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. Yourmother 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—amyour 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, andthe 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’ssupposedto 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.
