Chapter Thirty-One Emma Baldwin
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Emma Baldwin
The illusion I’ve made shimmers in front of me like an image reflected on water. The battle is so realistic that I can almost taste the sweat on my double’s skin as illusion Malcolm pins me down.
I grin. Sabine’s wicked smile as she watches from her throne shows me that she believes the fight’s genuine. Only the real Malcolm, standing beside me and staring at the rippling image of the fake versions of us locked in this fight, knows the truth.
“It’s working,” he mutters, but I note the desperation in his tone. With how I’m struggling to differentiate between reality and the vision right now, I can’t imagine what Malcolm must be feeling.
The air around us warps and shimmers silver with images of us fighting.
But behind the chaos of our fake war, the real Malcolm frowns, his hazel eyes looking devastated.
It’s as if even the sight of us attacking each other, although just a mirage, pains him.
His love for me tugs at my heart, and my concern for him and our families makes my focus slip.
My control of the illusion weakens. It starts to blur and fade for a second.
Tears stream down my face as I whisper through gritted teeth, a desperate plea in my voice, “I can’t hold this much longer.
You’re going to have to actually fight.” Sweat trickles down my forehead as I struggle to maintain the illusion.
“Sabine is going to kill our families, Malcolm.” Through my tears, I gaze into his hazel eyes. “Please.”
“No,” he says, his voice thick with pain. “I can’t fight you. I can’t hurt you again.”
My heart squeezes painfully at his words, but it’s the only way to ensure our families’ safety. “You have to,” I whisper hoarsely. “Sabine will catch on soon.”
His lips tremble. “I guess I still put you over everything, huh?”
The illusion in front of us sharpens again.
In it, my image fights to get free from beneath Malcolm.
He grabs a sword that whistles past the replica of me.
My mom gasps and cries out as the blade barely misses my image’s neck.
The slave statues stare at the battle, their frozen faces twisted in terror and anguish.
Tears of blood drip down the cheeks of some, showing that they too believe the illusion is real. We can hear our families sobbing.
“The plan to kill Sabine won’t work,” Malcolm whispers, his voice cracking. “She’s too powerful, and she’s got our families, Star.”
“I know. So fight me! The illusion is fading. We have to—”
“No.” Malcolm’s voice is firm. “You have to win the Tether.” With a trembling hand, he picks up a knife from the ground. “Kill me,” he pleads. “It’s the only way I know to protect you and my family.”
“What?” I shake my head violently. “No,” I sob. “I … I love you.”
“And I love you.” He looks at me with more emotion than I’ve ever seen, his hazel eyes teary as he puts a knife in my hand. He walks toward me, pressing the sharp point of the blade against his chest.
My voice cracks. “I’ve been fighting these urges so hard … fighting to protect you. To protect our love…”
“Don’t. You are the most beautiful and perfect person I have ever met, Emma Baldwin. I want you to live.” His voice gets shaky and desperate. “I’m sorry. Sorry I couldn’t save Grace. But please,” he begs. “Let me save her sister. Let me die so the rest of you can live.”
Tears stream down my cheeks, hot against my skin. My hand shakes holding the knife. I’ve daydreamed about carving his body, feeling his blood on my hands. But now when I have the chance to … it’s the last thing I want to do.
“Kill me,” he says. “I’d do it myself, but one of us must kill the other with intention in order to win. Please, Emma. I need you to do this now.”
My control on the illusion slips.
The sky around us stutters. The illusion fades.
Everyone sees us standing together. He’s in front of me, and I am holding a knife.
“What?” Teeth bared, Sabine looks around, roaring, “What’s going on here?”
I look at my mom, dad, Demetri, and I inhale a shaky breath.
I plunge the knife into Malcolm’s chest, and impossibly, my heart breaks further.
His blood splatters my clothes. I’m trembling and crying.
Malcolm and I both crumple to the arena floor.
The weight of grief and loss is crushing my soul, and I can’t seem to breathe.
“EMMA!” A shrill voice makes the birds in the trees rising above the outdoor arena flutter away.
“You’re dead, Emma!” Jayla’s sobs echo through the arena as she struggles against her chains, devastated by the death of her beloved twin brother.
“EMMA! I’ll kill you! You hear me, Emma! You’re dead! YOU’RE DEAD!”
The agony on her face, on his mother’s face, it claws at my heart. Jayla’s right. I’m dying inside. The old Emma, the innocent Emma, the happy Emma, the hopeful one, the one who was protected and shielded from the bad in the world.
She’s dead too.
The Tether taught me the color of evil. It’s black as the grief coating my skin. White as Sabine’s smug face. And red. Red as the blood on my hands. I’m no longer blind to the fact that evil is a monster that lives in all of us. It usually shrinks behind the good we hold inside … unless we feed it.
But me?
I let it free.
My shame is on display in this arena for all the world to see.
To judge.
Like I judged my family. But I’m no better than them.
Betrayal chokes me. I killed my first and only love. Malcolm’s body is lying motionless in a growing pool of red. Sabine’s laughter jingles like chains.
I kneel beside Malcolm, my hands on his body, feeling the warmth of his skin already fading into cool memory.
And I realize that Demetri was right, love and heartbreak are the same in this family.
Sobbing, shoulders shaking, I cradle Malcolm’s corpse.
Almost welcoming Jayla’s attack. I deserve her rage.
The Davenport family is broken. Malcolm’s grandfather and brother are crying, and tears that I caused wet the face of his Big-Mama as his mother weeps, “Noooo. My son-shine! My baby boy! Not my sweet baby boy!”
I look at the slave statues frozen in the audience around us, their stony faces reflecting the horror and heartbreak in the arena.
Malcolm’s mother shouts, “Nooo! No more dolls!”
I don’t look at my own family, because shame will make me crumble into dust. I don’t want them to look at me and see a murderer.
I cradle Malcolm’s corpse, my bloody, trembling hands stroking his cool brown cheeks.
Tears blur my vision. I remember his crooked smile, his corny jokes, his steamy kisses, the way my body lit up like the stars when he touched me.
Why can’t I be dead too? Each teardrop that falls on his perfect face reflects a love that refuses to fade with death.
“Please,” I beg the ancestors, the heavens, anyone listening, “bring him back to me!”
Sabine smiles with satisfaction. My soul is crushed as she grips the microphone. “Wonderful!” she says. Clapping, she adds, “Emma has triumphed! The Tether is complete!”
But for me, there is no victory here … just the heartbreaking realization that I have lost everything that matters to me.
“Forgive me,” I whimper, fumbling with the clasp as I struggle to lift Grace’s necklace from around my neck.
I unclasp it and drape it tearfully over Malcolm, the silver glinting against the brown skin of his chest as I secure the clasp around him.
With a shaky breath, and with a hope I’m almost afraid to voice, I whisper, “Malcolm, I love you. I wish you’d come back to life. Please … please come back.”
As I kiss his cold lips, a beam of light suddenly appears in the necklace.
It grows larger and larger, until it engulfs Malcolm in a warm amber glow.
His chest begins to rise and fall as the light surrounds us on the dirt of the arena, and I feel the steamy gasp of his breath on my lips as he comes back to life.
Confusion fills his hazel eyes as he looks up at me. “Emma?”
I kiss him harder, pouring my love and longing into it.
With each passing second, his lips grow warmer and more alive.
His mouth opens and Malcolm’s tongue slides slickly against mine, sending shivers down my spine.
His hands find their way to the small of my back.
With joy and relief flooding through me, I wrap my arms around him, never wanting to let go again.
“Impossible!” Sabine materializes before us, her mouth a massive O. There’s a look of shock and anger contorting her features. “He is supposed to be dead!” Her voice rattles with disbelief. “He should be dead!”
My mouth opens to scream in her face when a searing pain shoots through my ankle.
I glance down and see the tendrils of the golden Tether in my ankle slicing out of my flesh like razor blades.
Malcolm screams in agony as his own Tether is removed.
In the distance, Demetri and Imani scream.
But then, something magical happens. The threads of our former Tethers lift and float into the air, all four merging together.
They intertwine and dip, swoop and loop, dancing in the air above the arena, forming an infinity sign that beams as bright as the sun.
Sabine gapes in terror as the light from the merged Tethers touches her skin, rapidly aging her.
Her once-smooth complexion shrivels with thick wrinkles, and her hair turns a ghostly white.
She lets out a mangled animalistic scream.
“Noooo! My spell! What have you done?” She frantically chants, trying to stop the curse from breaking, but it’s too late.
The power of unity, our love, our combined Tethers, has broken her hold on us.