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

down at the haunting, pleading eyes. And then another until my heel bumped into something. I turned back to where I had come from, and looked down at the person laying at my feet. Her hair was a tangled blond mess beneath my shoes, her cheek the thing I had bumped into. The girl wasn’t dressed like the others in street clothes. No, she was dressed in a black kimono. A single black eight-pointed star stitched into the fabric over her heart.
    I stared down at her, shaking so badly I could barely stand. She looked so very familiar.
    As I stared at the girl, something gray like papery snow started to settle onto her. I looked away from her face, and held out my hand to catch whatever it was that was falling from the sky. I pinched the gray, dry snow between my fingers.
    Ash?
    I looked back down at the blond girl who was all but covered in the ash, all but her face. And then I realized the dead blond girl looking up at me was my sister.
    Draya!
    A scream ripped from my throat as I leapt away from her, and I turned, slamming into something soft but solid. I looked up into a pair of black-blue eyes hiding behind a tangle of wet curving black hair.
    Patrick?
    He reached out, and slowly traced the tips of his fingers down my cheek. And then his hand drifted to my shoulder where he gripped my shirt, pulling me toward him.
    “You should have run,” he whispered into my ear, his lips brushing my skin as I felt it again—the resistance of my body as the blade pushed through it.
    And then he released his hold on me, and I dropped to the ground.
    Cold, so very cold.
    There was a dark sadness in his eyes as he looked down at me. And disappointment. And I stared up into those eyes even as the world grew black and meaningless, and tried to push just one word past my lips.
    Why?

    There was the tiniest of creaks and my bedroom door opened slightly, but I didn’t move.
    “Nualla?” Nikki asked into the darkness in an uncertain voice.
    I didn’t answer, just continued to cry into the cold surface of the wooden floor.
    “Nualla—are you okay?” Nikki asked in a startled, frightened voice as she crouched down next to me.
    I just cried harder, because I was so frakkin’ far past “okay.”
    “What’s wrong?” she asked as she pulled me into her arms.
    I opened my mouth to tell her everything. About what it felt like to have a blade shoved through you. Or the true horror of walking through a sea of bodies, and having your best friend almost die in front of you. But I knew I would never be able to put words to the nameless terrors that haunted me every time I closed my eyes. And so I said nothing.
    “I know I’m not her, but we’ve… You’ve always been like a sister to me, Nualla, and… I want you to know I’ll always be here for you. To listen, or hold you, or tell you your skirts are too damn short,” Nikki promised in a quiet voice as she stroked my hair.
    I snorted out a bark of a laugh that sounded more like a wounded gasp.
    “Let’s get you off the floor at least, okay?”
    I nodded, and tried to swallow down another sob.
    Nikki helped me back up onto the bed, and sat down on the edge next to me. After a long moment she asked, “Do you want to go back to sleep?”
    I shook my head. No, never. Not back to those dreams.
    Nikki looked down at my trembling, cold hands. “What if I stayed with you?”
    And the irony of the reversal wasn’t lost on me. Every time Skye had been out of town when we were growing up, Nikki had always shared the big king-sized bed with me. Whether it was because she had been scared or lonely, I didn’t know, because I had never asked. All that had mattered was that she needed me. But now it was me who needed her .
    “Okay,” I managed to say past the lump in my raw throat.
    Nikki climbed into the bed, and pulled the covers over both of us. And I curled into a ball on my side, trying to force myself to close my eyes. I could feel the warmth of the blankets against my skin, but it wasn’t