Page 5 of Kingdom of Chaos
They know I entered and competed in Chaos, and that there was a magical gag that prevented me from telling them about it. They figured out on their own that I injured my hand duringone of the trials, but that’s pretty much it. I haven’t told them about Kerrim, or his claim that I’m a human. They don’t know what happened to Becks, and they certainly don’t know that I’m planning to track down Talon and force him to help me get to the human world to look for Becks.
And I wasn’t going to tell them either.
It’s cowardly, but I had planned to sneak out and leave them a note explaining everything. I was going to tell them about Becks and that I was going to find him. About Kerrim and the claim that I’m human. About everything. But now that my mom is standing in front of me, a frown on her face as she wrings her hands, I know this isn’t going to go the way I’d hoped.
Dropping the T-shirt into the open duffel, I straighten. “I’m going to find Becks.”
Compassion softens my mom’s features. “Oh, honey,” she says and moves into the room, reaching for me like she’s going to hug me, but I sidestep and she drops her arms. The hurt look that crosses her face spears me straight through the chest.
“You need to let the authorities look for Becks,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself. “There’s nothing you can do to help him right now.”
I shake my head. My mom has no idea. No one is going to find Becks because they have no idea where to look. “I have to do this, Mom. You don’t understand.”
I go back to packing.
“Locklyn, stop.” My mom lays a hand over mine, staying my movements. “This isn’t the right way?—”
“What do you know about the right anything?” I snap, my voice sharp enough to make my mom take a step back in surprise. I instantly regret both my tone and my words, but before I can apologize, my dad appears.
“What’s going on in here?” he asks, his large frame filling my bedroom doorway. His dark eyes dart between my mom and me,quickly assessing the situation, his expression darkening when he sees the tears welling in her eyes.
My dad is normally a gentle guy, but not when it comes to his wife. I can already see him puffing up, ready to come to her defense.
I can’t take the tension and animosity between me and my parents anymore. It’s been building for longer than just last night. But ever since Kerrim dropped the bomb that I’m human, not a creature, a heaviness has settled in my chest, making it hard to breathe.
Seeing the confusion and disappointment in my parents’ eyes breaks the dam I’d been holding back, and like a cork shooting from a bottle, the words burst from my mouth.
“Am I really your daughter?”
Both my mom and dad go still, their eyes widening. A buzzing sensation, like electricity running beneath my skin, prickles along my arms, and I rub them, trying to chase the feeling away.
My dad starts. “Locklyn, I’m not sure what you?—”
“I know,” I cut in.
“Know what?” he asks gently, stepping into the room, his presence filling the space.
“I know that I’m human.”
A beat passes. He glances at my mom, exchanging a look that’s not understanding—but confusion.
“Honey,” my mom says, reaching out to touch me before hesitating. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I look back and forth between them, and a rush of relief surges through me. They don’t know what the word “human” means. Just like I didn’t when Kerrim first said it. And if they don’t know, maybe it’s not true. Maybe I’mnothuman. And if that’s not true, then maybe what Kerrim said about them not being my biological parents isn’t true either.
I sit on the edge of the bed, staring blankly ahead. My mom takes a seat beside me and slips her hand into mine. My head is pounding, whether from smashing it against the cave wall or from the weight of everything I’ve been trying to sort through, I’m not sure.
I can’t make sense of this alone. So I open my mouth, and I tell them.
I tell them everything.
I tell them everything about Chaos, including the reason I entered it in the first place. I tell them about Shadow Striker and Talon. I explain the deal I made with Drake to free Becks from the dragon council’s control. I walk them through every trial, reveal that Kerrim was the game master, and recount what happened in the ruins—with Becks, the portal, the other world. Finally, I tell them what Kerrim said about me being human. It pours out of me like a waterfall, unstoppable. And when the last detail has slipped from my lips, I look to my parents, silently begging them to tell me that Kerrim was wrong, that it was just a fluke, an accident that a portal to the human world opened when I touched the dagger. That I’m not this mysterious “human” he claimed I was, but truly their daughter in every sense of the word.
Because even though, deep down, I’ve always known I was different, the thought of not being theirs is too much to bear.
Silence blankets the room.
They let me speak without interruption, but now that I’ve spilled everything, every secret I’ve kept over the past two months, I think I might’ve broken them. My mom’s hand feels cold in mine. Then I glance between her and my dad, and it’s clear there’s some silent communication happening between them.
