Bound by Prophecy (Descendants Series) (9 page)

My stance adjusted to more of a ready crouch. It was only a serrated stainless blade, but I was quickly becoming aware of her capabilities. She had eluded Morgan’s men. Certainly they wouldn’t have considered her a threat, merely another human, easily swayed. But she had still managed to find us, walk herself into that warehouse. His warehouse.

The lingering pain in my shoulder became a niggling distraction.

“Let me past,” she said in an unsteady voice.

“You can’t, Emily. Let me explain—”

“Let me past,” she repeated, though this time it was saturated with hatred and despair.

“You’ll never find them,” I said. “Not without me.”

She considered that for less than a second before tightening her grip on the knife. “There is no
with you
.”

I hadn’t expected her to know the Division. But the revulsion in her words made me wonder if she knew more than I. “I have to keep Brianna safe,” I said. “I will do whatever that requires.”

She narrowed her gaze on me.

“You can’t do this.”

“Stop me,” she said, and I could see her decide to make a move.

“I won’t let you,” I warned. “I can’t—”

Emily rushed me. Her moves were swift and sure, and left no doubt she’d been training for most of her life. She might not have believed her mother, but she had certainly paid attention in class.

Her knife bit at me with quick, short dives between practiced leg sweeps and palm thrusts. She kept herself low, as small a target as possible, and free from my grasp. She knew I wouldn’t hurt her, or didn’t care, and worked to use my size against me. All I could do without injuring one of us was avoid her strikes.

She feigned left, and then darted right, but instead of stabbing at me flipped the tray, dishes and all, at my upper body. It should have given her the opportunity to slip by, but I was no back-alley mugger. I got a secure grip on her arm and swung her around, her back toward me, to grab the other.

I had her trapped by a firm hold on each arm, just above the elbow where I had the best leverage, and the knife fell to the floor. For half a second, I thought that meant she’d given up, but she drew her bare feet together over it and
made a clumsy thrust toward my thigh without pause. I dodged the blow, but she’d lost her footing so my movement dropped her to kneeling. She tried to roll forward and catch me off balance and it nearly worked, but I was not physically unsteady, merely thrown by her maneuvers. By the idea that she—Emily—could fight this well.

I pulled her from the floor and she drew her legs up fluidly before kicking out to shove off the dresser and propel herself into me. I struggled to hold her. It was not unlike holding a cat. Some wild, ninja, cat.

I braced myself, legs wide, and drew her against me to twist her arms securely within mine. I pressed a hand to her neck to prevent her from smashing my face with the back of her skull and said evenly, “Emily, I don’t want to hurt you.”

It was probably mostly true.

She didn’t speak, simply raised her legs from the floor, forcing me to hold all of her weight. I sighed.

“Give,” I said. “Give and have a conversation with me or so help me—”

My threat was cut short as her bare right foot shot out to connect with the corner of the flatscreen television. I caught the move just in time to save her from flipping it toward us and spun around to throw her onto the bed. She’d no more than had a chance to roll over before I was on her, pinning her down on all points beneath me. She jerked, but it was too late, I had her. I sat atop her hips, my knees pinning her forearms while my legs, bent behind me, trapped her just above the knees.

Were she able to move, my free hands could discourage the notion, but she wasn’t, so I simply sat there, staring down at her, reminding her that she never had a chance.

She was furious. I wasn’t sure exactly when she’d lost her cool, but her cheeks were flushed and her jaw tight. Her hair had gone wild, splayed over the mussed blue comforter behind her. Her chest heaved, both her and the bed covered in bits of scrambled egg. Spots of something dark had splattered her shirt. I felt a tug at the corner of my mouth, but the look in her eye told me I was about to get an earful of something.

I’d never know exactly what though, because, suddenly, three loud knocks rang through the room and the atmosphere transformed entirely.

Chapter Ten

Eggs and Blood

Emily abandoned all signs of struggle. She steadied her breathing, face nothing but alert, when a woman on the other side of the door said, “Housekeeping.”

There was no way to know whether we were in danger, or I might have left it be. But this woman might have heard the struggle, the crashing dishes, might have been listening from the hall for some time.

I leaned forward, questioning Emily’s compliance with my eyebrows, but she didn’t move.

I slid from the bed, but hesitated as my shoes touched carpet. I didn’t quite trust her.

“Stay,” I said levelly, walking backward to the entry. She simply stared at me, looking past the finger pointing her down, and breathed.

The maid waited impatiently on the other side of the door. Mr. Smith’s room had been marked for early checkout, she explained. I told her there’d been a slight change of plans, but gave her my assurance she’d have the room within an hour or so. By the time the maid had moved on to clean a room down the hall, Emily had composed herself and sat on the edge of the bed, picking egg from her shirt and hair.

I leaned against the dresser across from her, and then folded my arms over my chest when I realized the dark splatters covering her were blood, where she’d nicked my forearms. The wounds had already begun to close, and I didn’t need to add that particular detail to our discourse. I gritted my teeth. Who sent a steak knife for scrambled eggs, anyway?

Emily looked up at me.

“I know you’re upset,” I said. “But there is more to all of this than your sister.” I didn’t know if she understood that, if her mother had explained the full extent of the prophecy, that the union would decide who ruled, whether or not the game-ending war would play through, but she didn’t react at all to my words. “I had no choice but to take her there. I’ll try to explain it to you, as much as I can, but I can’t let you go, not now.”

She didn’t argue, but I recognized a “why” in her expression.

“They are searching for you now, Emily. Morgan’s men will find you, they will do anything to get to you.”

The idea distracted me, and my hands fell to the dresser to curl over the edge I leaned against. Emily noticed the short stripes of dry blood and looked a little sick.

“I’m sorry,” I said automatically, and then realized how ridiculous it was. I rubbed a palm surreptitiously over the worst patch to brush it loose and changed my apology into what it should have been for. “You should have never been involved. If Morgan were to find you, he could pull anything you’ve learned from your mind.” Her eyes came back to mine. “And I’ve already let you know more than is safe.”

“Morgan,” she asked, “he’s different… from the others?”

I nodded. “He’s stronger. There’s never been a commonblood immune to his gift.”

She swallowed. “And Brianna, she’s not immune?”

“We don’t know,” I said truthfully. “He’s not had the chance to try.”

Emily chewed her lip, contemplating this for a very long time before she finally spoke again. “I’ll go with you. I’ll go to save Brianna.”

She moved to stand, but I stopped her. “Not yet.”

“We have to go now,” she insisted.

“There are a few things I need to explain first.”

Her lips were moving in that measured, silent way again, the way they had as the policemen searched for us outside the warehouse. The way they had as she climbed the hotel. I knelt before her, finally able, to some degree, to read her lips and gather a few words.
A prophecy
.

I was suddenly standing again. She was reciting words in the ancient language, re-memorizing a prophecy. Not our prophecy, but her own. My heart sank in a
why me
kind of hopelessness as Emily realized my discovery. She looked at once guilty and defiant.

“Tell me,” I said flatly.

Her fingers curled into her palms. “I don’t know,” she stammered. “I can’t remember. There were so many.” She glanced up at me again, stricken. “And I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t believe her, Aern.”

“Your mother?”

She nodded.

“Your mother was a prophet,” I repeated, to no one in particular.

“I didn’t know,” she said.

They were wrong about the prophecy. All this time, it wasn’t a daughter of great power, but the daughter of
a
great power. Did that mean Brianna truly wasn’t hiding a talent as the Division had suspected? Did it mean they were wrong about her protector as well?

“What did she say, Emily?”

Emily shook her head. “Something about the Division. The Taken will die at the hands of the Division.” She pressed her fingers to her temples, desperately seeking the words. “I can’t remember it all. But the Division is bad, Aern. She drilled that into my head over and over and over. We’ve got to get her out of there.”

“They won’t kill her,” I promised. “They have to keep her alive. They have to keep her from the Council.”

“But—”

“That’s why she’s there,” I said. “They need her.”

“No,” she said. “No, that’s not right. Why would they need Brianna?”

My jaw flexed involuntarily. “To get me.”

Emily’s mouth went slack with confusion and I sat heavily beside her. “That’s what I wanted to tell you about,” I said. “Why the Division is after me.”

Chapter Eleven

Morals

Emily sat silent while I attempted to explain my relationship with the Division, how I’d handed her sister over to the one group her prophecy said would kill her.

I told her how Morgan had turned on us. How he’d removed all those of Council who didn’t cower to him. I explained our fear, that those who stayed seemed to submit to his every whim, as if they’d lost their own power of will. I told her he was treacherous, barbaric, but I didn’t tell her the extent of his cruelty. I didn’t tell her of the human girls we’d found, their bodies barely recognizable, as he passed the time until he came into his prophesied power. I couldn’t tell her that. Not when he was after her, and not when he was after Brianna.

“Brendan convinced the others to leave Council, and he’s been gathering new followers every day.” Every time Morgan committed a new offense. “The split is quickly becoming a war. I’d never officially left Council, I stayed to try and right things, and I stayed because it was my place. When it went beyond fixing, I simply stepped away from everyone. The Division has been wooing me for a long time,” I said. “But I’ve never had to take sides.”

“Until Brianna,” she said weakly.

“It was all I could do. The best place for her. No one there will want any harm to come to her. Their entire goal revolves around her.”

“And then why,” she asked, “if they want you so bad, if Morgan is so terrible, why don’t you join them?”

“I don’t trust them.”

“You don’t trust them?”

“I won’t tell you why. I can’t tell you, because there’s still a chance—” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t tell her how close we were to harm, how there was no guarantee of keeping either of us out of Morgan’s hands completely. I couldn’t tell her about the Division’s interpretation of the prophecy, that they wanted me because they planned to use the second heir to the name for the
foretold union. I said, “They don’t want me for the right reasons, Emily. And I don’t want you to trust them either.”

She’d lost her determination again, her hands fisted to stop the trembling.

“They will protect her. It’s the safest place in the world for her right now. And by this afternoon, we’ll be with her.” She nodded and I turned her to look directly into her eyes. “Don’t trust them, Emily. Stay with Brianna.”

She agreed to do as I asked, but I couldn’t help reminding her again as she laced her shoes and found her jacket. I didn’t tell her why, that if Brendan or any of the others were somehow able to penetrate her mind in a way I couldn’t seem to do, Brianna would know. Brianna could stop them. But as I glanced around the room, I thought maybe I’d wasted my breath, because Emily didn’t trust them at all. She’d been told her whole life they would kill her sister. And now I was forcing her to ally with them, to stay under their protection. I shook my head.

Emily stepped beside me and stared at the shattered dishes strewn across the room, assuming I was shaking my head at the mess she’d made. She glanced at me, silently questioning whether she needed to pick it up, and broke my contemplation. I found the receipt among the chaos and signed for the charge. She’d just cost Mr. Smith a pretty big tip.

We left the hotel to much warmer weather. Emily squinted against the sunlight, and her hand slipped beneath my arm to wrap loosely over my wrist as we navigated the crowd outside the valet stand. Several taxis waited for guests checking out, but we walked past them, opting instead for a random cab passing by several blocks from the hotel.