Chapter 29 #2
He looks around the dining hall, suddenly aware that we’re still the center of attention. Grabbing my elbow, he pulls me into the hall, away from prying eyes. “What are you going on about?” he demands, his glare trained on me.
I roll my eyes and look away. I know this man isn’t this obtuse.
He grips my chin, turning my head back toward him. “Don’t do that. Don’t shut me out.”
“You disrespected me,” I whisper. “Where was the loyalty? Hmm?” The words are laced with more hurt than anger.
He sighs deeply. “I’m assuming you feel like I betrayed you?” he asks, furrowing his forehead.
I move my mouth to the side, refusing to say any more.
“You’ve never done well with betrayal,” he says simply.
No shit.
“Nori, look at me.” He tilts my head back so that I’m forced to look in those bottomless pools of promise.
“I didn’t betray you. We were going over scenarios relating to the professor’s disappearance.
As second-years, we have a bit more responsibility on our shoulders regarding the disappearance.
More than first-years. I’d never do anything to be disloyal to you,” he promises, staring into my eyes.
“I’m sorry Yaretta and I have history. I didn’t even think of her in that way when walking together, which is why I could have never imagined you’d feel any kind of way. ”
I believe him, but at this point, it doesn’t even matter.
We can’t change what happened and it wasn’t even the reason I was seeking him out to begin with.
I’ve been completely sidetracked. The real reason I was looking for him comes rushing back like a punch to the gut.
“Did you meet with Professor Tainey the other night?”
He drops his hand from my chin and blinks a few times. Slower than normal. His lips part like he’s going to say something but decides against it.
I cross my arms, step back, and wait for my world to shatter.
Please deny it, Ambrose. Let it just be a big misunderstanding.
He steps forward like he’s going to touch me, but I move out of his grasp.
“Ambrose, now is not the time to be evasive.” There’s a hardness to my tone that I don’t use with him.
Ever. But at this moment, too much is on the line.
A lifelong friendship, a future with the man I love, and buried family secrets that I know nothing about.
“Why?” he asks in a raw voice.
There’s so much emotion packed into the one little word. Fear. Regret. Longing.
There’s just as much emotion in my eyes. Pleading. Dread. Hope.
“Nori…” he whispers.
“No,” I respond, holding up my hand. “Did you or did you not meet with him?”
He lowers his head. “Yes.” It’s so quiet I almost don’t hear him.
I feel like I’ve been punched in the heart before it was roughly removed from my chest. If that part is true, more than likely the rest of everything else Finnley said is as well. And Ambrose knows it. He knows why I’m asking.
“Tell me,” I command, proud that my voice isn’t breaking. “Everything.”
He raises his head, his eyes begging me to let it go. To stop this before there’s no turning back. Students pass by us, unaware that my entire life is on the cusp of shattering. Their chatter and laughter are a macabre backdrop to my demise.
His Adam’s apple moves as he swallows. He closes his eyes before opening them again. Hardened resolve now lingers in their depths. “I did it to protect you,” he says in an unapologetic tone. “And I’d do it again.”
My breath is coming out in sharp rasps. I want to run from this, but I can’t.
The feeling that everything is about to change washes over me.
Everything I thought I knew is about to be demolished.
The one constant that I had in my life just stabbed me in the heart and is standing over my bleeding corpse, telling me he’d do it all over again, given the chance.
His hands clench at his sides. “Our mothers have been best friends since childhood, Nori. I’ve been in your life since the moment you were born, friendship thrust upon us, whether we wanted it or not.
Lucky for us, we were inseparable from the start.
” He swallows. “You were the little sister I never asked for but absolutely fucking adored. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t have done for you,” he says, running his hands through his dark waves.
He licks his lips and keeps talking. “Which is why, when our mothers approached me at a young age and asked me to be your shadow, I never even hesitated. Why would I? I didn’t think anything of it until we were a little older and your mother approached me again. Alone this time.”
My stomach does the kind of flip that happens right before you puke.
He continues talking as if I’m not crumbling from the inside out.
“She asked me if I could keep a secret if it meant protecting someone I loved. I said yes without hesitation. I’ll never forget the way her lips curled in satisfaction at that moment,” he says, his eyes hardening and his voice lowering.
“Like you, every family member of mine through the generations that entered the military has tested as Veils. Our mothers were already making a name for themselves in their Salaryan unit, and as most narcissists do, they wanted to be sure their legacy continued.”
He shakes his head. “They knew, without a doubt, one day we’d follow in their footsteps and enter Kintoira Academy. Your mother told me there wasn’t a sliver of worry that I would test as anything but light. It was in my very DNA,” he says before pausing. “But you were another story.”
I watch as he sinks onto the hard stone bench beside us. He drops his head down, supporting it in his hands, with both elbows on his knees.
I remain standing. Silent.
“I didn’t understand she meant literally,” he whispers.
He takes a deep breath and continues. “She said that you had dark roots, so dark they could shade out the sun and turn your light into full shadows. Being only eight years old, I couldn’t grasp what she was confiding in me, but I listened with rapt attention,” he says.
“Her tone hardened, and her lips pulled up in distaste as she kept talking, moving onto your lineage. She mentioned that at one time, a man in her life took everything from her.” He looks at me full of hesitation. “Your father.”
I press my hand into my stomach, trying to steady myself.
His eyes are full of sadness. “Your mother told me he left when she was pregnant with you. That she could feel his darkness flowing in your tiny body while she carried you. She knew that you wouldn’t place as a Veil, so I was instructed to do anything and everything to make it happen.
I was to guide you throughout childhood to think and react like a Veil.
” He laughs under his breath but keeps talking.
“To rationalize as one with light magic would. To smother out any darkness residing in your soul.”
A silent tear runs down my cheek.
“You pretended to be my friend,” I say in a broken whisper.
“NO!” Ambrose shouts, jumping up from the bench. “I was—am your best friend.”
Years of childhood memories flash through my mind.
Ambrose preventing me from punching a local boy in the nose when he took my last penny pie.
Ambrose teaching me about the stars and how they correlate with our birth-given abilities, and the importance of never, ever sacrificing them for anything.
The way we would lie on our backs in the fields of barley and dream about the manifestations we would inherit one day.
The slurs he taught me to say about Noctryns and how they were the cesspool of the world.
It was all staged.
I was dressed as the villain and didn’t even know it.
“I paid Professor Tainey handsomely to obtain a copy of the written assessment. I figured if you had a chance to be prepared for what the academy was going to ask, you would have a better chance of answering them as a Veil might. I feared…” He looks down at his hands, sorrow etched into his features.
“I feared if you had to answer on the spot without time to prepare, you would answer the way a future Noctryn might.”
He rubs a scarred hand down his face. “Obviously, it didn’t work because the test was completely different.
Someone must have gotten wind of my deal and orchestrated a new test being issued.
Hence, my conversation with Tainey that night.
To say I was livid would have been an understatement.
” He laughs harshly. “All the years I tried to protect you came to a screeching halt. It was out of my hands, and I didn’t miss the way Adair looked at you.
Like a personal vendetta to take out his deviant tastes on. ”
The one person who I felt understood me was bribed to be my friend. The friendship I held on to to get me through some of the roughest days of my life was fabricated. For years.
“What darkness did I have in me, Ambrose?” I ask. “Tell me. What was so bad about me that my mother had to order you to shape me into the person she thought I should be?” My voice comes out unsteady.
His eyes search mine. Sadness and regret shine back at me. “Your father was a Noctryn.”
I stop breathing.
The world stops spinning.
My blood turns to ice.
“Impossible,” I breathe, my eyes searching his for some kind of denial.
“Veils and Noctryns can’t procreate. You know this!
” I dig my fingers into my scalp, the pain being the only thing to keep me present.
“Once a Noctryn sacrifices their manifestations to be able to wield dark magic, it cancels out their light magic. Light and dark always cancel each other out, which makes procreation between the two impossible.”
A dark chuckle leaves his lips. “That’s the way it’s supposed to work. However, sometimes fate has other plans.”
“This is why my mother never talks about him.” The words slip out, quiet and devastated.
He nods. “That and I’m sure the fact that he left you both doesn’t help matters. She didn’t confirm what he was until I was a grown man, but I had my suspicions.”
I bite down on my thumbnail, gnawing lightly at the corner. “How could she be with a Noctryn soldier while enlisted as a Veil in the military? They would have discharged her, or worse.”
“Which is why our mothers swore me to secrecy.”
I walk in circles, trying to work it all out in my head. “It still doesn’t make sense. How a Veil and a Noctryn created life.”
Ambrose grabs my hand, stopping me from pacing back and forth.
I quickly yank it out of his grip.
“You’re a Liminal,” he says in a soft tone.
Light and dark cannot touch what is ambiguous.
Silver’s words come back in stark clarity.
I’m not light, but I’m also not dark. I’m the in-between.
The result of a Veil mother and a Noctryn father. Something that shouldn’t exist.
I stop pacing. “If that were the case, the regiment would have figured out that my mother shacked up with a dark wielder the minute my results came out after the trial. They’d have already arrested her.”
“It’s one of the ways a Liminal can be created, but not the only way,” he informs me. “Being the decorated officer she is, I very much doubt any suspicion will be cast in her direction on that front.”
I stop and stare at my best friend.
It’s slightly confounding how my heart can be so resolutely frigid while my blood burns like the firepits of hell.
Betrayal sits heavy in my gut. Regret mixes with the stark blue irises of the eyes I’ve dreamed about most of my life.
I’m an idiot. To think I was ever enough for him by just being myself.
“You kept this from me for years,” I accuse, stepping back. I need distance between us.
The shadows dance in the dark corners of the alcoves, and the tapestry closest to us moves as if there is a breeze.
The temperature feels like it’s dropped ten degrees in the last few minutes.
I wrap my arms around myself, seeking warmth from the frigid hall and even colder betrayal settling into my bones.
Ambrose just stares at me. As if he’s trying to memorize the lines and curvatures of my face. He doesn’t, however, disagree.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” I seethe, pointing my finger in his direction.
I am coming undone.
A lifetime of crafting myself to their standards, of repressing little wants and desires that scared me in their depths.
I always feared something was off about myself.
The love of solitude, the violent tendencies when my anger became too much, and the feeling of always wanting more than what was being offered.
Turns out I had a reason to be suspicious of it all.
“Nori… please,” he begs, extending his arm toward me.
“Stop.” I hold my hand up. “Everything you say to me is a lie. Stay away from me, Ambrose, and forget I even exist,” I order, retreating backward.
I angrily wipe the tears streaming down my face with the back of my hand.
He doesn’t get to see them. He’s taken enough.
I spin on my heel and flee down the corridor, leaving my heart shattered at his feet.