Page 60 of Above
It had to be public, and it needed to push our agenda. But how? How could I manage all of that while still making sure I never looked like a villain to Dajahim?
Maybe the answer lay in not minding being the villain. After all, I’d slaughter thousands if it meant making the stars happy. But that always felt…holy. As if doing the stars bidding made it justifiable. I hated the odd sensation in my stomach—a twistingand turning that demanded to be felt—that made me question those beliefs.
If only I could speak with the stars directly like my father had. Just hearing their voices could change everything. Instead, I was left sitting at the mahogany desk in my barracks room, staring at the page of my history text that discussed planet four-one-nine and our ability to conquer it in less than an hour in Dajahim time.
Huffing indignantly, I reached over and swiped up the bottle of whiskey, bringing the glass to my lips and tilting up the heavy bottle. Amber liquid sizzled and burned its way down my throat, heating my chest.
I shouldn’t have been drinking. This week, we would face illusions every day rather than only once. It was their way of building up to the final illusion, which the intels would broadcast into the minds of every shaytan present. It meant even less privacy than normal. Many of us—me included—needed to stay focused. Those of us with the blood of the original twenty elites had been trained our whole lives for this type of tactic, but it had proven far harder than anticipated.
Whiskey heating my body and muddling my mind, I leaned back in my chair, thinking of the illusion from earlier.
Father had appeared first, followed closely by the details of Castle Altair. It was a horrific scene of blood and gore as he rampaged after losing the stars, killing eadi servants left and right before finally rounding on me.
“This is all your fault!” he had screamed as he grabbed my collar and lifted me. Mother stood by, silently sobbing. Probably more upset at the lost rugs than my potential death. “If it weren’t for you, I could have focused more. You are the reason everything is falling apart!”
It was nothing new. All core families were generally like this. It was the curse of power and dynasty. But there hadbeen something about his tone that day. A deeper, more heated hatred for me. The type of break that could not be mended or healed. I realized on that day that pleasing him wasn’t possible. Placating him, maybe.
What I hadn’t expected was for that moment to seep into my illusions. What had the intel learned about me by seeing that? What did my mind tell them? Was I holding onto it in some way?
I held no bruises or scars, nothing that could physically tie me to the event, but apparently something still lingered within.
The illusion was made infinitely worse when time seemed to speed by, Priya and I’s lives racing through the traditional motions. Then, when our son was old enough to understand, I began beating him too. Continuing the cycle just as I had told Pri we would. But it didn’t stop there. I was eventually gifted the stars’ essence and named General. Ruling came easily, but I was just as complacent and comfortable as my father, so I went on to be punished in the same way. I was stripped of the stars, ridiculed by others, and I eventually died a failure.
“What a waste of an illusion,” I scoffed, bringing the glass bottle to my lips and taking another hefty swig. Soon this would all be over. The tactical phase would pass far quicker than the other two. Afterwards, I would become a true elite and work hard to impress the stars.
My own timeline was different from what I had been shown. While my father had taken nearly fifty years to receive the stars, I planned to get them in twenty. It didn’t matter how many planets I had to destroy or eadi I needed to kill. I was prepared to be the monster needed to impress the stars. To remind them of why they valued us enough to continue rewarding Dajahim.
But first, I had to kill the useless akhata and earn the favor of the core families. How though? Talon was always there, guarding her like a dog. It made my muddled mind wander to the conversation I had with him the other day. More of anargument really. But that was expected. Especially when I had been so off-kilter after speaking with my—no,his—Little Void.
Tershetta had caught me off guard. While I had expected her to be in there, I hadn’t been ready for her to rip open the door in a towel. It was the first time I realized that she wasn’t hideous. Even when I had first met her, the image had been something to toy with. However, with her thick, wild curls dripping down her back, looking as black as Talon’s rather than the chocolate color they normally were, I froze. Her eyes were half lidded and rimmed with a dark purple, as if she hadn’t gotten much sleep. Her skin was deep and clear, her lips chapped, the top slightly fuller and less tattered. She had gained weight since the first time I had met her, though that was to be expected. I wasn’t sure what her life had been like, but I would wager that she was closely acquainted with hunger. She wasn’t as beautiful as a core woman, that was for sure, but there was something there, lurking beneath the beast of her eadi side.
It had been her voice that jarred me back into action as I leaned forward, the animosity so strong that it poured from her mouth like blood from a wound. And when she had suggested I enjoyed the sight of her there, barely clothed, her tone mocking, I had lost my desire to do anything but play along.
As I had made my way down the winding stairs, my mind conjured its own version of the image of Tershetta standing there, her towel pooled around her feet. It wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks that my view from the shadow ritual had hidden.
Yes, not nearly as pretty as Priya or Dove or any of the many core women. Something different. Something new. Even as I acknowledged that, I still knew she had to die. She could have been the most beautiful creature in the world, and I still would have seen her for the abomination she was.
So I continued looking for Talon, searching first the dining hall, then the classrooms in the schoolhouse. I even checkedthe training center, but nothing. Wishing I didn’t have to, but knowing I did, I had begun searching the island. He had been avoiding me for the last few weeks, each attempt I made to talk to him shut down. I was relatively certain that he knew what I wanted to talk about. Worse, I was convinced that his hostility with me only grew.
I had trudged through the dense and damp forest, trying to think like Talon. He never used to like solitude, but it seemed he did now. He was also working far harder than most trainees. Where would he go that would stop him from being around people and would challenge him?
It was then that I had realized where he’d be. The mountain. When I had made it to the base, I saw him, swiftly making his way up. He was broader than he used to be, but still just as fast, which meant I was forced to shadow walk to him.
When I appeared a few dozen feet ahead of him, Talon stopped.
“I just want to talk,” I had said. “Please, Tal, it’s important.”
“Nothing you say is ever important, Az,” he had scoffed, turning around and descending the mountain. I rushed to keep up with him, determined to talk no matter how much he pissed me off.
“Oh, please, we both know that isn’t true!” I yelled, catching up to him.
“Let me guess, you want me to leave Nova alone so you can kill her?”
“Partly, yes!” He sped up, not willing to listen further, but I had been unwavering. “She doesn’t love you, Talon. So whatever you’re plotting with her, don’t. She isn’t going to do anything but get you killed right alongside her. You’re risking everything for nothing!”
“Says my supposed best friend who is fucking my mother!” he had shouted, pivoting in front of me and shoving my chest. I stumbled, my heart racing. He knew?
“Talon, it’s not what you think.”
