She flinched and tried to pull away from me. “What?”
I pointed at her sister’s retreating back and whispered, “Tegan. Come on.”
I didn’t wait for an answer. I just sprinted toward the sidewalk Tegan was on. To my relief, Emersyn ran beside me. She was breathing heavy and her eyes were guarded, but at least she’d gone with me. I refocused my attention on Tegan just in time to see her slip inside a pair of glass double doors. Emersyn and I were only a few feet behind her. We shoved the doors open and raced inside. A thick, intoxicating smell of chlorine burned my nose. I cringed and shook my head.
Emersyn coughed and spun around in circles. “Where is she? Where did she go? TEGAN?” she yelled out but was only met with silence.
I frowned and looked around. We were at the indoor swimming pool. It wasn’t a big building. Well, aside from the sheer size it. Three glass walls surrounded the Olympic-sized swimming pool. The fourth wall had doors that led into the locker rooms, which attached to the gymnasium. Translation: it took five seconds to realize there wasn’t another living soul in there with us.
Oh, you two are adorable, Tegan said into my mind.
When Emersyn gasped, I knew she’d heard it, too.
So determined to ignore the attraction. Well, since you just did me a favor, I’ll give you one back. Have fun…
“What does that mean?” I asked and looked around.
“The doors! Run!” Emersyn shouted and sprinted for the glass doors.
But it was too late. A wall of water shot up from the ground, blocking us from the doors. I spun on my toes to go for the other doors, but Tegan was one step ahead of us. The pool emptied in one giant tidal wave. The water swirled around the room, covering all of the walls and trapping us inside.
Chapter Thirty-One
Emersyn
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me, Tegan!” I screamed and pounded my fists against the wall of water. It was no use, but it helped with my frustration. Talk about meddling!
“Uhhh…she won’t…drown us, will she?”
I frowned and glanced over my shoulder at Deacon. “She’s not a monster, Deacon.”
He threw his hands up. “That shoe is starting to look like it might fit, Emersyn.”
“She’s not a monster,” I repeated, though I wasn’t sure if it was more for him or me. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Tennessee’s number.
“Where are you?” he said in greeting, his voice low and rough.
I wasn’t offended. I was used to him by now. “The indoor pool. We followed Tegan. She’s trapped us in here.”
“Coming,” he said, then hung up.
I sighed. “Tennessee is coming to get us out of here.”
“Good. Maybe by then, you’ll have an answer for what the hell that was.”
“I have no idea what my sister is up to, Deacon. I’m not a mind reader.”
“I’m not talking about her,” he grumbled.
I frowned and turned to face him. He stood a few feet behind me with his arms crossed over his chest.
I shook my head. “What does that mean?”
He raised both eyebrows and gestured at something behind me. “What the hell was that back there, Emersyn?”
My pulse quickened. “Excuse me?”
“Do you want to join your sister? Does it feel good to torture something for fun?” he snapped. His cheeks flushed pink.
I opened my mouth then shut it. My mind replayed the moment in question. I shivered. “I don’t know… It just…happened. It’s like I don’t realize what I’m doing while I’m doing it.”
Deacon sighed and rested his hands on his hips. He just stared at me.
“It scares me,” I whispered. I looked down at the ground and shrugged. There, I said it. I admitted it out loud to someone.
“It scares me, too,” he said softly. “If I hadn’t stopped you…I don’t know what would’ve happened.”
I didn’t, either, and I didn’t want to know. But then an idea came to mind. I stepped up closer to him. “Deacon, I need you to stop me if I ever do that again. I mean it. I need you to help me. Use your magic, your power of persuasion. Please. Just don’t let me be like that.”
“Why, so you can hate me even more than you already do? Yeah, that sounds fair.” He scoffed and turned away from me. “We don’t have to talk about it. I know you don’t want to.”
I didn’t want to, but I heard Royce’s words in my mind. One sleeping potion for one conversation. I’d made that deal. I needed to hold up my end of it. Plus…Deacon deserved it. He had just stopped me from being a monster, and he’d covered for me the night I got arrested. The least I could do was give him this talk. My palms were sweaty and my heart pounded in my chest. I didn’t know why this conversation made me so uncomfortable, but it was time to put on my big girl pants and get it over with.
I licked my lips and moved closer. “I don’t hate you, Deacon.”
I saw his eyes roll in the reflection of the water. “Yeah, could’ve fooled me.”
“I don’t, I swear.” I sighed. “I didn’t even hate you when you first got here.”
He spun on his toes and turned wild purple eyes on me. “You shouldn’t have to swear it, Emersyn! That glyph has spread halfway down your sister’s arm. Now, I don’t have to get your shirt off to know there’s one just like it growing on your skin. It’s about the size of your fist, glowing a pretty ocean blue color with little purple vines trying to spread out from it. Right?”
He was right, of course. I just didn’t know where he was going with this. I didn’t want to know.
“You’re my soulmate, Emersyn. I shouldn’t be concerned that you hate me, for Goddess’s sake.” He ran his hand over his face and started pacing the cream tiled floors.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
He spun back around to face me with wide violet eyes. “Say what?”
I sighed and threw my hands up in the air. “I am sorry, Deacon. You are right. You shouldn’t feel like I hate you. I don’t hate you.”
He shook his head. “Then why don’t I believe you?”
My chest burned like he’d just stabbed me. My heart sank. God, I really am a monster.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and prayed this wasn’t going to bite me in the ass later. “I wasn’t prepared for you, Deacon. I wasn’t ready. I’m still not ready. I was a normal southern country girl a few months ago. The captain of the cheerleading squad and homecoming queen. Then everything changed in the blink of an eye. This…this life terrifies me. I didn’t ask for it. Imagine for a moment what it would be like to be sixteen and be told you’re a witch, then to have all these scary powers unlocked and set free without knowing how to control it.”
“I know that had to be difficult…”
“Do you? Do you really know, though?” I ran my hands through my hair and tugged. “My whole life was a lie. I was robbed of so many things, then just thrown into the deep end and expected to swim. I’m drowning here, Deacon. I’m reaching for the ladder for dry land and only finding air. She may be my twin, but I’m not Tegan. I can’t take all this in stride.”
“You’re right. I can’t fathom what this must be like for you,” he whispered. “But you’re doing better than you think.”
I scoffed. “No, I’m not. I’m struggling. I want to be better, I want to be what everyone expects me to be. The Empress isn’t an easy role to fill. After Libby died…I just wanted to focus on me so that I could be what everyone needs me to be…so that we don’t lose anyone else. If I had been better, stronger, I might’ve been able to prevent Libby from getting hurt. I should’ve been able to. And I don’t say that because I don’t want you here…”
“Because you don’t want your friends to lose anyone else.”
I nodded and swallowed through the lump in my throat. I had to keep myself together or I may never survive. “This may sound funny, but I was so happy that I wasn’t attracted to anyone in The Coven. And none of
the guys went for me. Granted, they’re forbidden to by law, but it was such a relief. No distractions, no hurt feelings and awkwardness. I had my sister and Royce. I was good. Then you show up with your stupid, pretty purple eyes and that stupid smile that drives me nuts—yes, that one. Stop it.”
He laughed and covered his mouth.
“I don’t want to like you, Deacon. I can’t afford to like you.” I shook my head. “But I do, and it annoys me because I didn’t even get a choice in the matter.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
I pointed to my chest, to the spot that marked me as his. “It’s not fair that my free will was stolen from me. That I’m supposed to just give my heart to a boy I just met, that I don’t even know…to a boy with a reputation that scares me almost as much as my power does.”
“My reputation?” He cocked his head to the side. “What have you heard about me and from whom? Was it Royce?”
I shook my head. “Tennessee…actually…”
His face fell. “Tennessee?”
“It was the day you arrived. At Hidden Kingdom. I had unknowingly interrupted a rather heated moment between Tegan and Tenn, in which apparently he told her to stay away from you. He said you were reckless, dangerous, self-centered, and a total player. Tegan was venting to me about Tennessee.” I held my hand up to stop him from speaking. “I didn’t know they were soulmates then. If I had, I would’ve realized it was typical jealous behavior from a boy who felt threatened by the pretty new guy in town flirting with his girl.”
“I wasn’t flirting with Tegan. Okay, maybe a little, but only until you walked up. I knew right away what you were to me. I knew what this meant—and besides, Tenn wasn’t even there.”
“He was at Hidden Kingdom. He followed her into the bathroom.”
“Fantastic.” He walked over to the table on the far side of the room and sat down on the bench. “What did Royce have to say about me? He says you’re his best friend.”
That made me smile. “He is, and he told me to give you a chance to show who you really are. He said we didn’t give you that opportunity.”
He arched one eyebrow. “And have you?”
“We haven’t had many opportunities to really talk…” I tucked my hair behind my ears and walked closer. “Though that’s admittedly mostly my fault.”
“And because of that, you don’t really know me.”
“You’re right. I don’t. But I’m here now, and I do like you, and I do want to know who you are for real…not this reputation of yours.”
He laughed but not in a humorous way. “That’s the thing about reputations, Em. There’s always a little truth mixed in there.”
I sat down on the bench beside him and crossed my legs under me. “So tell me your side of the story.” The weird thing was, now that I was talking to him, I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to know him, the real him. I hated myself for not asking sooner.
He leaned back against the table and scrubbed his face roughly with his palms. “I grew up in Eden. Did you know that? Life was perfect back then. My parents and I were super close. We used to go on all these fun adventures together, and they’d teach me magic. We’d take trips down here to visit Henley and Royce. Man, they were my favorite. I remember Tennessee back then, too. I wanted to be his friend so bad. He was just the coolest guy. All I wanted to do was to be like them. I trained and studied real hard so I could do well at Edenburg. That all changed when I was ten.”
“What happened?” I whispered.
“My parents sent me down here to visit for two weeks, all by myself. They’d never done that. I was ecstatic. Then Kessler was telling me all about Edenburg and the four Suits of the school. He told me how each of them could provide me with a career to make an impact in the world. That was all I wanted, to be a hero like my cousins. To make a difference.” He shook his head and picked at his fingernails. “I remember calling my friend to tell him what I learned about Edenburg and to ask which Suit he hoped to be claimed by… Then he told me I moved. He told me that I moved. Sure enough, turned out my parents got a big promotion that moved us to Manhattan…and they shipped me off to Florida while they packed up. I didn’t even get to go home to say bye to my friends.”
My heart sank for him. “That’s terrible.”
“I didn’t handle it well, and as a result, Tennessee and all them got into a lot of trouble because of me. I thought Royce would never speak to me again.” He groaned. “I hated my parents for a long time for what they did to me, to us as a family. We went from building pillow forts to fancy operas. I was miserable, so I acted out.”
“Are there witches our age up there?” I hated the idea that he was alone up there.
“Oh yeah, and they’re the worst. Pretentious, rude, spoiled rotten. At first, I stayed away from them, but then they started bullying me. So…I went into survival mode. I became one of them.” He turned and met my eyes. “Our community up there… Well, we’re rich. There’s no such thing as innocent children up there, not in our world. I went from being a ten-year-old who wanted to save the world to a twelve-year-old who did drugs and slept around.”
My stomach turned. “Twelve?”
He smirked. “I told you, reputations come from truths. I’m not proud of those years and the things I did, the girls I was with. I lost myself for a long time.”
“Sometimes I feel like I still haven’t found myself,” I whispered before I could stop myself. This wasn’t about me; it was about him.
But he just smiled down at me. “How could you when it was hidden from you for so long? Our magic is an integral part of our souls. Then again, maybe you’re a better person for growing up without it.”
“How did you find yourself?”
He shrugged. “I had to play the game. I lied. A lot. I manipulated people and situations. And, like Tennessee said, I had to become self-centered. I had to focus on me and what I needed to do to get out alive. I told myself I just had to survive a few more years, then I could leave. I studied every bit of magic I could. I learned our history. I learned about the Sapiens’ version of history. I made friends with anyone who could help me in any way, then I used them. I pretended I was still the guy New York had made me, so they wouldn’t notice the ways I had changed. I nourished the reputation I hadn’t meant to make for myself in order to prevail, and now it’s tearing me down.”
For a moment we were silent. He stared at the ground, and I watched his profile. There was so much more to his story, to his life, and it startled me how badly I wanted to hear every bit of it. A sense of protectiveness surged inside me. I wanted to punish everyone who ever hurt him, and it disconcerted me.
I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his cheek. His skin was soft and warm. My face burned with heat. “Thank you for opening up to me, for trusting me with all of that.”
He turned toward me and smiled. His purple eyes twinkled. “Thank you for letting me. I want you to like me, Em.”
“I do like you, Deacon.” And the crazy thing was, it was true. I did. “I’ve been trying to wrestle the reputation with the guy I saw in front of me every day, and they didn’t seem to match. It scared me. I feared your pretty face was somehow preventing me from seeing something awful... You being the soulmate I didn’t sign up for was just one thing too many on my plate.”
“I don’t want to be a burden to you, Emersyn.” He turned all the way around to face me. “I’m not asking to be your boyfriend. I’m not asking for anything romantic. I just want to be your friend.”
I frowned. “That’s all?”
He shrugged. “That’s everything, Buttercup. I want to be your person, even if that’s strictly platonic. When you need something, I want to be the one you call.”
“But we’re soulmates. We supposed to be a couple.”
“We’re teenagers, Em.” He smiled. “We don’t need to be in love yet. I hope one day your heart will want mine in that way, but it doesn’t need to be now.”
“It doesn’t?”
“How can we fall for someone else when we don’t know who we are yet?”
That was exactly what I’d wondered myself after I found out he was my soulmate. “Exactly!”
“But the Goddess and the universe know something we don’t.” He reached out and tapped on my chest just under my collarbone. “I want us to figure that out together.”
I smiled. And for the first time in weeks, I felt some of the pressure lighten. “I’d like that.”
“Emersyn? Deacon?” Tennessee’s voice broke through our little moment, shattering the bubble we’d been lost in.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, we’re here.”
The water rippled then poured into the empty pool. In the flash of a second, every drop of water was back where it belonged.
Tennessee stomped over to us. Brown demon blood dripped from his sword onto the tile. “Sorry. We had another dino across campus. You all right?”
“Yeah, we’re fine.”
“Tenn, Tegan is here somewhere—”
He shook his head. “She’s not here. I’d feel her.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Emersyn
“Is it dead?” Braison yelled in between breaths.
I was the closest to the demon, so I walked over. There was a nasty gash above my left knee, so it was more of a hobble. I winced through the pain shooting up my leg with each step. The demon was a disgusting blob, like a giant slug. It lay on the dirt not moving, but I couldn’t have said for sure if it was dead. I am not touching that. A piece of a pole the demon had broken glistened in the sunlight next to my foot, so I summoned my magic and stabbed the monster with it. Chunky green mud oozed out of the puncture wound, but the demon didn’t move.
I pulled the metal out then stabbed him again. Something warm and soft touched my arm, and it sent little bolts of energy shooting through my body like electricity. I glanced over my shoulder and found Deacon’s purple eyes watching me. He arched one eyebrow. I opened my mouth to ask what he wanted, but then his fingers slid down to my wrist. My words dried on my tongue. His touch wasn’t inappropriate, but my body had other ideas. My pulse quickened. Heat pumped through my body. Butterflies danced around in my stomach.
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