Chosen (9781742844657)

by Morgansen, Shayla

  ‘It happened a little while ago,’ he said delicately, watching her closely for signs of a breakdown or explosion. ‘I’m not sure when, exactly. I’ve known for about a week. It was quick,’ he added.

  Tears had begun to stream down Emmanuelle’s face.

  ‘How?’ she asked brokenly, pronouncing every phoneme in the word.

  ‘Lisandro.’

  I walked over and sat down on one of the stiff-looking armchairs in front of the desk. It was comfier than it looked. Still, neither councillor noticed me. What had Lisandro done? I didn’t know what his capabilities were. This Peter person, whoever he was, seemed to have died, and according to Renatus, Lisandro was somehow involved.

  ‘But how?’ Emmanuelle insisted, although she was shaking by now.

  ‘Quickly,’ Renatus said again. When she looked up and opened her mouth to press him for details, he said, ‘I’d rather not discuss the rest. What’s important is that you remember him as he was to you.’

  Emmanuelle was silent for several moments, trying to suppress sobs.

  ‘It was a while ago,’ she whispered after a wait. ‘The night the students came ‘ere. There was a note in my garden, I found it today. It was dated March the first. Peter’s handwriting. It just said, “Forgive me, love”. Why would ‘e call me that? ‘e never said it before. Did ‘e…?’

  ‘Did he mean it?’ Renatus finished for her in a quiet voice. Emmanuelle nodded, crying openly now. ‘We believe so. Don’t you?’

  Again, she nodded. She managed to choke out something unintelligible, and had to take several deep breaths before she could say it properly.

  ‘‘e never told me,’ she whispered. ‘Why wouldn’t ‘e just tell me? Things might be different. Peter…’

  ‘I’m sure he had his reasons. Maybe he thought he had more time.’

  ‘I always thought ‘e would come back. I hoped.’ Emmanuelle stressed the word enough to make the h sound. She covered her face with her hands.

  ‘We all did,’ Renatus reminded her softly. She slowly dropped her hands and met his eyes.

  Suddenly, Emmanuelle stepped forward and threw herself into Renatus’s arms, wrapping her arms around his neck and back. She pressed her mouth against his and kissed him fiercely.

  Shocked again, I jumped to my feet. This was unexpected. Emmanuelle, who had seemed to know so little about the headmaster when Sterling had badgered her, who had seemed even resentful of his power and magical abilities, who had spoken to him so coolly the other morning, was involved with Renatus?

  Emmanuelle’s manicured fingers slid through her colleague’s soft black hair as she kissed him deeply. Renatus leaned backwards, lightly knocking the closest pile of papers. A few sheets drifted to the floor. Emmanuelle pressed herself close and held him tight, as though concerned that he, too, might disappear from her life.

  My cheeks burned with embarrassment. I wished I could disappear. I was trapped in an office, watching my two most beautiful teachers make out. I considered running to the door and slamming my fists against the heavy oak until it opened, but then thankfully, I was given a reprieve.

  Renatus’s hands tightened around Emmanuelle’s upper arms and he pulled her away from him.

  ‘Emmanuelle,’ he said. ‘Stop.’

  It was a simple command, but without much force. Emmanuelle shook her head childishly and shook him off.

  ‘No,’ she said, pulling him close again for a second kiss. Again, it wasn’t long before Renatus ended it, but while it lasted, it was intense. Emmanuelle kissed him with such force that I would not have been surprised if either of their lips were bruised. I’d never kissed anyone like that so I didn’t know. She moved her hands to his cheeks and held his face tight.

  ‘Emmanuelle,’ Renatus said again, taking her shoulders firmly and holding her away. ‘Stop. We both know it isn’t me that you want.’

  My supervisor stared at him with watery eyes, her skin flushed, her lips red. Then she dissolved into tears, dropping her hands to his shoulders and collapsing against him. Renatus ran a hand up and down her spine reassuringly for a few moments, then led her to one of the deceptively plush armchairs. He sat her down, and dragged the nearest one a little closer for himself. He conjured a tissue from thin air and handed it to her as though nothing had just happened between them.

  ‘Je suis désolée, I’m so sorry,’ Emmanuelle sobbed as Renatus sat down opposite her. ‘Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès. I didn’t mean to…I don’t know…I just…’

  Renatus rested a hand on her knee. It was a supportive gesture, meant to convey understanding and sympathy. Soon, Emmanuelle calmed down. She hiccoughed and excused herself for it.

  ‘Did you see it? The end, I mean,’ Emmanuelle asked finally. Renatus nodded. ‘I only saw ‘im for an instant, underwater – ‘e closed ‘is eyes and then I woke up. Did ‘e suffer?’

  ‘His last words were, “I never told her I love her”. Peter’s main concern at his death was that he’d lost his chance with you. I think the root of his deepest suffering was that you might hate him for what he’d done.’

  Fresh tears ran over the French sorceress’s cheeks, but she smiled. Renatus hadn’t answered her question about Peter’s suffering in quite the way I’m sure she’d expected, but it seemed to be the right thing for her to hear.

  ‘I don’t hate ‘im. I ‘ope ‘e knew ‘ow much ‘e meant to me, too,’ she murmured.

  ‘You’ll have your chance to tell him, probably tomorrow,’ Renatus told her. ‘Lord Gawain took the others tonight to retrieve the body. I imagine there will be a funeral service here tomorrow morning.’

  ‘What will ‘appen to ‘im?’ Emmanuelle asked, and Renatus hesitated. His intense eyes flickered towards the window, passing right over me without seeing.

  ‘Does his family have a place of burial?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Nowhere in particular. The Chisholms are very scattered.’ Emmanuelle sniffed delicately, and Renatus looked at his hands.

  ‘If you would like,’ he said slowly, ‘Peter could be buried here. With my family. If you would like. It’s entirely up to you – you knew him best.’

  Even though I barely knew him, I could sense how reluctant Renatus was to give this – how much it cost him to even say it. His expression was conflicted. He wanted to give Emmanuelle this small consolation, yet something else was making him hesitate. Family pride? Emmanuelle smiled, and it seemed to light up the room, so genuine and hard-earned was the expression.

  ‘Merci beaucoup, Renatus,’ she said warmly. ‘This offer means a lot to me. But if it is up to me, I think ‘e should be cremated, and ‘is ashes given to ‘is grandmother. She was the only family ‘e could count upon.’

  Renatus visibly relaxed, and nodded smoothly.

  ‘Other than you,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she will appreciate the gesture.’

  Emmanuelle nodded, and opened her mouth to say something, but hesitated. She stared at him in silence for a long, long moment.

  ‘This is a stupid question,’ she whispered, ‘but I ask anyway…can I trust you?’

  Renatus, too, hesitated.

  ‘I hope you will learn to,’ he answered eventually. Emmanuelle reached over and took his hand.

  ‘And words spoken in this room…they are completely safe?’

  ‘Absolutely. No one else can hear you.’

  I shifted uncomfortably. Um, sorry, but I’m standing here denying your truth.

  ‘Then…’ Emmanuelle hesitated again, tightening her grip on his hand. ‘There’s something else. A list, with your name, in Lisandro’s hand.’

  ‘What?’ Renatus tried to pull his hand away, but Emmanuelle held on.

  ‘There are other names, too. Some dead, some alive. Some very unexpected. Don’t stress, I don’t ‘ave it with me anyway,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter, not in light of this.’

  She looked significantly at their joined hands, and something changed. I peered closely.
Her thumb seemed to be changing colour…No, a ring was appearing. A dull, wide, silver band with a big stone set in. A strong presence seemed to be growing in the room, too, and it was only after a bit of energetic searching that I realised with a shock that a strong welling of power was coming from the ring.

  Renatus took a deep breath. Emmanuelle looked up at him.

  ‘It’s mine now,’ she said. ‘Peter left it with the note.’ She held his gaze. ‘Do you want to take it from me? I won’t stop you – we both know I would not win. You can ‘ave it.’

  Slowly, Renatus pulled his hand from hers.

  ‘There’s a very good reason why the weapons are kept separate,’ he said, mystifying me. ‘I won’t take it from you. I won’t accept it from you if you offer it. It’s yours now.’

  Emmanuelle stared at him for a long time, seemingly surprised but also apprehensive, as though waiting for him to change his mind. When he did not, she broke the silence with a choked, awkward laugh.

  ‘I’ve never given you enough credit, ‘ave I?’

  A harsh, heavy knock sounded at the door, startling both Emmanuelle and myself. Renatus waved his hand briefly, and we all watched as the door opened again and Qasim entered. Renatus stood quickly, and Emmanuelle wiped her eyes. Qasim surveyed the scene before him, which apparently didn’t include me, and glared at Renatus.

  ‘What did you say to her?’ he asked, his tone making his annoyance clear. ‘I thought we agreed to wait.’

  ‘He Renatus told me what I deserved to ‘ear,’ Emmanuelle said testily, standing also and glaring back at the Scrier. ‘What gave you the right to decide what information is shared with other councillors?’

  ‘I don’t know what he told you, but the four of us agreed not to share this with you until we had all of the information,’ Qasim responded coldly. ‘That is, Lord Gawain, Lady Miranda, Renatus and myself. I would have thought that the collective wisdom of the four of us would be sufficient.’

  ‘Where’s Peter?’ Emmanuelle said sharply, changing subjects. ‘Is ‘e here?’

  ‘Emmanuelle,’ Qasim said, staring at her hand, ‘is that-’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she snapped. ‘Peter passed it to me. Now, where is ‘e?’

  ‘Glen and Elijah are bringing him now,’ Qasim said. ‘This changes things. When did you receive that?’

  ‘I took possession of it today, but Peter left it for me over two weeks ago.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Qasim murmured. He turned his attention to Renatus. ‘Lord Gawain is waiting for you in the ballroom. He would like to discuss funeral plans with you.’

  ‘Emmanuelle has already made a decision on that,’ Renatus said.

  ‘Where was ‘e?’ Emmanuelle pressed, and I saw the two men glance at one another.

  ‘On a private beach,’ Qasim said.

  ‘And why tonight?’ Emmanuelle added insistently. ‘Why have you waited a week before retrieving him?’

  Qasim’s eyes narrowed at Renatus – apparently, the younger councillor had said way too much.

  ‘Our visions were indistinct and dated,’ the headmaster explained, ignoring the Scrier. ‘We had no way of knowing where the event was taking place. One of Qasim’s students had an accompanying vision yesterday that gave us some further information – a place name; the bird life; the season of the area.’

  ‘One of the students? Who?’ Emmanuelle asked, looking between them. They gave her nothing further, but I felt my jaw drop.

  I had scried a private beach yesterday, with plants flowering in spring and birds circling something dead. I had thought it was a seal or something.

  Could that dark shape have in fact been a person? It would explain why Qasim had directed me to pull my attention away from it, if he had suspected the seal to be this Peter.

  ‘Emmanuelle and I will meet with Lord Gawain to finalise her plans for the funeral,’ Renatus was saying. He looked back to Qasim. ‘My housekeeper, Fionnuala, has prepared the basement room for the body. You may meet her in the reception hall, and Glen and Elijah may bring Peter there.’

  Qasim nodded once, and Renatus gestured the other two towards the still-open door. Emmanuelle went to the doorway, followed by her male colleagues, before stopping and turning back to them.

  ‘I…I want to see ‘im,’ she said in a small voice. I walked over, watching the expressions of the men she spoke to. Without even glancing at one another, both Renatus and Qasim said, in unison, ‘No.’

  Emmanuelle looked ready to argue, but then seemed to take in their stern, stubborn expressions. She silently walked out the door. Qasim followed, then Renatus. I realised that I was about to be locked in here alone, and ran for the door as he walked through. It began to swing shut behind him, and I had almost reached it when it slammed in my face. I blinked.

  Bang.

  My eyes snapped open, but I couldn’t see anything. My heart was thudding; my head was throbbing dully. I sat up. Hadn’t I just been standing, running? I looked around. Incredibly, or perhaps not, I was back in bed, in my room, with Hiroko asleep in the bed to my right and Sterling and Xanthe on the other side of the room.

  Did that mean it really had been just a dream?

  I slowly lay back down. I felt massively disorientated, as though I really had just teleported straight from my bed, into the office and back again. The experience had been so real – I had been fully aware of my surroundings, and there had been none of the surrealism that typifies dreams. You know, changing landscapes, people morphing into other people, pink elephants, that sort of thing. None of it. I almost might have believed that I had teleported – displaced – to the head’s office during my sleep, except that nobody else had been able to see me. If I had actually displaced, then I would have been physically present at the time and there should have been nothing stopping the other three from noticing.

  This left me with my original suspicion. I had dreamt the entire thing. That meant that the conversation had not really happened, except in my head. Why would I dream something like that? Why would my mind make up an office for Renatus, complete with the arched window at the top of the house and the door with no doorknob, and play out such an odd scene?

  I tried unsuccessfully to fall back to sleep. My mind kept going over the dream, as though it were a video on a loop. Maybe it was a prophetic dream, trying to warn me of…something? If that were the case, it might have been warning me about the death of Emmanuelle’s friend Peter, or that the councillors of the White Elm were not as close friends as I had imagined. There had been a moment or two of obvious hostility between Renatus and Qasim.

  But of course, it had only been a dream. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t real; that I’d invented the entire exchange, from the heated conversations to the tears to the kiss.

  Of course, Qasim would be on my thoughts because of how hard I’d been working on scrying. Emmanuelle was the White Elm with which I identified the most, because, as my supervisor, she was more involved in my life than the others. It made as much sense that these two people might pop up in my dreams as if Hiroko or Kendra were to do.

  Renatus? Well, I heard his name fifty million times a day from Sterling…obviously she’d talked enough rubbish that it had invaded my dreams.

  By the time the other girls had awoken the following morning, I had almost managed to convince myself that my experience had been a perfectly rational dream. I forgot to wonder why, after three weeks of dreamless sleep, I would dream anything at all.

  Unlike the previous few days, Thursday dawned overcast and gloomy. The sun made no attempt whatsoever to shine through, as though it knew already that it wasn’t worth the effort. A few sunbeams weren’t going to make Emmanuelle’s upturned day any less horrible.

  She’d been sitting in the ballroom of Morrissey House since just before midnight. It was hard to tell what time of day it was through the windows, because the sky was so grey, but she knew that many hours of numb nothingness had passed.

/>   After Renatus had brought her here to speak with Lord Gawain about the funeral service, she had collapsed into a chair and he had left. She hadn’t seen him since, and for that she was glad. She couldn’t think of him without wanting to melt into a puddle of embarrassment. What had she been thinking? Obviously, nothing.

  It was a weak moment, she kept telling herself. She hadn’t been thinking straight – she’d been distraught, thinking only of Peter and all the things she now wished she’d thought to say and do while he was alive. Imbécile, Emmanuelle.

  Lord Gawain had sat with Emmanuelle for a while, wanting to know all about how the ring had come to her, as if that mattered. She’d offered it to him, and he’d shook his head.

  ‘Fate has brought it to you. It’s yours for now, and for a reason.’

  He’d explained how the service would go. The students would be told at breakfast that they would be attending a funeral for a former White Elm councillor that morning. The service would be short, held in the ballroom, and would be used as an example of Lisandro’s destructive power.

  ‘I think Peter would approve of his death being used to incriminate his murderer and to educate young sorcerers against Lisandro,’ Lord Gawain had said, not noticing Emmanuelle’s miniscule flinch at the word murderer. Renatus hadn’t said that Lisandro had murdered Peter – only implied it, and it hurt much more to hear the word. The word made it real and horrible. ‘He was lied to and manipulated, and it’s our responsibility to ensure that Lisandro doesn’t get the chance to do the same to any of our students. Emmanuelle,’ he had added when she just nodded. ‘Peter was not White Elm when he died. We don’t have to have any special ceremony if you would rather not…’

  Emmanuelle thought for a few moments in silence. The idea of Peter’s death being used, in any way, to promote an ideal or rule upset her. She would love for Lord Gawain to hand to her a decorative urn with Peter’s name on it and to take it to Peter’s grandmother, and to grieve in her own time and space. Alone.

  If anyone asked, she would say that her friend had been killed by Lisandro. It wouldn’t be shocking; it would be sad, and people would feel sorry for her. If the story circulated, it would change slightly with each retelling until Peter was no longer Peter and Lisandro was no longer a heartless killer. The story would not save anybody, nor would it do justice to Peter’s life.