Zach started to pull Emma back. He had to get her away before James could hurt her. But he was too late, James had already pushed up to stand in front of Emma, and the words were already coming. “What the fuck happened to you?”
Zach’s Shadow sword was in his hand before James finished his sentence. He didn’t need to look at Emma to feel how stiff she’d gone. He tried to nudge her back behind him, somewhere safe, so that he could deal with James. But she wouldn’t move. She dug her feet in and refused to let him stand between them. And then she took another step into the room, away from him, directly between him and James.
Fuck. He suddenly realized that she couldn’t see his sword. Even when he was touching her, her perception of their Shadows was hazy at best. But he couldn’t risk dropping his weapon to take her hand.
James widened his stance, pulling strangely misshapen shuriken from the Shadows. Hell. She couldn’t see those either. How was he going to protect her if she couldn’t even see the danger she was in?
“Step back, Emma,” Zach muttered.
She gave him a quick, hard smile over her shoulder, but then she shook her head and faced James. “I don’t know what happened to me,” she snapped. “What the fuck happened toyou?”
There was a moment of deadly silence as Zach pulled a second sword from the Shadows. He didn’t care that James was still weak. He didn’t care that James was his friend. If James said one more thing to hurt Emma—
James let out a rough bark of bitter laughter and slowly opened his hands, releasing the distorted Shadow throwing stars into thin wisps. “Gordon and an array of stupid decisions happened to me,” James said. “Mostly, I guess, I’m just an arsehole. Sorry.”
“Are you? An arsehole, I mean?” Emma asked before Zach could reply. “Or did you just get caught up in something terrible that you couldn’t get out of?”
James sank back onto the rumpled bed with a grunt. “I’m an arsehole. It’s the only thing I know for sure. I am sorry, though. I never used to be so… thoughtless.”
Thoughtless. Fuck. That was the understatement of the century.
Emma took another step toward James. “That’s okay. You’re not the first person to react like that. Honestly, you weren’t even that bad.”
God. One day, Zach was going to hunt down everyone who had ever made Emma feel horrible about herself. Starting with Gordon. He opened his hands and released his swords into the air, but James hardly seemed to notice. He was too busy staring at Emma’s Shadow.
“Do you know? What it looks like, I mean?” James asked.
Zach wrapped his arm around Emma’s shoulders, ready to turn and leave. He’d dropped his weapons, but it didn’t mean they had to stand there while James took a blade to her scars. But Emma simply patted his hand and then pulled out the hard wooden chair from under the small desk and sat. “I can’t see it.”
James turned to Zach. “Is that what my Shadows looked like? That night?”
Zach frowned, glancing at Emma. His reaction to her Shadows had already caused so much pain between them and he didn’t want to reopen those wounds.
She smiled in understanding and murmured, “It’s okay. You can tell him.”
“At first I thought so,” Zach admitted, trying desperately to let go of the mixture of anger and regret still swirling through him as he replied to James. “But when I looked properly, I realized that yours was full of cysts, more… rotten. Decaying even. Emma’s isn’t like that.”
“Fuck.” James wiped his hand down his pale face and a shaft of guilt pierced Zach. He hadn’t wanted to hurt his friend, not really, but James had asked, and it was the truth.
“What does mine look like?” Emma asked softly.
“It looks… withered,” James answered. “Like it’s been strangled somehow. It should be dark. There should be charcoal and ebony filled with vibrant reds and burgundies, but it’s gray and pale. There are some whisps of a purple-red color. Some parts are moving sluggishly, but a lot aren’t moving at all.”
Emma swallowed hard, her eyes shining suspiciously, but her chin was up. She didn’t even reach for her locket. “Okay. Thanks. I’ve always wondered…. No one would tell me.”
Hell. Now Zach felt even guiltier. He should have told her before rather than leave her to find out from James of all people.
“Are you going to get Ethan and Bryn to look at it?” James asked. His eyes flicked to Zach. “I guess you know they saved me.”
Emma nodded slowly. “I think so. I just—” She swallowed. “It’s been part of me for so long, I wonder if it’s supposed to be like this.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m a little afraid, if I’m honest.”
Emma was the strongest person Zach knew, and she was afraid. Afraid enough to admit it to James. Had he pushed her? Was she doing it for him? Damn. Maybe he should have left it alone.
James shook his head. “Nah, let Ethan try. He’s good. Otherwise, you’ll always wonder.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Emma agreed.
Zach grunted. Nothing about this conversation was going how he’d expected. Or wanted.
