The Knight (The Heir #1.5)

14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

W e walked through the front door of my house and down the hall. I nervously grabbed the door handle to my bedroom and turned to Emma. “I just want to warn you a little that, well—” I stopped and ran a hand across my face. The nervousness about sharing it with her was making my body shake. How would she take the news? How would she take the news that I thought her parents had been murdered? “I’ve been doing some research, and–don’t think that I’m crazy, okay?” I needed to be ready for what I was about to show her, and how Emma was going to take it.

“Okay. What class of yours already has a project? Are we watching the movie in your room? You’re acting weird,” Emma went on. She tended to ramble a bit when she was confused or nervous. I didn’t dare unshield my melody to check because I was barely holding it together as I prepared to show her my research.

I nodded, not answering her questions and opened the door. Emma walked inside. As I approached her, I watched as she took in my room— watched as her eyes roamed over every single thing I owned on Earth. We had been in that room so many times together. I wondered if she had any memories of that. She wasn’t the same person on that day as she had been when we were young. I continued to watch as her gaze wandered over the wall behind my desk. I knew it was a sight to see. Papers and research taped up and charted out.

I could sense her confusion and a little fear. Murderer rose up in her thoughts, and then she had memories of movies. I didn’t catch it all; it happened too fast, but she was confused and possibly thought that I was insane—or a murderer. I needed to clear that up first.

“Okay, so I know it is a bit much, but there is something about having all of my research in one place and being able to always see it.”

She nodded and walked over to a piece of paper with all the dates I had found of suspicious behavior, from the man who caused Emma so much pain, who killed Lamont and Ara. “What is this?” She asked, pointing to the paper.

“I was mapping out any previous attempts.”

“Attempts?”

“Uh, yeah.” I looked at my feet and shuffled.

“What is this, Ry?” Emma asked, moving down the wall to news clippings of car crashes. She stopped when she reached the news clippings from the night Lamont and Ara were murdered. I watched as her body became rigid, and blackness seemed to coat her soul, much like it had in the hospital and right before I had left for the summer. It made me sick to think of the pain that she was experiencing, and I was worried about the corruption that was entering her soul.

“Are you okay, Em?” I asked, supporting her quickly as she began to wobble. I wasn’t sure if she was going to pass out or not.

“Ry, what is this—” Her voice was shaking.

“I know your parents were murdered, Em,” I said, looking into her eyes, pleading within her melody for her to listen to me, to not run away. I felt the horror that she was experiencing as it radiated from her melody, and I wanted to take it all away, remove all of the bad things from her life.

“What?” She finally spoke again after a long silence. Her eyes held so many questions, and I wanted to answer every single one of them; I wanted to tell her everything.

“It doesn’t make sense— what happened, how it happened,” I ran my fingers through my hair as I shook my head.

Emma looked the entire wall over as if searching for all of the answers that she didn’t even know that she had. “Did you talk to the police?” she asked as she sat down on my desk chair. I knew that she was trying to unravel what it all meant, what it all meant for her.

“Yes, I started with them first, and it was weird. They couldn’t say what happened.” I pulled out a notebook and turned to the page with the sketch of the man. I held it up to show her in the light. I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction she would have to it, but I needed to know as much as I could about that man before I left to search for him again. I didn't know if she remembered yet that she had seen that man, or that she had actually described him to the police, and that the sketch was made from her own descriptions. Her memories were still a bit fuzzy. I knew that; I knew that she was having trouble remembering anything at all about that night. She often had dreams of that night, nightmares—had she seen him in one of those nightmares? Would she remember the details of that night yet? I wondered.

“Emma?” I asked, moving closer to her. Her eyes locked onto mine, and I could feel peace radiate inside of her. That surprised me.

She remembered him. I could feel it inside of her melody.

“Ryker, this man didn’t kill my parents. He saved my life.”

“One of the officers saw him flee the scene and tried to call out to him, but he drove off,” I questioned.

“He helped me. He didn’t do it,” she insisted as she pushed the picture away.

“But that night—in the hospital, you told me you saw someone, someone who maybe hit your car.” I found myself thinking back to that night.

Emma was passed out on the bed, and Mary let me go in first. The beeping of the hospital monitors, along with the sterile odor of antiseptic and chemicals, made me want to vomit. There she lay, cuts and bruises visible on her face, arms, and neck. Her right leg was bandaged. As I approached her, I could feel her melody swirling free, it was uninhibited because of the loss of Lamont and Ara. It was the most beautiful thing, and yet the most tragically heart-wrenching thing, that I had ever heard. She looked clean; she had changed from whatever she had been wearing into a teal blue hospital gown. A needle and tube were stuck in her arm. There was also something on her finger that made the monitors beep, keeping perfect time with her heart.

I walked over to her. I remembered holding my breath as I reached her side. I knew that I needed to start the process of shielding her soul right away, but I was weak. After losing Lamont and Ara, I wanted to feel her soul and melody. I stood there for a few minutes before I placed one hand over her eyes and the other hand over her heart. A mind and soul became one through a melody. This was thought by our people to be in the chest and the eyes on the body. She did not move as I started the process of shielding her soul. Soon I was done, and I stood back. Her melody was still strong, not completely shielded, but I knew it wouldn’t attract people from great distances anymore like it would have only a few moments earlier. Her eyes opened. I stepped back in shock as she sat up.

“Ryker, he said—he—killed them. I saw someone hit our car. He stopped and helped, but he did it. Please find him, please.” Tears were running down her face like small trickling waterfalls, bursting without a dam to keep them in place. I held her to me.

“Emma, we will find who did this, and they will pay. I swear it.”

She cried and cried in my arms, and I would be lying if I said that I wasn't crying, too, right alongside her.

“They are dead, Ryker,” she moaned into my shirt, clutching her arms around me for strength. And within me, like always being her knight, the strength emerged just when she needed it, because I was her guardian knight, and that was what she needed.

Emma, of course, must not have remembered that conversation. She must not have remembered the moment later, either, when Mary also had placed her hands on her and shielded her, too, as best she could. I looked into her eyes, concerned as her melody swirled, and so many thoughts darted this way and then that way, through her emotions.

“Are you okay?” I whispered.

“Yes. I remembered. I had a flashback; my therapist says that can happen.”

“Emma, I am so sorry.” I moved then to sit on the desk.

“So what are you going to do now?” she asked as if she were trying to be brave by asking like she really didn’t want to know., but I knew deep down that she did want to know, and that she did want the murderer found, just like she pleaded with me in the hospital.

“I need to find him—figure out who he is, exactly.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’ve talked to some friends about it. Even if it wasn’t this man, maybe this guy saw someone else. He is the best lead, and he was there first.”

“Friends?” she asked, moving a stray hair from her cheek.

“Private investigators—and stuff—don't worry about it. The point is that I will figure out who he is, and I will give your parents justice.”

She nodded.

I motioned for Emma to sit on the bed, and I was grateful when she followed me. She seemed so off balance; I didn’t want her to fall to the floor.

“Thank you, Ry,” she said, falling back against the bed. I lay beside her on the mattress. She turned to me, and it only took me a moment to tuck her into my side, stroking her back. She lay her head upon my chest, and I didn’t think as I bent down and touched my lips to her head, not a kiss, but the pull I had for her wanted it to be one. She lifted her face up to look at me.

“You sure you are okay? I feel like a horrible person for just springing that on you. I didn’t mean to make you sad,” I whispered.

“I don't know if I will ever be okay.” Her eyes told me the truth of her words, and so did her soul.

After Emma fell asleep during the movie, I watched her as she slept, cradled against me in my arms. I would have been happy to stay there for all of eternity.

Then my father, who wasn't really my father at all, or even a person, really, came into my room. It was interesting just how powerful the ancient magic was. That illusion of a father figure had haunted me for sixteen years up to that point in time. Lamont said that I needed to look like a normal human person with a family, and one day, he was just here, pretending to be a person, pretending to be my father. I didn't understand the ancient powers fully, and I didn’t try to understand. He only came around when Emma was at my house, or when Lamont, Ara, Emma and I were pretending to be on family vacations. It was odd, like a ghost trailing behind me. How it could fool Emma and other humans, I had no idea. I clearly saw through the facade, but then again, I knew the truth, and I knew about the Ancients.

I tried to get him to leave—whatever it was, but it wasn’t working, and Emma was embarrassed to be found asleep in my bed with me. I just smiled and couldn't help but joke with her a little as she had overreacted. I smiled wide as I walked down the stairs with her, and my “father” disappeared again.

Mary wasn’t home yet, and I knew that I wasn’t going to leave Emma alone. I stayed there while she slept, watching senseless television shows. I was clicking through channels aimlessly when Emma started thrashing on the other couch. I walked over to her and touched her shoulders. She cried out, pushing me away.

“Emma, Emma. It's me, Ryker. You are dreaming.”

She opened her eyes, and her eyes locked onto mine as she started to cry.

“It’s him, Ryker. I saw him—that night. He kept me alive on purpose. He only wanted them dead.”

“What—?”

“It was him. You were right. He did help me, but he was irritated by the mess of the crash, and he didn’t even care that my parents were dead!”

“I will find him; I won't let him ever hurt you again.” I meant those words, just as much as I did the first time I had said them, and then the second time I had repeated them to Mary. I felt the vow that I had made become stronger, my promise more solid than before, and I knew that I would discover who was responsible for inflicting the pain which Emma endured, and he would pay.