Read Online The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) by Alicia Kat Vancil - Free Book Online

broken glass into my heart. Oh gods, I missed her so much.
    I traced my fingers across her face, but it wasn’t really her—just pixels on a screen. Cold and perfectly smooth, and nothing like the real thing.
    I had spent night after night laying here for hours, alone in the dark, staring at those pictures of us. Those memories captured in a flash. The screen my only light until it ran out of battery. And then I would plug my phone in, and close my eyes and fall into dreams or memories. Though I was no longer sure which it was anymore. But now I was awake again, staring into the darkness.
    Gods, I wanted to die. Why wouldn’t the universe just let me have it— death . Why did it insist on keeping me here—in this place without her. What had I ever done that was so horrible to deserve this? This ache that I couldn’t drown out no matter how much I drank.
    And as they always did, with a cruel ironic bite to their words, the whispers answered me back with my own words, I stabbed Nualla with a tantō blade made of titanium.
    I rolled over, and curled up into a ball. Hugging myself so tightly it hurt, and tried not to make a sound as the tears spilled down my face. Because I had lost her—that other half of my soul—and I was never going to get her back again. And some dark corner of my mind whispered, You always knew you would lose her.
    Usually I argued with the whispered voices, pleading my case within my own head. But I had stopped having the strength to argue with them a while ago, and so they rushed in, cutting my heart raw with their words.
    I had told Connor the hard facts after Travis left on Halloween, but I hadn’t told him how I felt. How very much not okay I was right now. How I was barely holding it together. How afraid I was. Afraid that I had been wielded like a knife. Afraid that I had killed. Afraid that large portions of my memories—if not all of them—were fabricated. Afraid that I was nothing more than a construct of clever lies. Afraid that Patrick didn’t even exist, and never had. That everything that was me was just a cheap mask pulled over someone else’s face. Afraid that someday I would wake up and everything that was Patrick would be gone.

    NUALLA

    I woke up screaming. Again .
    It was essentially the same dream that I had been having for over a month. The same one that left me soaked to the skin in sweat, shivering on the floor in a tangle of blankets. But each time the dream just got more horrific—more twisted.
    The tears poured down my cheeks and I just laid there in a sobbing heap on the floor, because I didn’t have the will to get up. Every night was a battlefield, and I was just too tired—too weary—to continue the fight anymore.
    I had started to remember more than just the night Patrick had stabbed me. More than the day of the attack. Other things that I wasn’t completely sure were real. And they were all bleeding together into a dark net that captured me every time I closed my eyes. But this dream—this nightmare—had been worse than all the others before it.
    I had been wandering in the rain, searching desperately for something as I walked down the deserted wet streets. Everything had had the crisp sharpness of reality, not the foggy, unsettling vagueness of a dream.
    I could smell the distinct scent of wet pavement. Feel the clinging dampness of my clothes as they gripped against my skin. Hear the cacophony of tiny drumming that was the rain bouncing off the surface of the ground. But it was the lack of other sounds, like traffic, and dogs barking, and terrible rap music, that made my heart slam faster against my chest.
    And then they were there—the bodies—spread out in all directions. Trails of crusted acid green, snaking down their cheeks from their eyes, noses, and mouths. Mouths that were hanging open in horrible, silent cries. The people— my people—were staring up at me from cold, dead eyes. Eyes veined through with green.
    I took a step back as I stared