“Are you to take her life personally,” I asked, “or were you going to hand her the blade to do it herself once you see the darkness coming?”
Master Wu’s eyes narrowed in smug triumph, knowing something I did not. He kept his lips sealed.
Emma said in a thin, reedy voice, “It’s not that kind of sacrifice.” She cleared her throat to make her voice stronger, “The sacrifice is—”
“Silence,” Master Wu’s words snapped in the air like a mighty whip.
Emma’s lips immediately thinned away and a shudder of fear rippled up my spine. It wasn’t my fear, it was hers. He had done something to make her afraid of him. Fury rippled through me.
“I am not here to make trouble,” I announced. I gripped a fist to keep my powers at bay. The light tingled inside my right palm. I hadn’t needed to form a sacred sigil with my hands, nor chant words to focus my energy. It came easily now. A need to defend myself against Master Wu threatened my logical thinking and calm demeanor. I had to focus on my objective. “I am here to protect the Propheros.”
“You have betrayed your Order and the Light,” Master Wu’s nasal voice boomed as if he were making a proclamation. “You shall be used as an observance of darkness and sent back to the Stygian, where you belong.” His smile was full of promise of unimaginable pain to come.
Gatsby dug in me with the needle point knife again, this time piercing through my shirt and flesh. The warmth of blood trickling down my back got my attention. The cut from the tip of his knife stung, but I didn’t give him the pleasure of even a grimace.
“You were relieved of your duties, brother,” Gatsby said. “Without your powers or your dignity, you can’t possibly be of any use.Iam the one chosen to protect the Propheros.”
For a moment, a deep sadness welled inside of me. Gatsby’s voice was harsh and full of spite. I knew he took umbrage with me, but in that moment I realized how much.
“I knew you resented me brother,” I said softly. “I don’t think I realized how much until now.”
He snorted.
I said in a flat tone, devoid of emotion, “Ironically, you were the one who had the most sense of us all.”
That gave him pause. I could feel it, though he was behind me and I was unable to see his face.
“You want to ask me, don’t you? It’s on the tip of your tongue. It’s what made you better than the rest of us, and the reason why you were punished the most. Your innate curiosity.”
“Gatsby,” Master Wu’s voice cracked like a whip. “You will hold the rogue Chevalier until the prophecy has been fulfilled. Do you understand?”
There it was again. That slight hesitance that urged Gatsby to ask more, but instead he led me back and away to the outskirts of the ring of order members.
Emma watched me with wide eyes as her hands came up to rub either arm against the early night chill that had set in. The wet hair couldn’t be helping her body temperature.
I’m glad you’re here.
I heard the words inside my own head but they were Emma’s. Though I wasn’t sure how she had done it, I focused on solidifying the words in my own head and tried to send a message back to her.
To the end, my love.
Emma’s mouth quirked on one side, the barest hint of a smile disappearing before it barely began. I didn’t know if she heard me, but I sent one more message to her.
Are you sure?
My heart pounded in my chest so hard, I could barely hear over its thunderous beat in my ears. Part of me, sure I would throw myself back onto Gatsby’s knife myself if her answer was yes. If I had to watch her take her own life, I surely wouldn’t survive. But I would never do that. I had to protect her life and would in whatever way she chose, even if it killed me to do so.
For a long time, I watched Emma rub her arms and stare at the ground. She did so for so long I doubted she had received my psychic messages at all.
Then she reached up with both hands to slip off her glasses, shakily closed the frames, then looked up at me. Her smooth white throat convulsed under a hard swallow. Travis’s head rose several inches, and I noticed he was watching her too as if sensing a shift.
Her answer came through crystal clear as her eyes met mine.
No.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Gatsby,” I said, under my breath, well out of earshot of Master Wu, who’d begun loudly chanting in fervent prayer. “Did they tell you why I was no longer fit to be Chevalier?”
