Bound by Prophecy

by Melissa Wright

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. “Brianna 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.