to tell her what had happened, I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to do that to her. To explain what it was like to watch someone die of titanium poisoning. To see the frantic, desperate hope in someone’s eyes in the last seconds of their life. To feel the black hands of death seeping in around you like black ink.

“Nualla?” Nikki asked uncertainly. “You’re shaking.”

I looked down at my hands, and sure enough my whole body was trembling.

Nikki touched my shoulder, and I looked back up into her face. She searched my eyes, concern tinting her own. “What is it that wakes you up every night?”

I opened my mouth, but the only thing that escaped was a choking sob.

Nikki wrapped her arms around me, and I cried into her shoulder, not caring if anyone saw.

TRAVIS

I
stared at the screens in
my office as KARA ran through a series of possible requests she might be asked by visitors to The Embassy. Assessing the code for any potential errors or malfunctions.

“Travis, I found that—” Akiko started, but then stopped mid-sentence.

I turned around to face her, and arched my eyebrows in question. “What?”

“Are those the same clothes you were wearing yesterday?”

I jerked back, and my mouth dropped open in disbelief. “How the
fuck
—?”

“What? I
am
a girl, you know. I
do
notice these things,” Akiko said defensively.

“Yes, they are,” I admitted with a scowl as I turned back to my screens. “And since I
know
you’re going to ask, I didn’t go home last night because I was comforting a friend.”

“Does your ‘friend’ happen to be the future ruler of Karalia?”

“If you already know the answer, why are you even asking?” I said flatly without turning around to look at her. Akiko didn’t answer, just shifted her weight to her other foot. I sighed, and leaned my cheek on my palm as I rested it on the table. Akiko still didn’t say anything, just continued to stand there silently. “Before you ask,
yes,
I know I have a meeting with Central Six in twenty minutes.”

“Well that’s good to know, but it isn’t about that,” she replied and I swear I could hear her rolling her eyes at me behind my back.

“Then what is it?” I asked as I swiveled my chair to look at her.

“I found the information on that girl.”

I rushed into the room, and dropped into the seat at the end of the meeting table. I had spent far too long pouring over the info Akiko had found about the woman I was pretty sure had been Parker’s mother.

“Sorry I’m late, I—” The chair opposite mine at the table wasn’t empty, and it wasn’t occupied by Alex either. “
Nualla
?”

“As I was just saying, Arius Nualla will be taking her father’s seat as the head of the Central Six in the Chancellarius’ absence,” Roy Vallen stated with a slightly exasperated huff.

I just blinked at him as comprehension slid over me. And then I looked at Nualla. She wasn’t looking at me, but at the Central Six as a whole. She looked up at Roy and after a quick nod from him, she looked at the tablet in front of her. “Let’s begin with the status of the collection of genetic profiles…”

I watched Nualla with unwavering fascination. There wasn’t a trace of the scared little girl from last night in her eyes. No, these eyes were as hard and serious as anything. And that’s when it finally hit me for the very first time. That she wasn’t just Nualla. That she had never been
just
Nualla. That she was the future Chancellarius of Karalia.

The Central Six continued to discuss a wide range of things, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Nualla. It was almost like she wasn’t herself—like she was someone else. Like the girl I had always known was melting away, burning into oblivion, and being replaced with this person. Like that day in the wedding dress shop. Like she was performing some strange type of magic.

The moments slipped by, but I never stopped watching her. Like I had lost the ability to move my head—my eyes—somewhere else. Eventually something changed in her eyes though, and they flicked to me.

Nualla stared pointedly at me, and then made a tiny jerk of her head toward Ashley Hutchenson. And as if a spell had been broken, the conversation around me suddenly flooded in like rushing water.

“…if this girl, Chan-rin, is such a potential danger, why is she still residing in The Embassy? Perhaps we should move her to one of the less populated embassies or—”

“You’re not moving Chan-rin anywhere,” I blurted out, cutting off Ashley’s suggestion.

“I wasn’t aware that was
your
decision to make, Mr. Centrina,” Ashley said coldly, purposefully leaving off my new title.

“You’re not taking her away from the only family she has ever known,” I stated firmly, trying not to let the growl bubbling up my throat creep into my voice.

“The girl has no family that we are aware of, though
someone
apparently changed her school records recently,” Ashley said as she glared at me pointedly.

“Family has nothing to do with blood,” I said flatly, my eyes narrowing at her.

“Just because you have the ability, doesn’t give you the right—”

“If I have to trace Alex down
myself
and petition him for custody of Chan-rin, I
will
. But the only way you’re moving her is over my dead—”

“Will you both stop it!” Nualla shouted over us as she slammed her palms on the table in front of her, and stood. “We have bigger problems than where a little girl lives!”

When the meeting concluded, Nualla looked down at the tablet in front of her. “Director Centrina Viliyata, please stay behind,” she said in a firm, clear voice. “I’d like to speak with you.”

I clenched my hands into fists at my sides, and bit back the words threatening to claw their way free from my mouth. I had never been so angry with her in my entire life.

The rest of the Central Six continued toward the door, only giving me and Nualla a quick look. Roy was the last to leave the room, giving Nualla one last long look before sighing and closing the doors behind him.

After the doors shut, Nualla waited a few heartbeats and then she slumped against the table, putting her head in her hands. “I can’t do this, I’m no good at it,” she groaned in a defeated tone.