Emily returned her gaze to the lake, letting them catch up and unsure what she would say when they reached her. Part of her ached to apologize, wanted to say she was sorry for forcing them to choose between Michael and her.
But most of her wasn’t sorry at all. She knew what she had to do.
Ever since that first night after returning from the island and the incredible revelations there, she’d been haunted by a little boy’s face, topped with golden hair and framed by a pair of spiraling horns.
“Promise me…” he’d implored.
And she had promised.
Celine and Corbbmacc stopped before her, looking up at her from the edge of the sand below.
“I don’t think I’ll be climbin’ that just now,” Celine called, a slight tartness in her voice. “So why don’t yeh come down ’ere and talk to us proper, Em.”
For a moment, Emily thought about just staying where she was. She hadn’t asked them to come out to her. All she’d wanted was some time to herself—time to think.
But of course, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to them, and it wasn’t fair to herself, either.
She stood, feeling a slight twinge of pain in her shoulder where an arrow had pierced her flesh during that last hellish battle on the cliffside, and made her way back down the embankment to her friends. The wound was gone, healed by Celine’s unique power, but the scar remained.
As she reached the sand, she opened her mouth, having decided on the apology anyway, but Celine cut across her.
“Shut up, Em. Yeh’re not sorry, and you shouldn’t be none, neither. Yeh’ve got to go back for Daniel, and that’s the end of it.”
Emily closed her mouth, feeling a flush rise in her cheeks. She looked down at the stretch of sand between them to avoid looking at Celine’s worn and aged face.
Rascal fluttered down from Celine’s shoulder and began winding his way around Emily’s ankles. He mewed softly, looking up at her with those strange silver eyes of his.
The silence seemed to stretch out interminably.
“We’re going with you,” Corbbmacc said at last. “Celine and I, I mean.”
Surprised, Emily raised her head to look at him.
“You’re coming with me? But what about Mona?”
“Mona will be fine. She has Garrett. She doesn’t need me anymore.” He stopped, and this time it was Corbbmacc who dropped his gaze, color rising up his neck. “She never did…not really, anyway.”
“What about the others?”
“Garrett and Mona are goin’ with Michael and the wizard,” Celine said, her tone making it clear what she thought of that decision. “’Aven’t got a clue about that Haake fellow, though. He’s off sulkin’ somewheres. S’pect he’ll go off on ’is own, but yeh never know.”
There was another awkward pause.
“Thank you,” Emily said at last, and it wasn’t until the wave of relief and gratitude had crested inside her that she realized just how terrified she’d been that she might have had to go after Daniel alone.
Celine snorted. “Don’t thank me yet, Em. Wait until yeh see just ’ow much I’m gonna slow yeh down.”
“I don’t care, Cel,” Emily told her, and it was the truth. She stepped forward and embraced her friend. Corbbmacc let his arm fall to his side from around Celine’s shoulders.
Emily looked at him over Celine’s head. She and Corbbmacc had come a long way since their flight from Seven Skies. What had begun as mutual enmity had grown into grudging respect, and finally friendship. She was grateful.
“Does the wizard know what you’ve decided?” she asked, still holding Celine to her.
“Not yet,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning down. “We’ll have to tell him soon, though. They’re planning on leaving tomorrow morning.”
“He suspects, though,” Celine said. “Yeh can see it in the way he ’olds ’is shoulders. He’s nervous, he is. Ain’t gonna be happy none that more’n ’alf ’is feckin’ holy trio, or whatever we’re supposed to be, are off and outta ’is sight.”
“Fuck him,” Emily said viciously. “It isn’t up to him.”
“Rascal, no. Come back ’ere, li’l one,” Celine called.
The girls broke apart, and Emily turned to see Rascal up near the fallen tree. He was digging through the bushes, looking for all the world like a dog searching for a buried bone.
“Rascal!”
The kitsper lifted his head, glanced back at his mistress over one wing, and seemed to give her a look that said, “Come and stop me, then.” He went back to pawing through the thickets.
“Damn idiot’s gonna get a thorn in ’is paw,” Celine muttered.
“I’ll get him,” Emily said, smiling a little, and she scrambled back up the embankment, ignoring the thorns that tore at her clothes.
By the time she’d reached him, Rascal had almost disappeared beneath one of the berry bushes. Only his rump was visible amidst the bright, ripening fruit.
“C’mon, boy,” Emily said, and when he ignored her, she nervously reached out, and keeping an eye on his tail, clasped his hindquarters between her hands and pulled him out from the bushes.
It was harder to do than it should’ve been, and as his head and forepaws cleared the greenery, Emily saw why.
Rascal had his claws hooked deep into a dirty leather pouch, and he looked up at Emily with an expression of smug satisfaction.
Emily let go of him, and he dropped the pouch at her feet, batted it once triumphantly with a paw as if it were a gift of a dead bird, and then flew back down to Celine, his mission apparently accomplished.
Emily picked up the pouch, a bit nonplussed. It was heavy, despite its size, and she hefted it in the palm of one hand, wondering what could possibly be inside that would’ve attracted the kitsper.
“What is it?” Corbbmacc called up to her.
Emily frowned down at the little bag. It didn’t look familiar at all. Strange.
She turned it over, and a flash of sunlight glinted in her eye.
Dangling from the end of the pouch’s drawstrings was a small bronze disk. It spun and swayed, light reflecting off its shiny, burnished surface.
She reached out and took hold of the strings, stopping their motion, and tilted the disk away from the bright sunshine.
Etched on its surface was the image of a sword being broken over a large boulder.
She knew that symbol, of course. It was the insignia of Marianne’s guard, of which she had, however briefly, been a part.
And now, too, she remembered something else. She remembered standing on one of those ledges far above, watching Marianne and Marcom retreat as the fire raged toward them and the life ran out of her.
Marcom had thrown something, hadn’t he? In the aftermath of all that had happened, she’d completely forgotten that. She’d seen him throw it out over the abyss, but she hadn’t been able to tell what it was.
But it was this, wasn’t it? This little leather pouch that bore the mark of Marianne’s guard.
She made her way back down to the others, still clutching the little bag in her fist and staring at the disk that swung, almost hypnotically, in the morning light.
“What is it?” Corbbmacc asked again as Emily reached them.
She held it out to the others, still clutching it tightly. There was something hard inside—something that felt strangely familiar.
“Marcom threw this,” she said. “I’m sure of it. I remember him doing it…when I was up on the cliff…”
She let the thought trail away, leaving the word “dying” unspoken. She didn’t want to think about that—not now, and not ever again.
Corbbmacc frowned at it.
Emily’s fingers went to pull the pouch’s mouth open.
“Wait!” Celine said sharply. “It might be dangerous. I dunno if yeh should open that, Em.”
Emily paused, considering.
“It’s been sitting here for three days,” she said, “and I don’t think Rascal would lead us to
something if it was dangerous. He can sense stuff like that, can’t he?”
Celine didn’t answer, but her face darkened.
“Mayhap,” she said at last. “But be careful.”
Emily looked at Corbbmacc.
“What do you think?”
“Open it,” he said shortly.
Emily reached for the drawstrings once again, fumbled with them, then tugged the mouth of the pouch open.
Cautiously, she reached inside, and her fingertips found a piece of paper. She pulled it out, unfolded it, and stared in dumbstruck astonishment.
The page was tattered and dirty, but the photograph printed on it was still perfectly recognizable. It showed Emily herself, standing and laughing with Casey and the others of her hockey team at Lindsey High.
“I remember that,” Celine said. “Yeh showed it to me.”
Emily didn’t respond. There was a knot in her throat, threatening to strangle her, as she stared down at her friends…her team…her rink…
…Remember your friends…
Casey would’ve been worth going back for, she thought, tears stinging her eyes. I didn’t have much, but I had her.
She felt Celine’s hand on her arm, and she looked away, blinking rapidly.
At last, her gaze drifted back, moving between Celine and Corbbmacc. She took in their concerned and trusting faces and knew that, despite it all, she had made the right choice. They were her family, every bit as much as Casey had been. Moreover, they’d needed her; maybe they still did.
“What else is in there?” Celine prompted gently. Shaking her hair out of her eyes, Emily reached once more into the pouch.
Somehow she knew what she would find before she pulled them out. First, the smooth, scuffed disk of a hockey puck, bearing the crest of the Lindsey Timbre Wolves. It was the one Coach Anders had given her, just after that last hockey game.
Last, scratched and battered, came her phone. The lower third of the screen was cracked, but still mostly intact, if a little worse for wear.
She stared at these things, relics from her past—from another universe—and wondered why they were here. Why had Marcom, after her betrayal, brought them with him? Why had he risked Marianne’s wrath to give them to her amidst the flames of the conflagration Emily had made of Marianne’s insidious flora?
“What are those?” Corbbmacc asked, reaching out to touch the smooth glass of her phone.
Emily held the gifts—were they gifts?—for another long moment, then carefully packed them away back inside the pouch.
“They’re mine,” she said quietly. After tying the pouch to her belt, she turned and began making her way back down the beach toward the wizard’s cave.
CHAPTER TWO
Emily paused at the mouth of the cave, waiting for her eyes to penetrate the darkness. Her own shadow stretched out before her, huge and elongated, merging with the black depths. It made her seem taller, more formidable, as she imagined she’d been in another time—in another place.
She blinked, and Michael came into focus. He was alone, still seated on the same stone he’d occupied earlier. He stared down at the place where his hands rested, clasped in his lap. Though his face was lost in shadow, she could see sunlight gleaming from the fastenings of his tattered clothes and from the streaks of red and gold in his beard. He seemed so much older now, but how much of that had to do with his restored sense of self and how much with the aftermath of all he’d been through, Emily wasn’t sure.
His shoulders stiffened, and he looked up at her, suddenly aware of her presence.
“May I come in?” she asked awkwardly, her gaze sweeping the deserted cavern.
“It’s not my home,” he said with a little laugh. “I think what you mean to ask is if we can talk, and we can.” He motioned to the stone beside him, where she’d been sitting earlier before storming from the cave.
Emily hesitated a moment longer, looking back over her shoulder and down the stretch of beach behind her. Corbbmacc and Celine had followed her but were now sitting at the water’s edge, apparently deep in conversation. Either Celine had needed to rest, or they were giving Emily time to talk to Michael. Either way, she was grateful.
Slowly, she made her way into the cool interior of the cave. The scrape and crunch of her boots through the sand and gravel that littered the stone floor seemed very loud as it reverberated down the passage. How far into the mountain did this tunnel go, anyway? She didn’t know. Had the wizard retreated into its depths, or was he somewhere else, already plotting new ways to manipulate her? …Manipulate them all…
She sat beside Michael again, unable to look at him. Needing something to do with her hands, she drew her sword from the loop on her belt and held it across her knees, running one hand along its cool, smooth blade. The feel of the steel beneath her fingers was comforting; it brought with it images—images of horses and men in armor and banners fluttering in the wind. It also brought a sudden and intense pang of nostalgia. How many times had she sat just this way, running her hands over the smooth shaft of a hockey stick? A hundred? A thousand?
Angrily, she pushed those thoughts away, focusing instead on the way the meager light bounced and reflected off the metal between her fingers. In their own way, those glints were comforting, too.
“The wizard is very angry with you,” Michael said at last. There was no rancor in his voice, only a mild sort of amusement.
Emily waited, sure that he’d go on, and when he didn’t, she finally raised her head and looked at him.
He was studying her, his gaze intent, curious, and full of a simple empathy. It was still so strange to see him that way, after all the time she’d traveled with him while his mind had been broken. He was entirely here now, not lost in some world only he could see, and the reality of that was both wonderful and terrible at the same time.
But the boy—the one she’d seen calling out to her from a frosted window—was still there too. He wasn’t suffering now, at least not in the way he had been, and he wasn’t asking for her to come and help him. She’d already done that; she’d already brought him back from wherever he’d been. Now he was offering her his help. He was telling her, with his eyes, that he understood, that he was with her—really with her. Here was someone who knew, his face seemed to say; here was someone who would help her find her way.
“Do you remember any of it?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Michael blinked. “Any of what?”
“Any of…of what happened to you? Of what was going on while you were…” She trailed off, unsure how to describe how he’d been.
Michael’s face darkened, and this time, it was he who looked away.
“I’m sorry,” she said at once. “Too many questions, right? I shouldn’t have asked.”
Michael raised a hand, and Emily fell silent.
“No,” he said, still not looking at her. “It’s fine. It isn’t you.” He kicked a pebble with the toe of his boot. It danced across the floor toward the cave entrance and the sand that lay beyond. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that, really.”
He sighed and sat silent for a long moment, apparently thinking how to phrase what he wanted to say. Outside, the howl of the wind came to them, its voice seeming to almost make the stone around them vibrate with its song.
Emily’s fingers moved faster along the blade of her sword, taking comfort from its hard, sharp edges.
“I remember snatches of things that happened,” he said at last. “There are glimpses of places and people, but they are all lost in a jumble and shrouded in mist. Half-remembered dreams…nothing more. Most of it feels like a dream to me now.”
Emily started to speak, but Michael shook his head, and she fell silent.
“I know you were kind to me. I know that I must’ve been difficult at times. But most of it is dim and confused.”
Now he did look at her, and Emily could see much more of that desperate, hurting boy she’d shared a glance with through a mesh of thorny vines
.
“It’s what I remember from before all that happened that haunts me. I can’t really remember the cold nights spent on a damp stone floor, or the pain of the thorns that drew blood. Those things don’t come to me in my dreams at night.”
“Then what?” she asked, self-conscious of posing yet another question, yet unable to help herself.
There was another long pause, and then Michael closed his eyes and drew in a slow, shaky breath.
“Derek,” he whispered, and the word seemed to float on the air, riding his exhalation like a wave.
She waited for him to go on, but he remained silent, lost in his own thoughts.
After a moment, he seemed to shake himself free of his reverie, and he straightened.
“So you’re going after Daniel, then.”
It wasn’t a question, but Emily nodded anyway, a twinge of annoyance at the sudden change of topic. Why wouldn’t he confide in her? She had been Derek—or would be. If he’d been so close to her future self then, why wouldn’t he trust her now? It was all such a tangled web, and it left her feeling drained.
“Do you have any idea where to find him? Did you arrange some meeting place if you both were to escape the mines?”
“No.”
In truth, her only plan was to go back to the mines and look for Daniel, Maddy, and the others there. She had some vague notion of finding and following a trail that they might’ve left behind them.
“The destruction of the mine was days ago,” Michael went on. “If your friend is still there, he’s probably no longer in need of your help.”
Emily felt tears sting the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away and met Michael’s gaze.
“He’s not dead,” she said with a certainty she did not entirely feel. “And I told him I’d go back for him.”
Michael smiled a little and reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder. The touch was casual, and the weight of it calmed her; it felt almost familiar.
“I’m not trying to talk you out of going,” he said gently. “But I do know that you have a tendency to follow your heart without listening to your head. Lord knows you’re good at thinking on your feet. I just want you to think a bit now, before you leave, while there’s still time to carefully weigh your options.”
Haven Divided (The Dragon's Brood Cycle Book 2) Page 4