“So,” Morgan said for the crowd, “you come here to make demands of me, little commonblood.”
Emily stepped forward, separating herself from the crowd at the entrance, centering her position between the Council men lining the walls. “I am giving you your last chance,” Emily said. She stared, unshaken, at the man who had killed her mother. The man who had held her mother captive, forced her into the only choice that could save her daughters’ lives.
Morgan shook his head, disbelief clear in his tone. “You people stand here as if you have some kind of say in the matter.” He gestured toward the door, the men lining the walls. “Do you think I’ve not covered these rooms with the highest security? Do you think I’ve not filled those halls with guns, with trained men who plan to stop each of you from leaving the property?” His voice dropped to a deadly tone. “Do you think that I cannot move you all at my will?”
Emily took a deep breath, and then gripped the handle of a blade that was strapped beneath the front hem of her shirt. Four knives, I thought, for gods’ sake, she has four knives.
Her left hand dropped in a strange motion, and I suddenly stilled. My eyes found Logan, who had eased slightly away from the other Division men. My stomach dropped, and instinctively, my mouth opened to stop them. But I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do. Any signal I gave would only alert Morgan. Her right hand came up, her grip loose and ready.
Morgan laughed. “Oh, look, Aern. Your prom queen brought a knife.” His words were light, plainly unconcerned she could strike him from that distance, and several of the younger men along the walls chuckled. But I could see the concentration in his features, the way his thumb pressed against the inside of the platinum ring at the base of his third finger. It wasn’t working. He was doing everything in his power to sway this girl, and it wasn’t working.
My chest swelled. He couldn’t take her. He could never steal her mind. I prayed he wouldn’t kill her, that he would wait, try and use her to bait Brianna, that there was some chance…
And then the corner of Emily’s mouth rose in a smirk, as if she, too, were laughing at his prom queen jab. When her knife landed solidly into the left side of his chest, it was as if all the air was sucked from the room.
“I was homeschooled,” she said evenly, a new knife suddenly in her hand, and I knew the words were to remind him of her mother.
Morgan let out a shocked huff of air, hand coming up to grip the hilt protruding from his chest, and the room broke into chaos.
“Here,” Logan shouted to the men behind him, pointing the location of a concealed keypad. Several soldiers moved on the group, whose position now seemed less like cattle being led to slaughter and more like a raging stampede. Brendan reached behind his back to retrieve a hidden revolver, apparently not so trusting as he had seemed, but shots were fired from the opposite side of the room and there was abruptly a frenzy of suits and soldiers searching for cover, aiming for kills, and locked in unarmed brawls.
Two men leapt onto the stage to grab Morgan, who had removed the blade and was screaming furious threats at anyone within earshot. I had broken loose of one restraint, but dislocated a thumb in the process and couldn’t free my other hand.
I yelled, “No!” toward Emily as she rushed the stage, but it couldn’t be heard over the din of battle.
Her eyes met Morgan’s as he was dragged behind the hidden door, each of them delivering an unspoken promise before the panel slid closed and broke their connection.
“Look out!” I screamed, and she rolled to the floor just as one of Morgan’s men took a shot at her from the lower level. He spun as a bullet tore through his chest, and she crawled over to cut my straps free.
“What are you doing?” I hissed as she cut the last tie and I could finally grab and shake her.
She stared helplessly for a moment, as if she had no good answer, and then I fell to the ground as my legs collapsed.
A cry escaped Emily and she crumpled over me. Panting, I looked down where her hand pressed tight against my hip, and realized I’d been shot. Again.
“Help!” Emily yelled. “Logan! Brendan!” and then, as though she could think of no other name, “Eric!”
I took a deep breath, and then pressed my own hand over hers and leaned forward.
“Aern,” Logan said, suddenly crouched in front of us.
I nodded and Emily slid her hand from under mine, and then she and Logan each took a shoulder.
“The east wall,” Logan said, and we moved clumsily across the platform toward the steps. Two of Logan’s men met us there, covering fire and helping to block our escape from view. As we came to the east entrance, I glanced at Logan, who seemed to know more than anyone else about the new ins and outs of Council.
“I’d already done the recon,” he said, gesturing at Emily as he released my shoulder. She was on my good side, and slipped easily beneath my arm to prop me up while he pressed a code into the keypad. Emily glanced at the other entrance, the one currently blocked by thirty of Council’s men, at the shouting and fighting and gunfire, and then, with a sick expression, impatiently back at Logan.
The door slid open and we were shuffling down the hall in an attempt at running, the two other men splitting up to scout ahead and cover our backs. Three downed guards littered the floor of the corridor.
“We broke in earlier,” Logan explained. “Took out the ones Morgan had planned to surprise us with, disabled some of their security systems. I would have done more, but we didn’t have long before we had to meet up and enter with Brendan. Couldn’t leave them alone.” We turned a corner. Two more men lay prostrate along the walls. “Most of them were tranquilizer darts,” he said, glancing sidelong at me as we moved. “The men weren’t quite ready to kill their brothers.”
“Down!” the scout yelled from the corner to the hallway in front of us. We crouched, Logan releasing my arm to ready his pistol, and gunfire erupted ahead of us.
Emily flinched as a bullet ripped through the arm of our frontman’s jacket. Several more rounds were fired, and then he turned to signal our backup before waving us forward.
“How much farther?” Emily asked, and I realized I was weighing a little too heavily on her slender frame.
Logan pressed a finger against his ear, and said, “Not much, they’ve got clearance at the northeast corner.”
Gunfire and shouting echoed behind us, and Logan picked up the pace to nearly drag me with them. Three Division men appeared in the corridor in front of us, guns at the ready, and ushered us the last ten feet to a door. Sunlight burst into the foyer, and I squinted, snow-blind as they rushed me across the lawn. More gunfire, the chopping sound of helicopter blades, the barking of orders, torturous groans from the wounded, and then I was face down on leather and Emily was curled into the floorboard beneath me.
I reached for her, my hand clutching hers tightly, and promptly passed out from loss of blood.
Chapter Twenty-four
Mending
I smelled Emily’s shampoo, and my mouth turned up at the corners. I was lying face down on clean cotton sheets, one arm under pillows, the other draped over the side of a bed. When I opened my eyes, she was inches away, watching me.
“Hi,” I said in a gravelly voice.
She bit her lip and swallowed hard. “Hi.”
The bedding beneath me was a deep shade of burgundy, and I knew we were no longer in the Fordham house. I glanced briefly around the room. Antique cherry dresser, highly ornate vintage armoire—this would be Southmont.
“How are you?” I asked Emily, and a shaky, breathless laugh escaped her. She’d been watching me for how long? Worried because I’d been shot. I rolled to my side to face her, cupped a hand on her cheek. “I’m fine.”
She was suddenly crying, and I pulled her to me for a hug. “What is it?” I whispered. “Is it Brianna?”
She tilted her head to look at me, wiping absently at her cheek. “No, I… I’m sorry. Everything is fine.” She took a deep breath. “B
rianna is downstairs. She’s had a lot of work to do, but she’s fine. Everyone, everyone is fine.”
I sat up, keeping her near as I moved to question her.
She waved a hand. “Logan said you would ask. He said they were trained men, but never hit a lethal mark. Something about brotherhood”—she took another deep breath, this one seemed to steady her—“and that Morgan hadn’t prepared them ahead of time. He said to tell you that was what saved us.” A bit of guilt crossed her face and she looked away.
“What else, Emily?”
She sighed heavily. “And me,” she said. “He said to tell you me.”
Relief flooded me, but I managed to narrow my eyes on her. “So you have Logan taking your side now?”
Her gaze swept up to mine, still damp with tears, and I could see her repentance. “It was so stupid,” she said. “I could have messed up everything.”
“It was stupid,” I said, bringing her chin back up. “But thank you.”
My wrists were clean and smooth. I stretched, testing out my side. “I feel great, actually. How long was I out?”
She glanced at the clock. “About six hours,” she said.
“No, I mean altogether.”
She looked at the clock once more, nodding. “Yeah, that’s about right. The doctors stitched you up a bit.” She glanced down, twisting the hem of her clean white shirt. “They made me go take a shower.” She looked sick at the memory of leaving me, shot in five or six places, and then swallowed hard. “And then Brianna saw you.”
It seemed to be an explanation, though at first I couldn’t understand why. This amount of damage, surgeon or no, should have taken much, much longer to heal. And then, slowly, her words fell together. Brianna was downstairs, she had a lot of work to do, but everyone was fine.
I stared at her.
She nodded.
I closed my eyes for one long moment, remembering the words they’d shared in the tunnel before our escape. Brianna had said she bore her mother’s gifts. Plural. An image of the wounds Emily had left on my arms came then, and the way they’d healed in minutes instead of days. Without the benefit of sleep.
“Brianna is a healer,” I breathed. I should have felt it in her touch, should have known.
“No,” Emily said, confused.
“But…” I glanced down, feeling nothing but well. “How…”
She grimaced. “Brianna didn’t heal you, Aern.” She placed a hand over my palm. “She fixed you.”
I sat still for so long, Emily’s head tilted, as if she wasn’t certain I was behind my vacant stare.
When I blinked, she spoke again. “She made those connections, Aern. The ones our mother taught her to.” I opened my mouth with a horrified protest, but she stopped me. “Not all of them, not the ones with the influence,” she explained. “Just to help you all heal faster.”
“Oh, Emily,” I breathed. “She should never have done that. Brendan, the others, if they know she has this—”
She held up a hand, stopping me again. “It isn’t like that, Aern. They already suspected she had a gift, but they don’t know. They don’t truly understand.” She glanced around the room, and I could tell she was speaking with caution. “They simply think she can help them recover faster. That’s all.”
Her eyes spoke more than her words could. None of them knew she was a prophet. None of them knew she could affect their sway. They didn’t know how their mother had died, that Brianna could give them Morgan’s power. That Emily was the chosen.
She let me process the information for a very long time, sitting silently before me, hand still resting patiently within mine. After everything that had happened, everything that could still come about, she was here.
The scope of it all fell into place. I was one of them, one of the monsters she’d been warned her whole life to stay away from, to protect Brianna from, and she had risked everything to save me. I yearned to draw her closer, to touch her face once more, gods, to press my lips to hers. But it was a betrayal.
I gripped her shoulders, placing her several inches back from where I sat. The action troubled her, but I held firm. “Emily,” I said, “there is something I have to tell you. I should have told you long ago.” My chest tightened. This was going to crush her. “It was about Brianna.” I rubbed a hand over my forearm. “But now it concerns you.”
She waited, distress playing across her features.
“The reason Morgan wanted Brianna—” Gods, how did I explain this? “The way that he needs her…”
Emily nodded. “The prophecy. They would create a union.”
“A bond,” I said. “An actual, tangible link.”
She moved closer. “I know, Aern. I understand. But Morgan will never have me.”
I stiffened, completely thrown by her words. By the idea of Morgan… “No,” I said, pushing her back. “That’s not what I’m trying to say.”
She stayed this time, waiting for me to finish.
“Not Morgan,” I explained. “The Division. The reason they want me, the reason they’ve been after me for so long”—I found my gaze wandering, focusing on anything but the expression on her face—“is that they’ve read the prophecy differently.” My throat went dry. “They think that the union, this bond, can be created by any heir to the dragon’s name. By either Morgan…” My eyes met hers. “Or me.”
She sat silent for an eternity of seconds, then said, “I know.”
I stared at her. And then, “What?”
“I know,” she said. “My mother told me, some time ago.” She shrugged. “I just didn’t think it would be me, is all.” Her voice dropped lower. “But it is me. And I’m glad, Aern. I’m glad that it is me, and that it’s you.”
A rush of emotion, too fast, too broad to sort into anything, surged through me, and I was moving for her. She had known. All along, she had known.
I pulled her into my embrace, and she drew tighter against me. She had been waiting for this, since I had found her mark, she had accepted it. Her arms around my shoulders, I pressed my lips hard against hers, regaining all of those moments I’d denied myself the touch, and she melted into me, her breath a soft moan of relief. The kiss was deep, fire and passion and unpinned desire. My hands slid lower down her back, squeezing her to me, and she slid her legs over mine. She smelled of sweet pea and strawberries, and something all her own.
Her head tilted back as she tried to catch her breath and I trailed kisses down the line of her neck, stopping just above her chest, at the tiny divot centering her collarbone, to collect myself. She was mine, she was in my arms, and she was mine.
My hand slipped beneath the hem of her shirt, finding the heat of her lower back as my mouth skimmed over her throat on its return to hers. The kiss became gentle, teasing, and soft. My hand slid over the length of her thigh, and then up, touching the skin between her open collar, the pulse hammering at the base of her neck, and into the caramel waves of her hair. Her eyes came open, hazy and gratified, and the soft, deep green of the sea. Our lips drew apart and we simply watched one another, both of us knowing we could stare into these eyes forever, and then it happened. And it was a coming home.
It was peace, settling deep within my chest, a feeling of rightness. It made me whole, and it threatened to tear me apart. A longing so intense it was painful tore at me, and I knew I would never get enough of her. I could never leave her. It would always be Emily.
Emily.
I realized I’d spoken then, murmured her name, and she gasped.
“Did you feel that?” she whispered.
We sat pressed together, face to face, but it was as if our souls were suddenly seamed, bound so tightly as to be one.
“It’s the bond,” I said.
She stared at me in stunned astonishment. “It’s like, like my insides are tied.”
I automatically gave her space. “Is that what it feels like to you?”
I could hear the worry in my tone, and I realized I’d been afraid of what it would be for
her. None of the elders had known how the bond would affect the chosen, what it would do to one without our power.
Panic slammed into me. What if it has enslaved her? Like the sway.
She blinked, searching my face. “No, it’s like… Like lacing up a good pair of running shoes—”
The fear waned at her denial, but when her words sank in, the short-lived determination to hold my expression faltered.
“… that feeling, when you have them good and snug,” she said, her gesturing hand falling to rest over my heart. “That security.”
My chest eased. I felt a tug at the corner of my mouth. I cleared my throat. “Did you just compare our bond to running shoes?”
She stared at me a moment, searching for a better comparison for something so indescribable. Her brow curved speculatively. “A five-point racing harness?”
I laughed, and then pulled her closer. The words felt right in the old tongue, and I knew she would understand them. Loosely translated, the sentiment was something like, “love’s embrace,” as I spoke them low, to the only woman who would ever hear them again.
Her skin flushed and she repeated them back before leaning forward, suddenly desperate for another kiss.
Chapter Twenty-five
Strategy
We lay together, my thumb pressed into the crook of her elbow, fingers wrapped around her skin, while my lips traced feather-light kisses down the line of her jaw.
“Aern,” she whispered, trying to bring my attention to the insistent knock at the door.
I released her arm and slid my hand lower, to the bend of her knee, drawing it firmly over my hip. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, pressing slow kisses to the delicate skin below her ear. “Nothing else matters.”
She sighed, but it was the wrong kind of sigh. She pressed a hand against my chest to look at me, a grimace forming on her perfect lips. “I’m afraid it does matter,” she said.
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