“Be brave, Chloe. You have the power to make the right choices for yourself. Listen to your gift, and you do what’s best for you. If that means you go to school and stay here at home or you move into the cottage with us, then great. We will have so much fun together. But if that’s not where you need to be, then go find your place and don’t forget we’re all here for you when you need us.”
“I can’t stand living so close to her.” Allie didn’t have to ask who she meant.
“You and me both,” Allie murmured. “Livia remains in her cell. That’s the best we can hope for now. If I had my way, she’d be in a real prison somewhere far away from here. She killed my mother, too.” Allie continued brushing Chloe’s hair, gripping the brush in her clenched fist.
“That kinda hurts, Allie.”
“Sorry.”
“I know you get it in a way,” Chloe said.
“But I never had the chance to know my mother,” Allie finished her sentence. “Livia took that away from me. But I still have Lily and she’s my real mother.”
“I hate being here, Allie, but I have no where else to go and I’m afraid Dad will fall apart if I mention going away.” She looked to Allie for help. “I can’t with him anymore. I know he’s never going to get over losing Mom. It’s not fair. But I … can’t be the daughter he needs. All we do is fight.”
“You both need time,” Allie said. She didn’t want to push her friend away, but she knew Chloe was standing on a precipice. She needed to mourn the loss of her mother in her own way. “It’s okay, Chlo. You’ve got some tough choices to make right now.” Allie knelt in front of her and took her hands. “I don’t want to lose you. We love you and always will, no matter what, we are your family, and you are more my sister than Livia will ever be. But I don’t want you to lose yourself, either. You know the right path for you, Chloe. Take it. And don’t feel bad about it. We will take care of Jin so you can take care of yourself. He is your father, but he doesn’t have to be your responsibility.”
Chloe clutched her hands tightly. “I feel so useless here. I’m such a coward.” She shot a glance at the shadowy dragon she’d created as a living monument to her mother.
“Chloe, my friend, you are one of the strongest women I know. You came from Ming Lao Long, you have the spirit of a warrior inside you.”
“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Jin Jing shouted, his voice echoing across the common room. His eyes were wild and frightened.
“I’m sorry, Jin,” Allie said. “She left this for you.” She handed him a letter. “I found it in the kitchen just now.” It was similar to the one Chloe had left for her.
“No.” Jin sank into the nearest chair like his legs couldn’t hold him anymore. “I can’t lose her, too.” He ran his hands through his white hair, as he read his daughter’s last words. He hadn’t shown up for Chloe’s graduation. It wasn’t on purpose. He’d genuinely forgotten. He did that a lot since Ming’s death. In some ways, he was like an elderly, feeble version of himself. Within a few weeks after Ming died, his hair had turned white. In other ways, Jin’s behavior was more like an alcoholic struggling not to hit rock bottom.
“You haven’t lost her, Jin.” Allie crouched beside him. “She’s taking care of herself right now. And that’s exactly what you need to do.”
“What the hell do you know?” Jin spat. “It’s your fault this happened in the first place. We should have never taken you in. Then that sister of yours wouldn’t be here, and my family would still be intact.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d lashed out at her. And it wouldn’t be the last. His words hurt, but he was right, it was her fault. Allie’s presence had disrupted this entire family.
“Jin Jing, don’t you dare speak to Allie that way,” Emma huffed and puffed, waddling her pregnant belly across the room.
“It’s okay, Emma. He’s right.”
“It’s not okay.” Emma glared daggers at him. “And it is not your fault.”
“Jin, I’m so sorry, but there is no changing the past; we can only hope to make the future a better one. Your daughter finally gathered the strength to do what was best for her. Let her mourn for her loss and find her path forward.”
“Trust in Chloe’s gift, Jin,” Emma added. “She is young and she’s hurting, but she is her mother made over. She will be okay.”
“She has no protection.” Jin crumpled the note against his forehead. “I have to go after her.”
“We will keep a careful eye on her from afar,” Emma said. “We won’t let anything happen to her.”
“I can’t lose her,” Jin muttered.
“Allie, I’ve got this.” Emma draped her arm around Jin, helping him back to his office where he practically lived now.
Allie glanced down at the letter in her hand, reading it again.
Dear Allie,
Thank you for giving me the push I needed to follow my instincts. I love my father and our family, but I can’t breathe here anymore. I know if I stay, I’m going to turn into someone I don’t recognize, and I know Mom wouldn’t want that.
So I’m leaving. I don’t know where I’m going, or what I’ll do when I get there, but I need this. In a weird way, I feel like I’m following in my mother’s footsteps. She left home when she wasn’t much older than I am now, so I think I’ll be able to find her more this way than I ever will at home.
Tell Sasha and the others I’ll miss them more than they could ever know and I’m sorry for being so hateful.
I love you, my friend. My sister.
This isn’t goodbye forever. It’s just a see you later,
Chloe
Allie wiped the tears from her eyes. She’d seen it coming since Ming Lao’s funeral. The moment Chloe brought her dragons to life, representing the fallen of her family, Allie’s mind had whirled with images. Random snatches of things to come, and things that might never be. In every instance, she’d seen Chloe, sometimes at her side, sometimes standing in opposition. Allie’s gift had shown her how Chloe would grow into a formidable, powerful, and respected Immortal. The death of Ming Lao would have an extreme impact on Chloe’s life. It would make her stronger, but if she didn’t allow herself to fully mourn her loss and deal with her grief, it would send her down the wrong path.
Allie knew now that saying goodbye to Chloe—telling her it was okay for her to leave—to take care of herself had finally set Chloe on the path toward healing. She still had a long journey ahead of her, but Chloe would come back to her family. Some day.
Allie was just so tired of losing the people she loved.
Part III: One Year Later
Chapter Nineteen
Aidan
Milan, Italy, February
“Thirty seconds left,” Aidan called, checking his stopwatch. “This one’s going on your record, so pull it together, ladies.”
“Ladies?” Neela wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“What? You don’t like it when I call you girls, now ladies is out, too?” Aidan rolled his eyes. “What am I allowed to call you guys this week?”
“How about our names?” Ivy suggested, her face scrunched in concentration, as she worked to diffuse the last bomb to secure the perimeter of the test area and pass Aidan’s latest attempt to stump them.
“I have to say Neela and Ivy every time?” Aidan leaned back against the brick wall. “Twenty seconds.”
“How about Nivy or Ivyla.”
“Ivyla?” Ivy shook her head. “That sounds stupid. Let’s go with Nivy.”
“Well you’re going to be Nivy soup if you two don’t get that bomb shut down.” Aidan was sweating it this time, wondering if he’d made the challenge too difficult. He didn’t want to hurt them, but if he interfered, Genevieve would just punish them and leave them to heal on their own. Otherwise, she’d let Aidan heal them if they were injured during training—but only if they tried their hardest.
“Is he saying he’d actually let us blow up?” Neela scoffed.
“I believe he is, N
ivy.”
“I’m serious, you have sixteen seconds left, and these are real bombs this time!” Aidan wiped his sweaty palms against his jeans. Neela and Ivy were two of his favorite students, but he would never tell them that. It would go straight to their egotistical heads. Nineteen years old, the girls hadn’t met an explosive they couldn’t conquer or a security system they couldn’t penetrate. Cool in a crisis, they would be invaluable to the mortal world if he could just get them to their Proving without some outside force corrupting them. Aidan wanted to give them the freedom to forge their own way and actually make a difference in the world.
“Less than ten seconds. Come on, girls you can do this!”
“His voice is getting high,” Neela said.
“Maybe we should tell him we’ve had this bomb diffused for at least three minutes?” Ivy pulled her hands out of the snarl of wires, a shit-eating grin on her face.
“You little assholes.” Aidan ran a hand through his damp hair. “That’s what I’m going to start calling you. And everyone will know exactly who I mean.”
“Come on, you think this is hard for us? We’ve passed all your little tests without even trying. We’re beyond this basic crap. Give us something real to work with; we’re ready for legit mass destruction level stuff.”
“No, you’re not. But we’ll see what Pilar says at your next review. We can try to step it up for next year.”
“Next year?” Ivy sighed. “Will this Initiative crap ever end?” Her mouth turned down in a frown, and Aidan wanted to tell her she could leave whenever she wanted. But that wasn’t true. They were stuck in this farce of a boarding school for however long their benefactors wanted to study them. It took Aidan a long time to come to terms with that. For months, he looked for a way out for himself and Naomi, but just as Cleo and Genevieve said he would, he eventually came willingly, for the kids. They needed him and he couldn’t leave them behind anymore than he could Naomi.
“Initiative or not, I’ll always be around to knock some sense into you guys. That you can count on. Now get out of here. Naomi will be ready for you by now.”
“Later, sexy.” Neela tugged her gloves off, patting him on the rear end on her way out.
“Look, his ears are totally red.” Ivy giggled, following her Syntrophos from Aidan’s training room.
“Those girls are trouble,” Pilar’s voice called from the open door that led to the training field at the center of the complex. “But you’re so good with them.”
“They’re good kids.” Aidan picked up all the loose wires and tools the girls had left behind. He would make them come back and get rid of the bomb casings later tonight. He’d learned the hard way not to touch them himself. They liked to surprise him with loud explosions wherever he least expected them.
“It’s so weird, you’re barely a year older than them.”
“I feel like I’ve got at least a century on them.” He swept a pile of debris to the center of the room. “This place hasn’t sucked the life out of them yet, but it will some day; once they realize their lives will never be their own because of what they are.”
“If it were up to me, I’d let them all go. Us included.” Pilar grimaced. “But it’s not my call.”
“You aren’t the one who dragged us into this mess.”
“Maybe I’ll be the one to get us out of it one day. Come on, Cleo’s looking for you.”
“She’s back?”
“Yep, and she’s in a mood.”
“A throwing things at my head kind of mood or I’d better go armed kind of mood?”
“Worse. I’ve not seen this mood before. I think she’s about to cry.”
“Cleo does not cry.”
“Which means the world as we know it must be ending.”
“Lead the way.” Aidan followed Pilar from his wing of the complex housing his and Naomi’s private quarters, training rooms, classrooms, and even a walled in garden that sometimes reminded him of his mother’s gardens at home.
Aidan moved to Milan six months ago. Cleo and Genevieve had been right. It didn’t take Aidan long to decide for himself that his work for the Initiative was far more important than his musical education. Music could wait. These kids needed him. After his first few lessons with each pair, Aidan realized how very little they knew. Not just about being Syntrophos. Most of the kids knew precious little about their own abilities and their combat skills were pitiful. They came from average homes with limited resources, which forced Aidan to come to terms with his own privilege. Growing up, Aidan had the best of everything, including world class training—a thing he once thought every young Immortal had.
A few of them had parents who’d taught them well enough—if they were average Immortals. But none of them were just average. They were all talented and powerful young Immortals, largely due to the bond, which enhanced their natural, individual and collective abilities. They were all so ignorant they made Aidan look like a PhD candidate in Immortal studies. They needed him. Aidan’s lifelong training had prepared him for this, and he owed it to these kids to teach them what they needed to know to survive what the Initiative would surely do to them. It was worth the sacrifice of his musical education, his freedom and his relationship with Allie. One day he would find a way to leave the Initiative—but he would take his students and Pilar with him when he did.
“Do you think the Senate is finally getting involved?” Aidan asked, as he followed Pilar to Cleo’s office. Cleo was the official head of the Initiative, though it was clear she answered to someone higher up. Though Cleo and Genevieve were powerful Syntrophos, they were surprisingly ignorant about what that meant.
Pilar was the true teacher here. She’d studied the Syntrophos all her life. She knew the histories, the myths and the facts, but she shared those things judiciously—and not with their leaders. Aidan had learned so much from Pilar since his arrival, but they guarded their collective knowledge of the Syntrophos bond.
“It’s not the Senate.” Pilar rolled her eyes. “You’re always on about that.”
“One of these days, you’re going to start listening to me. The Senate is always in the background pulling strings. And others stand behind the Senate pulling a different set of strings.”
“You and your conspiracy theories.” They walked down the long, cool corridor to Cleo’s office, which faced Lake Maggiore and had the best views of the Italian Alps from her balcony.
“Come in.” Cleo’s clipped voice carried down the hall. “Hurry up and close the doors.”
Aidan darted a last glance at Pilar. She looked worried.
“What’s going on?” Aidan asked, as he stepped into the pristine office, taking the chair in front of Cleo’s antique desk.
Cleo stood behind her desk, her back to them. She was tall and slim, her body made up of sharp angles and porcelain smooth skin.
Flipping through a stack of files, he could sense her distress. He recognized those files. There were five, one for each pair of Syntrophos, from Cleo and Genevieve, Aidan and Naomi, right down to Ivy and Neela.
“We’re in trouble.” Cleo tossed the files on her desk.
“What can we do to help?” Pilar asked, her tone indicating she meant the opposite. She never shied away from showing their leaders exactly what she thought of them and their tactics.
“Perform a miracle with these kids in the next twenty-four hours, or we’re all going to wish we were never born.” She flopped into her seat, tapping her fingertips against her full lips.
“How about we start with some answers, and then we’ll go from there?” Aidan said. “What’s the immediate issue?” For all of Pilar’s bravado and courage, Aidan worried something far worse than Cleo and Genevieve was headed their way.
“Our benefactor is coming for a visit.”
“Okay, we can deal with that,” Pilar said. “It’s probably a long overdue visit anyway. We’ll get the kids ready.”
“Who is the benefactor?” Aidan asked, although he could hazard a few guesses
. This thing was always going to connect with someone bigger and badder than Cleo. “I’ve asked you before, and you’ve always been vague. If they’re coming here tomorrow, now’s the time to prepare us.”
“You don’t realize,” Cleo said, running her hands through her long, dark hair. “She was never supposed to come here. Not for several more years anyway.”
“Pull it together, Cleo. What are you saying?” Pilar asked.
“She’s going to kill me.” Cleo leaned her head back, barely keeping it together.
“Who is she?” Aidan said. “You’ve set up this entire operation on some benefactor’s dime, and you didn’t expect her to follow up on her investment?”
“I thought I had more time. I thought I could do it my way and still deliver what I promised.”
“Who is it?” Pilar demanded.
“This cannot leave the room,” Cleo said, her ebony eyes narrowed to slits.
“You have our word,” Aidan said. “Just spill it, so we can help.”
“Sarah and Charles Madison, the Chief Justice of the International Senate will be here tomorrow.”
“Wow.” Pilar’s eyes rounded in surprise. “Looks like you were right.” She turned to Aidan.
“You knew?” Cleo asked.
“Not them specifically, but I knew the Senate had to have their hands in this pie somewhere. It’s what they do.” Aidan shrugged.
“So they’re coming here? Tomorrow? Okay.” Pilar took a deep breath. “That’s not terrifying at all. Can we reschedule?”
“Not an option. They’re already on their way. And when the Chief Justice calls, you don’t tell them to come back later.”
“Cleo, what are they expecting to find when they get here?” Aidan asked.
“Not what they’re going to see.”
“What have you promised them?” Aidan’s hand clenched into fists as his temper soared.
Emerge- The Betrayal Page 19