I turned around, my back pressed against the door. “I’m sorry, Travis, I didn’t mean to implicate you into this. I was just trying to save Emma.”
Looking up, I calculated the distance to the secret opening Gatsby had used. I quickly scaled a ladder, two of the rungs breaking under my weight. When I got to the opening, I saw a small, metal door had been shut behind Gatsby. I shook its hinges but apart from its loud screeching protest, it did not budge. Gingerly stepping back down the ladder, I had to leap the last several feet where three more rungs broke, effectively destroying the ladder for further use.
Travis’s long fingers drummed against the book as he waited for me to find a way out. “Were you going to let me die?”
I didn’t answer right away. I had to obey my Order in deliver the Propheros to the dark, but a part of me was ashamed I felt Travis would have been easier to sacrifice. “It isn’t up to me. I am merely a foot solider for the Light.”
Travis gave me a strange look. He knew I wouldn’t have fought as hard if it were him. Tension rolled out into the room, a thick blanket of unsaid accusation. Discomfort stiffened the muscles between my shoulders but there was nothing to say. There may be nothing I could do for Emma, either. I could feel sorry, but guilt was a useless ruse that changed nothing. I couldn’t indulge, I could only correct what was before me.
Finally, Travis put his nose back into the book while I waited by the door, listening for approaching footsteps.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Whoa,” Travis said after five minutes of reading from the book.
“What?” I snapped, impatient and on edge at the door, waiting for them to come for us. Best case scenario, the Luxis would send me back to purgatory, life between lives, and I would stand no chance of regaining my soul. Worse case, they would deem me a dark one. They would torture me before banishing me into the Stygian using a portal. It was a punishment reserved for the most wicked. As my agitation grew, my fingers ached to pull my broadsword from its sheath on my back.
“Your upbringing is super intense. Like child-star messed up. I didn’t know....” said Travis.
“Oh,” I said, my shoulders sagging a bit. He must have read the part about me trying to regain my soul.
“I mean, being snatched from your crib and trained into a thoughtless soldier of the Light would screw anyone up.”
I perked up at that. “What? What do you mean?”
Travis held his hands out as if they could do the talking where his mouth struggled. “I don’t know. Like it’s pretty messed up how they snatch babies and force you to obey their every whim.”
“It is for my own good. It is so I can redeem myself and regain my soul.”
Travis’s face scrunched in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“It must mention in there how I had committed untold atrocities in a past life and must serve the Light until I can regain my soul. They used magic to find me and offered me a chance at redemption. It is what the Chevalier are, creatures of darkness, serving the Light.”
Travis’s eyes turned back down to the sacred text. “No,” he said slowly, “it only says that whenever the Chevalier ranks have been whittled down, they go out into the world and snatch some babies. Doesn’t say anything about how they choose. It doesn’t say anything about Chevalier missing their souls, it just says,” he leaned into the book and read off the page, “Chevalier must be trained to facilitate complete and utter obedience, no matter the means. It is done so that they will unerringly follow the Light.”
My body went numb as he read. They lied to me? Emma was right, they lied to me so I would obey their every command. I wasn’t missing a soul. There was no reason why I could not love, or read, or enjoy the earthly pleasures like anyone else. I had nothing to prove.
“I’m sorry, man,” I distantly heard Travis say. “I’ve heard of brainwashing cults and all, but dayum.”
“They lied to me.” I said the words out loud as if it would make the idea easier to swallow, but it went down like razor blades soaked in lemon juice.
Footsteps approached the door, and I knew they’d arrived. I pulled the broadsword from my back and squeezed the handle with a rage never known before. Unable to digest the lie of my entire existence, my vision turned red.
When the door creaked open, I swung my sword high, ready to bring it down on whoever was on the other side.
“Calan, no,” Travis cried out just as my sword swung down. His cries met my ears just as I recognized the liquid brown eyes of Emma widen in fear as she watched my steel slice through the air toward her face.
It was too late to pull back on the momentum I’d created but I moved the axis of my swing and it swiped down past Emma’s face and away from her body. A few of her hairs floated to the ground from where they had been cleanly sliced away from her head.
I forced out a breath. I had almost killed her. I fell to one knee and held myself against the storm of emotions erupting from the close call.
What was wrong with me? I wasn’t a killer. I’d never slayed anything other than demons and malevolent spirits. I couldn’t let the Luxis further manipulate me away from what I was. They’d made me soulless enough already.
Emma molded her body over my hunched over one. “It’s okay, you didn’t hurt me. It’s okay now, Calan.”
I never wanted her to move away. Feeling like a raw, pulsating nerve, she acted as a skin, protecting and soothing me.
“I think I peed a little,” Travis squeaked.
