Emerge: The Captive: (Book 3)

by Melissa A. Craven

  “Come, child. Let’s walk in silence for a while. When you find you can again see the beauty of this world, rather than the turmoil of your own thoughts, we will talk.”

  Most of her evenings with Mother Raghavan began this way. Sasha linked her arm through the mother’s and walked beside her. Fuming.

  For a moment, she’d thought she and Jayesh were finally getting somewhere. And then he freaked out on me when I missed the shot. And then I freaked out on him. Since then, he’d kept his distance. Even during their shared training sessions, he was distant and aloof.

  “We’re going nowhere fast.”

  “Still not seeing the beauty of the garden?” The mother chuckled softly. “So caught up in your own mind.”

  Mother Raghavan’s private garden was a veritable Eden on earth. Sasha knew she should be focused on the flowers blooming with their fragrant perfumes. The colorful fish in the murky ponds. The ancient statues capturing the most impossible of the kalari forms. The majestic trees towering over them. The squish of the moss-covered stones beneath her feet. This oasis should be the one place where she could leave all thoughts of Jayesh behind.

  But still she itched to wrap her hands around his throat.

  With her next step, Sasha took a breath, exhaling deeply, focusing only on the act of breathing. She felt her pulse return to its normal rate and the tension finally left her body.

  “Much better,” Mother Raghavan said, patting Sasha’s hand where it lay tucked against the crook of her elbow.

  “I am sorry, mother. I should not bring my tension and anger into this sacred place of peace.”

  “Nonsense. This is what our evenings together are for, Sasha. You do not need me to tell you how well you are doing with the physical aspect of meithari. You are a born martial artist. You’ve trained all your life. This is all second nature to you.”

  “Then why are we still stuck in phase one? I’m going crazy with the sameness of every day.”

  “Meithari is the most important phase of your training here, child. It is the first stage because in some ways it is the hardest. The rest will come in time, but you will never succeed without meithari.”

  “Maybe I’m just not getting the lesson, mother.”

  “Perhaps you should try to see things from his point of view, rather than your own,” the mother suggested as they walked.

  “He treats me like a child.”

  “You are a child, dear. As much as it might seem like an insult, it is not. It is simply the truth.”

  “Then what am I missing?”

  “Jayesh has never known the kind of life you have. A family who loves you. Wealth. Status. Friends. Stability. Jayesh’s life has never really belonged to him. I believe he struggles to communicate with you because he simply does not understand how to talk to you. He’s made assumptions about who you are because your life is completely foreign to him.”

  “That doesn’t give him a license to react the way he does.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “I’ve given him no reason not to trust me,” Sasha said.

  “You haven’t?” The mother gave her a knowing smile. “When you missed your target, what were you doing to give Jayesh cause to react so harshly?”

  I was deceiving him.

  “He doesn’t know you missed the shot on purpose,” Mother Raghavan said. “The dear boy is not that perceptive. He is simply worried about what it will mean for you if you cannot meet the Senate’s expectations. It is his responsibility to make you a success.”

  “I need to fail at this, mother. I am not ready to become a Chola assassin.” If we ever get through the training.

  “And have you given it a moment’s consideration that Jayesh might agree with you? That he might not want to be the one to turn you into an assassin? That he might see you as an innocent girl he doesn’t want to corrupt?”

  “No.” Sasha sighed.

  “Have you considered that he is waiting for you to give him your trust? That he might be on your side in this mess?”

  “No.” Sasha suddenly felt exactly like the child she was.

  “You fear if you show him what you are truly capable of that he will betray that knowledge to the Senate and they will continue to demand your services even though you are not yet Proven.”

  “Yes.” Sasha nodded. “I can’t risk it. I don’t want my life to belong to the Senate before I’ve even had a chance to live it.”

  “A valid fear. But you are holding Jayesh accountable for a betrayal he hasn’t yet committed.”

  “You are right.” Sasha laughed. “You usually are.”

  “Come now.” The mother hugged her. “I’m not suggesting you reveal all of your deepest secrets to a man you’ve only just met. I’m simply suggesting that you meet him halfway. Isn’t that what you expect of him?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Sasha nodded again. The mother was right. How could she expect Jayesh to trust her if she was the one deceiving him at every possible turn?

  “You will dust yourself off and try again, yes?”

  “Yes, mother. I will.”

  ~~~

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  Quinn: Fall

  Atlanta, Georgia

  “What do we know about the Scholar?” Livia demanded, staring at each member of her team in turn. They were few. Just Livia, Michael and Ryan, Quinn and Santi, and a woman named Selena.

  They each were there for a reason, but Quinn and Santi seemed to be the only ones who would rather not be. The rest of the group ignored them as they sat at the edge of the room, trying not to get in the way. It was early evening and Livia planned to leave the following day, but they still didn’t know where they were going.

  “He was last seen in Viña Del Mar along the coast of Chile,” Selena offered. “But he’s been on the move. Spotted in different parts of the world. Cape Town, South Africa; Nigeria, Egypt and the Sudan.” Selena scanned through her notes. “He’s randomly showed up in rural Scotland and all across Eastern Europe. Then he had a really good time in the cafes of Amsterdam for a few days before heading off to the Philippines, Brazil, and back to Egypt, Indonesia, New Zealand and finally ended up in Sydney, Australia, just a few days ago.” Selena let her notes fall to the table.

  “Any idea where he is headed next?” Livia asked.

  “No. But I would love the opportunity to collect his gift.” Selena rubbed her hands together eagerly. “Can you imagine all that knowledge? I’ll make a fortune!” Selena’s gift allowed her take a gift from one Immortal and bestow it to someone else—usually the highest bidder.

  “His gifts would melt your brain,” Livia said. “Try it and I’ll snap you like a twig.” She gestured for her team to join her around the conference table inlaid with a map of the world in black onyx against a sea of white marble.

  “We need to know where he’ll show up next,” Livia continued. “He and the queen will have a rally point. We need to figure out where that is.”

  “Where and when was she captured?” Ryan asked.

  “She was taken somewhere in Africa in 259 BCE, and spent some time in a Coalition prison in Carthage before my father liberated her in 30 BCE. She’s had no contact with the Scholar in all of that time, but a credible source says they intend to ‘go back where it all began,’” Livia said. “But the start of what?” She glanced around the room, looking for answers.

  “They would have needed a rally point that would stand the test of time,” Michael said. “Maybe they meant the beginning of civilization? Somewhere in Mesopotamia?”

  “Or did she mean the beginning of Indriell? It is believed Indriell was located near Egypt,” Ryan offered.

  Quinn listened as they threw out different suggestions. All useless. There was something to be said for his education. He knew volumes more than they did on the subject of Immortal history. He just wasn’t sure if he should help them or let them hang themselves with their own ignorance. But he desperately needed this chance to get out of Sterli
ng Tower. Nothing else mattered beyond this opportunity to escape with Santi. If a queen of Indriell still lived, he didn’t want to be responsible for her capture. But if it got him out of Soma, it could be worth the risk.

  These guys have zero chance of success anyway. They don’t know what they’re up against.

  “Quinn, Santi? What do you know?” Livia demanded, snapping her fingers for them to join the discussion.

  Quinn stood with a sigh. He would never forgive himself if this led to terrible things for the queen or the Scholar. He glanced down at Santi and she gave him a shrug as if to say they didn’t really have a choice.

  “What does your teaching tell of the last Indriell queen?”

  “She was the best of them all. And if she still lives, I wouldn’t underestimate her,” Quinn said.

  “Where would she go after she dismantled Indriell?”

  “It depends on where you believe Indriell once existed. When Queen Alísun banished the first mortals, she laid waste to the entire realm and sent the remaining Immortals to the far corners of the world. She left no trace of her kingdom. Some believe Indriell must have existed around Mesopotamia because that is the cradle of all civilization, but the earliest known civilizations emerged around 3200 BCE. We’ve existed since long before the mortal cradle of life.” Quinn moved a stone marker to modern-day Mesopotamia, placing it at the center of Eastern Turkey, Syria and Iraq before continuing.

  “During the banishment, Alísun sent her mortal subjects as far away from Indriell as possible. Some believe she couldn’t have sent them very far because that kind of travel wasn’t possible back then, but this was during a time when most still wielded the pure power. They could do more than we can ever dream. Some believe they traveled the world much as we do today. Not in airplanes, but through other fast means of transportation fueled by the power. It is possible the queen did send them to the ends of the earth, but wherever they ended up, it took centuries for those mortals to figure out how to exist on their own. The banishment is believed to have occurred sometime around 5000 BCE. So what happened to those mortals in the nearly two millennia intervening? Did they stay wherever she sent them? No. They were nomads. They went where the food was. So if mortal civilization emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt, how far did they travel from their original location?”

  Quinn had the whole room’s attention as he paused to take a breath.

  “Immortal records indicate the first mortals were sent across two oceans before they reached the queen’s destination. Then, for nearly two thousand years they wandered, so it is safe to assume some of them ended up in Egypt while others drifted to Mesopotamia.” Quinn placed markers on the map at both areas of the world. “Scholars have suggested that the two oceans they crossed were the South Atlantic and the Indian oceans, and the original banishment took them to India along the Arabian Sea.” He placed stone markers on each.

  “How do we know this is accurate information?” Michael asked.

  “It’s accurate,” Quinn said.

  “Have you spoken to these scholars?” he replied with a sneer.

  “I have.”

  “The scholars do not mix with the rest of us. They keep to their own. How can we trust this boy?” Selena asked.

  “How do you know this information, Quinn? Tell me,” Livia demanded.

  “My great-grandparents are scholars. That is all I will say.” Quinn folded his arms across his chest and refused to speak further about his grandmother’s parents.

  “Go on,” Livia said.

  “If they ended up in India and crossed two oceans to get there, Indriell couldn’t have existed on the same continent, right?” Quinn removed the marker representing the nation of Indriell in the Middle East, and placed it off the map. “Indriell wasn’t just a small city-state with a single thriving city as most believe. It was the seat of the world and it was enormous. But there were earthquakes in the Great War. Massive ones that probably changed the map of the world, making this nothing more than an educated guess.” He gave Livia a hard look to make sure she understood his words shouldn’t be taken too literally.

  “So where was it?” Livia asked.

  “South America.”

  “Where in South America?”

  “The entire South American continent was likely the nation of Indriell and it was nothing even remotely resembling what it is today.”

  Santi nodded. “It’s true. The Mayan Immortals have records that would confirm much of what Quinn is saying. We believe the Maya just didn’t go very far after Indriell was destroyed.”

  “But the Scholar has been in Chile for years,” Selena said.

  “He already went back to where it began.” Quinn nodded, looking at the map again.

  “So they could both be heading there now, and all his travels recently have just been a ploy to throw us off his trail?”

  “The Scholar is said to be something of a trickster,” Quinn said. “He likes messing with people. And let’s never forget he has the knowledge of the world at his fingertips. He has constructed the history of … everything. He’s leading you on a goose chase. He’s going to meet his wife where it all began—where Indriell fell and the banishment happened. The banishment caused many of the issues our world still struggles with today. They are circling back to where that struggle began. The banishment probably happened somewhere along the coast of Brazil. They traveled across the South Atlantic Ocean around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to their new home.”

  “So where is he going? Where are they meeting?”

  “He is going back to Indriell, where he’s been all along, but he’s not going to Chile.” Quinn studied the map, recalling everything he could from his history lessons. “Rio de Janeiro.” He tapped the coastline of Brazil, placing a new marker on the port city. “That is my best guess of a landmark they would both remember that would still be visible after so much time. It didn’t become Rio until the sixteenth century, but port cities like that have always existed in some capacity. The statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Mount Corcovado has only been there for the last century, but it could be a good meeting place, don’t you think? That is just a guess, though.” Quinn stepped away from the table, praying Livia would buy it. It was a good guess, but he had no real reason to suspect that was where they were going. He just needed Livia to buy it long enough to get them out of Sterling Tower.

  “Wow,” Santi breathed. “That just happened.”

  Quinn looked around the room at all the blank-staring faces and wondered if he’d overdone it on the history lesson.

  “Have his movements suggested that is where he is headed?” Livia asked.

  Ryan nodded as he checked the dossier on the Scholar’s movements. “It’s possible.”

  “It’s as good a place to start as anywhere,” Livia sighed. “Let’s get some rest and we’ll reconvene in the morning to go over our most recent intel. We’ll be on our way—somewhere—by tomorrow afternoon. You two are with me.” She nudged Quinn and Santi out of the room and away from the prying eyes of the rest of her team.

  “It’s getting late.” Livia checked the time as they headed back to her penthouse. “Go nuts in the kitchen. You both have my permission to eat whatever you want. But I would suggest you stick to foods that will give you the most energy. Then get some sleep. Both of you. You’re going to need it.”

  As soon as they entered the foyer, Livia retreated to her study to continue planning their mission, and Santi made for the kitchen at once. She was trembling at the mere thought of a good meal. As she put water on to boil, she struggled with a box of pasta.

  “Sit, Mina,” Quinn said. “It’s my turn to cook for you. What do you want?”

  “I want all the carbs.” She reached for a bag of Cheetos from the pantry along with a jar of peanut butter. “Cheesy pesto pasta with a big juicy steak and lots of garlic bread with cheese. And for dessert I want chocolate cake and ice cream.”

  “And when you puke it all up at three in
the morning?”

  “Then I’ll go for round two. Muévete, mija, I’m starving here. Literally.” She snapped her fingers and Quinn poured the pasta into the boiling water.

  “Get the bread,” he called over his shoulder. “The good stuff.”

  “This?” Santi held up a loaf of French bread from the pantry.

  “Yeah.” He grinned.

  “How much you want?” she asked.

  “All of it, baby. I’ve been dreaming about bread.”

  “On it!” She grabbed a tub of garlic butter from the fridge and began slicing up the loaf.

  Quinn busied himself with making a spice rub for the steaks as Santi slid a pan of buttered bread into the oven. “I’ll make all of your requests, but we have to go slow and eat small portions. You haven’t eaten well in months and you need fuel to get you through whatever we’re about to face. We do not need to be sluggish.” Quinn turned to get fresh cilantro and lime from the fridge. “Santi?” His laughter caught in his throat. “What the hell are you eating, babe?”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it.” She dipped another Cheeto into the peanut butter jar.

  “That is disgusting.”

  “Pasta?” She smiled, urging him to get back to work. “It smells good. Where did you learn to cook? Your mom? She’s French, right?”

  “Yeah, but she was a terrible cook. She could bake the most amazing cakes and pastries, but real food was her Achilles heel. I learned from my dad, actually. We pretty much all had to learn how to cook in self-defense. Mom’s idea of a meal was to take all the leftovers from the fridge and make a casserole. She thought if she put enough cream sauce and cheese on it, we wouldn’t notice the taste.”

  “Don’t talk about your family in past tense, Quinnton. You’ll see them again,” she whispered softly as she retrieved the bread from the oven.