Talk turned to the troubles of late, barely skirting the chief taboo of the evening: Morgan. Bringing up the name of the man the guest of honor was hiding from would not only be ill-mannered, it would lead to the questions the Division was trying to keep from answering directly. So far, they’d managed to inform Brianna of Morgan’s desire for her, his power to sway, and the danger to the rest of us. What they’d been afraid to disclose, however, was the prophecy, and how central she was to their plan.
While Eric and Seth discussed the messes being made by Council, the commonbloods who were being used and then left without cover stories or explanations of any kind, I considered again what Emily’s life must have been like, knowing her sister was the chosen and being held responsible for her safekeeping.
A small white plate of custard drizzled with chocolate and caramel pulled me from my thoughts and I glanced down the table at Emily, who finally looked like she’d found something she could eat. She lifted the tiny dessert fork, but stopped short at the turn of conversation.
“Four of them, beaten near death and dumped roadside with no explanation,” Seth complained.
She stared across the table at him, her hand dropping slowly to return the utensil.
Eric sat beside Seth, joining in, “We’re spending our resources on cleaning up after them. They aren’t even adhering to the oldest codes. If we miss something, it will be on the news. The commonbloods…”
Emily’s hands went into her lap as they continued. She looked a bit sick.
“… like we have the time and resources to waste on their used commonbloods—”
It was about the sixth time in so many minutes they’d used the label, and Seth’s words were cut short as Emily, who was suddenly standing, slammed her fist on the table. “They aren’t commonbloods, they’re people,” she said. “Dead. People.”
The room fell still. Emily’s stare was focused directly on Eric and Seth, so she was unaware that the rest of us could only watch her, could only look on in shock as Brianna’s quiet sister transformed from a pretty young blonde into a barely restrained fury. Her eyes were hard, expression not just livid, but outraged, and she was suddenly older. It was as if she’d seen more than any of us in her years, and yet remained shocked at our manners.
Seth had the decency to look shamed at having offended a guest, and Eric inclined his head slightly in apology. The silence became awkward, heavier and heavier, and, eventually, Emily returned to her seat.
But dinner just wasn’t the same after that.
Sustenance
Dessert sat uneaten on most of our plates, and everyone politely refused coffee. No one was brave enough to attempt conversation again, but had they tried, the look on Brendan’s face would have shut them down.
When Brianna finally spoke up, letting on that she was exhausted from the day’s excitement, the rest of the table latched on to the pretext and excused themselves for the night.
I saw Brendan whisper something to Brianna, but she merely stared at him for a moment, jaw tight, before leading Emily from the room. When they disappeared through the doorway, I glanced back to Brendan, only to find him giving me a similar look to the one he’d just received.
“What?” I said around a mouthful of bread.
He shook his head and turned for the door Eric and Seth had exited minutes before. I grabbed a few more rolls and wrapped them in a napkin, ignoring the sidelong glances the kitchen staff gave me as they waited to clear the table. I tied the top of the napkin in a quick knot, which, perversely, made me want to whistle the Andy Griffith Show theme song for my audience. I hastily made my way from the dining room, smiling as I skipped up the steps two at a time, and nearly ran into Logan around the corner at the top of the stairs.
He raised his brows.
“Logan,” I said, grabbing his forearm in Council’s traditional greeting.
He didn’t hesitate, gripping my own in return. “I was on my way to find you,” he said. “I got a message you needed a crew.”
“Yes.” I glanced down the hallway then, and he tilted his head toward a sunroom on the far end.
I turned to lead the way, Logan wordlessly at my side. He’d been raised by Council law as well, and he had little faith in Brendan’s promises. The Division might have been the lesser of two evils, but evil was evil, and neither of us trusted them.
We made our way to the windows, both of us glancing at the shadows reflected against the glass as darkness stole its true purpose. Logan reached into a pocket of his black cargo pants and pulled out a small plastic device to lay on a nearby table.
He pressed a button before turning back to me. “That should do it.”
I smiled, imagining how long it would take the security team to figure out they’d been scrambled.
Logan glanced around the room. Neither of us had much love for “the beige house” either. “How long will you stay?”
“Looks like three nights,” I said. “There’s been a bit of a complication, I’ll need to sort it out first.”
He nodded. “The girl.” He shrugged at my grimace. “Word travels fast. What do you plan to do with her?”
“I don’t know.” I rubbed a hand over the muscles at my neck, remembering my broken shoulder. “I can’t leave her here, but she won’t go without Brianna.”
He pursed his lips, not wanting to ask his next question. “Can you not make her?”
A breath huffed out involuntarily. “Doesn’t seem to be the case. Aside from that, however, I don’t trust them with her.”
“Wait,” Logan said, suddenly at attention, “you can’t make her?”
His surprise had me taken aback, and I struggled to explain why it had made sense to me. “Well, I hit my head.” Which was now fully healed and apparently working with everyone else. “And then…” And then what? Logan stared at me. “Her sister is the Chosen. We don’t know, well, we can’t know what should work on them.”
Logan waited for something I’d said to make sense. A long moment later, he said, “So we leave her here. With the chosen.”
I was shaking my head before he finished. “No. She’s too dangerous. She thinks she’s meant to protect Brianna and she’ll end up doing something stupid.” Reckless. Permanent.
“Aern—”
“And I don’t trust them. I can’t, Logan. I just can’t.”
He watched me for a long time, my tailored shirt, my messy hair. My tied-up dinner napkin. “All right,” he said finally. “Then what do we do with her?”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t know yet.”
A tiny red light began to flash on the scrambling device. Logan held up his first and second fingers: two minutes.
“We’re moving on Morgan,” I said. “I can’t play cat-and-mouse any longer, he’s getting too close.”
Logan nodded. “I’ll have a team together in two days. We will wait for you at the secondary drop point.”
“Thank you, Logan.”
He only stared at me. We had known each other our whole lives, fought and played side by side for two decades. Our world had crumbled around us, and yet, even when what I was doing made no sense to him, he trusted in my decision. “Two days,” he said.
Two days and it would be either me, or Morgan. The unforeseen, or death.
Logan switched the device off and slid it into his pocket. We turned to stare out the darkened glass until the security team rushed into the room. I couldn’t help but notice the corner of his mouth turn up at their urgency.
It had taken Brendan to finally calm things down with the security team. He was highly disappointed in both of us, though he clearly had more pressing issues to resolve and didn’t stick around to berate us. Logan left the house after restocking his supplies, and I trudged up the stairs to my room, tied napkin in hand.
It was nearly two a.m. when Emily showed up.
I’d been standing in front of the side table, wondering if I should check on her. The napkin full of bread had be
en an excuse, I knew, and that knowledge was what had kept me from going. But when I heard soft footfalls outside my door, I knew she was standing there, unable for some reason to bring herself to knock. It was that same magnetic polarity that caused me to open the door.
She stared wordlessly at me from the hallway, barefoot in jeans and a plain cotton tee, completely unprepared to explain her late night visit.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I supplied.
She seemed grateful for the excuse, though it was probably true, given that we’d both napped most of the afternoon. I stepped aside to let her in, resisting the urge to glance down the hall. The door clicked shut behind me as I turned to face her, and the sound seemed amplified in the empty room. Emily twisted her hands in front of her stomach.
“Sit,” I said, taking the napkin from its place on the side table. She returned obediently to her spot on the bed, completely ignoring the reading chairs on the far wall. I pulled up the lightweight chair that sat beneath the narrow, matte black desk to sit in front of her and untied the knot. When she saw the bread, her unease melted away. I offered the open bundle to her and she pulled a braided roll from the small pile.
She held it in front of her, tearing a section away with one hand, and then stopped. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.
“For what?”
She rolled her eyes in a gesture much like the one Brianna had displayed earlier. They were very much alike, she and her sister, but not indistinguishable. Emily’s hair was sun-streaked, less orderly. Her eyes were not quite so wide, or at least, I thought, didn’t seem so against fuller cheeks and decisive expression.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “It’s just a little less conspicuous than calling them humans.”
She bit her lip, not wanting to ask the obvious question.
I sighed and sat the napkin on the bedside table. “We are all human, Emily. There is very little of that other in us now. It’s just an expression. Old habits die hard, is all.” It wasn’t entirely true. Many of the eldest refused to believe we were anything like the humans. But I didn’t need to tell her that now.
“Brianna and me,” she said, “are we… other?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. She put down her uneaten bread and I took her hands. “We may never know how you tie into our lines, Emily. Your mother wanted it that way. If she was a prophet, then she had good reason.” I stared into her green eyes. “But you have to know, whatever you are, you are special.”
“I think that came out way cornier than you meant it,” she said. When I didn’t respond, she swallowed hard, and pulled her hands free of mine. “I just can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t sit there playing nice while one of them might be the one who wants to kill Brianna.”
I sat back in my chair. She was right. But until Morgan was contained, the Division was the only safe place for Brianna. I had to leave her here, but I couldn’t expect Emily to abandon her.
“Two days,” I said. “Give me two days and you can take Brianna and run.” Take Brianna and run? Was I so sure of my failure? So certain of the prophecy?
“What happens in two days?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Eat. We will talk about it later.” When I figured it out myself.
Several hours later, we’d fallen back into our former locations on the bed. I couldn’t be sure how it had happened exactly, but we both seemed to migrate toward it, that comfort that waited where she lay in my arms and rested her head on my chest. We talked softly of her sister, Emily’s stories reinforcing my first impression of the girl.
“What does she think of Brendan?” I asked, certain there was a good story there. If I’d had to describe Brianna before seeing them together, it would have been with words like “meek” and “unassuming,” but the way she’d spoken to Brendan had me questioning my assessment. But, in truth, Brendan wasn’t exactly himself around her, either. Something about Brianna set his teeth on edge.
Emily laughed and I knew I wasn’t the only one to notice. “I suppose she’ll let me know when she figures it out,” she said. “She knows you don’t trust him, but she likes to form her own opinions.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“And what does Brendan think of her?” she asked.
I smiled. “He keeps his opinions to himself.” I hesitated, remembering his concerns. “Does Brianna have any visitors, anyone bringing her messages?”
She tilted her head up to look at me. “That’s what he thinks? That she’s got a spy on the inside?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure what he thinks, but apparently it involves your sister knowing things.”
Her head fell back to its earlier position as she stared across the room. “That’s just Brianna. She always knows things.”
We were quiet for a while, both of us lost in thought, and Emily’s gaze fell upon my forearm where it rested on my abdomen. She reached tentatively out to touch the place my scars had been, the once-jagged knife wounds that were now smooth skin. Her index finger rose slightly as her middle finger traced delicately over the skin. Her touch was so light, so perfect as it trailed over me, it became unbearable not to touch her in return. And touching her was so wrong.
I swallowed against a dry throat, shifting slightly beneath her, and brought up the one topic that would keep me from acting. “Is Brianna well?”
Emily’s hand froze on my arm, her fingers poised birdlike above my skin, and I wondered what I’d said wrong.
“She looked a little pale earlier,” I explained. “If she isn’t feeling well, we can help.”
I felt Emily’s back ease as she released a breath. “Oh, no, she’ll be all right. It’s just, sometimes she gets like that.” She seemed to realize this wasn’t answer enough, and added, “When she’s tired.”
The topic effectively ended our discussion, and we lay silent, Emily’s hand still as it lay over my chest. And though neither of us needed to, we slept.
A Turn for the Worse
Breakfast was far more private. Brendan had apparently learned his lesson, and only allowed Kara and Seth to join us at the small round table beneath the skylights that surrounded the entrance to the kitchen. When Emily and Brianna arrived, Kara slid fluidly into the seat to Brendan’s left, leaving only a free chair between myself and Seth on one side and myself and Kara on the other. Brianna chose Seth’s side.
“I trust you all slept well,” Kara said, as if we were guests in her house. I pointedly did not look at Emily as she arranged the napkin in her lap, head down. “Of course,” Kara continued, “we can make other arrangements if any of you are uncomfortable.”
I realized then that she was not implying anything about us, but rather Brianna, whose eyes were shadowed more than usual. I laid a hand over hers. “Are you well, Brianna?”
Her eyes flickered just the tiniest bit, as if the pupils had constricted to pinpoints and then flashed back to normal. I narrowed my gaze on her, but she stared steadily into my eyes, and I decided the reflection of the skylights must have been playing tricks on me. “I’m fine,” she said, “only anxious for this to be over.”
“Soon,” I promised, hating the lie. No matter what happened, Brianna would be forced into a life she couldn’t want. Even if, by some miracle, we removed Morgan and Council fell back into order, the Division would come for her. She was the key to the prophecy, and she’d never rest until a path was fulfilled.
I looked up, recognizing that the table had fallen silent, and found them all staring at the two of us, a daughter of great power and second heir to the dragon’s name, my hand lying gently over hers. I had the sudden, infuriating sensation of being pushed into something I didn’t want, and I had to consciously remove the glower from my face. My hand returned to the silverware, but only as pretense.
Seth attempted small talk with Emily, failed miserably, and then moved on to repeating jokes he’d heard from Logan the night before. But Logan had a dry sense of humor, and generally delivered them in a subtle mann
er that Seth simply couldn’t master. After the first few fell flat, he clicked his tongue and went back to his food. This made Emily smile, though all of his efforts had not, and she finally forked up a large bite of the scrambled egg she’d been picking at.
Brendan looked, if not pleased, at least a bit less annoyed now that she’d apparently decided they were not trying to poison her. Brianna, who had yet to touch her own plate, raised her gaze to the door. It was a full six seconds later before Wesley walked through it.
As he approached Brendan’s right side, Wesley locked eyes with Brianna in an all-too-brief instant that would have meant nothing had he not immediately looked down to break their connection as he handed Brendan a report. My eyes narrowed on Brianna, who looked as if she were about to be ill, and then Brendan’s fist crashed against the table, sending silverware and dishes to clanging.
He cursed, clenched his jaw tight, and then handed the paper back to Wesley. “Gather a meeting, I’d like some control in how this gets out.”
Wesley hurried from the room and Brendan pressed the base of his palm firmly against his forehead before looking up to let us in on the bad news.
“Three different sources are reporting Morgan had a row with a couple senior Council members. After the disagreement, it seems that one of the men walked to the encased display knives and stabbed himself in the chest, directly through his heart.” There was a gasp from my right, and Kara covered her mouth with a manicured hand. Brendan’s jaw flexed and he swallowed hard. “The other abruptly changed his opinion, and knelt on the ground before Morgan’s feet.”
“No,” Seth said from beside him, “no, it’s not possible.”
“I might have agreed with you, Seth, if not for their character.”
[2018] Reign of Queens Page 24