The Knight (The Heir #1.5)

17. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I stood in my hotel room at the Terran colonies. I was near the caves, and soon, I would call Mary and check-in. I looked at my phone as a text came in from Emma.

Emma: “Hey, are you doing okay? Will you be back for homecoming? Sam finally asked Ash. Miss you.”

Ryker: “I am out of town, might be longer than I thought.”

Emma: “Your dad said a relative is sick?”

She must have gone to my house.

Ryker: “Yeah, you talked to my dad?”

Emma: “No, Mary told me, she talked to your dad, I guess.”

So she didn't go to my house.

Ryker: “Well, I am doing some research. Promise you won’t be mad?”

Emma: “Ryker, I think we need to call the police. You’re driving me crazy over this. I do want to find my parents’ murderer but not at the expense of your happiness, Ry.” She sounded like Mary.

Ryker: “I know, but he killed your family, Em, and I can’t just stand by and let him get away. No one is even looking into it.”

She didn’t answer my last text for a few minutes, and I wondered how she was feeling. I knew that she still had a hard time sorting through her emotions. I sat down on the bed for a minute, and then I called her.

“Are you okay?” I asked after she said, “hello.”

“I am waiting for all this to just be some horrible dream that I can wake up from.” Her voice was shaky as if she were about to cry, and I wished I could have comforted her.

“I just have to figure out the last piece of this puzzle. I am so close.” I wanted to reassure her, but I wondered if talking to her about any of my plans had been a mistake.

“Ryker, this is too much for me right now,” I heard her breaths come in, and I knew that the tears were about to come. I wanted to say something. I knew she needed to put the past behind her, but she had also asked me to find out who killed her parents. She asked me to make it right, and I promised her that I would. I swore it; I made a vow.

“Ryker—Ryker, I can’t—”

“Emma, I am sorry.” I was sorry, sorrier than I had ever been before. I leaned my head against my hands as I listened to her pleading words, her confusion spilling through her voice and through the phone speakers like some slowly trickling stream, flowing slowly over a rock.

“Why on earth would someone kill them? Tell me, Ryker. Why? Why would someone want my parents, and possibly me , dead?”

“Everyone has enemies, Emma.” What was I supposed to say? Tell her that there were armies fighting against her family and her family line? Should I tell her that she was an heir, a princess of Terra? I wanted to—how desperately I wanted to tell her. I just needed a little more time.

“My parents don’t have enemies. I don’t have any enemies. I don’t understand.” She cried into the phone, and the sobs wracked my body as if I were the one crying. I wanted to reach out to her, take away her pain.

“Neither do I, Emma. Don’t worry. I am going to keep you safe.” It wasn’t enough. I knew it would never be enough for her, but I would always keep her safe. I would always fight for her.

“I am scared, Ryker. I don’t want to know the truth—but then I do. Mary says I need to move on, move past all of this, but it is so hard.” Her voice was sharp and quick, and I felt anger bubbling within me each time her voice rose more in frustration than in sorrow, because I knew that in just a short amount of time, no doubt, Shad would comfort her. Shad would have his arms around her, and she would be more than happy there. The thought made me want to slam my head against the wall. Instead, I lay back on the bed and tried to swallow the vile thoughts I was having about Shad and Emma. Move on? She wanted to move on. What did that mean? Did she want to move on from me? Was she going to replace me with Shad? All of the years and all of the time spent together, would they melt away? I knew that she didn’t remember everything. It wasn’t right to hold that against her, but the anger was growing within me. I pictured her with Shad, him kissing her, holding her, and I wanted to punch him in the face.

“How are we supposed to just move on!? Oh, I get it—how you are moving on to Shad, huh!?”

“Excuse me?” she asked, completely taken aback, and I wanted to slap myself. I sat up and then stood, moving over to the wall and hitting my head against it, chastising myself for letting the anger, the frustration, flow out of me and hit her. She didn’t need that.

“Never mind. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just—frustrated is all. I should’ve been there that night with you guys.” I lamely tried to explain my anger.

“Part of me wishes you had been there so that I wasn’t alone, but that’s selfish. If you’d have been there, you probably would be dead right now,” she breathed into the phone.

It felt good to be wanted, to be needed—I was grateful that she didn’t want me dead. That was something. But she didn’t know the truth, the truth that Lamont had asked me to go with them—granted he had been okay with me not going. He liked that I was fitting into this realm and being a normal teenage boy. He had wanted me with them, but he understood that I had a commitment to football. I groaned silently. Football was the biggest mistake of my life. If she knew the truth, how I could have saved them all, I doubted she would want anything to do with me.

“Your dad asked me to go, and I didn’t.”

“So?” She replied, as if it didn’t matter, as if the rightful heir of the first kingdom’s throne asking for something wasn’t important, wasn’t what I was sworn to do since birth. But, of course, that was her response. She didn’t know who I was, who her father was, or who she really and truly was.

“So—I feel like I could have prevented it.”

I heard Emma’s humorless laugh on the phone. “Seriously, Ryker? Do you have super strength?”

“Okay, maybe I could not have prevented it. I’m sorry, Emma. I miss them. I am so sorry. I should have been the one who died; it should have only been me,” I choked on the words, regret and guilt eating at me.

“Ryker, no. No, I couldn’t live without you. No one wants you dead.”

“I have to go, Emma,” I whispered.

“Just say goodbye to your sick relative and come home. You’re missing the homecoming dance, and I am so annoyed that I have to go without you.”

“Are you still going with him ?” I couldn’t help the annoyance in my tone. I was so far away, and I hated knowing he would be with her, and I wouldn’t be.

“Yes.”

I was silent, deciding not to speak, not to let my anger spill out on that occasion.

“Ryker?”

“Yeah?” I said, my voice low as I leaned my back against the wall and slid down.

“Are you okay?”

Was I okay? It was a loaded question, and if I got too into the real feelings there, I knew that I would have exploded.

“He likes you; I can tell,” I said, knowing that above all else, Emma needed a friend, needed reassurance. I was her guardian knight after all.

“There is something different about him, Ry; I don’t know what it is.” I knew what it was if what Shad had told me was true. I knew exactly what it was: the song. I had her melody memorized, and even though I couldn’t hear it, I hummed it inside of myself to the tune of my own melody. It wasn’t a perfect fit—my melody with hers—still, they did compliment each other so well. What we had, it was what most people wanted on Terra, even searched for.

“He has always thought that he could get whatever he wants.”

“He is not like that at all. You don’t know him the way that I do.”

“So, does it even matter what I say? Emma, I have known him for a long time.”

“I mean, I love you, Ry, but I need to grow up sometime, right?”

“This is hard for me,” I mumbled as I buried my face in my hands. It was the biggest understatement of my life.

“Ry, I—”

“I know. I’m sorry. I will fight for you.” The words just spilled out of me. If she didn’t know my pull, my vows, and my devotion before, would she know it then? I thought.

“Fight for me? Ryker, we'll always be friends.” Friends, she still thought friendship was all there would be between us. What I felt for her was so much more. The pull I had toward her was more than simple friendship. She was family; she was my duty. She was my heir, yes, but there was more.

“I don’t like change,” I said.

“Well, things change. That’s part of being human—and living. I am allowed to have more than one friend, Ry.”

“Look at you—all wise.”

She laughed, and I was comforted by the sound of it. “I know, I’m so wise, and you should listen to me.”

“I really need to go, Emma—” I didn’t have any place to be, but I knew that if I talked to her for too long, I would spill all of my secrets.

“Call me soon.”

“I will,” I answered, knowing that I would; I just didn’t know when “soon” would be.

“Thanks.”

“Love you, Emma. Have fun at the dance, but not too much fun.”

“Sure, Ryker.