Chapter Twenty #2
folk who live in the valley below? Fewer bargains?”
Emmett pulls himself upright, looking wary. His long fingers drum on the arm of the silk love seat. The fabric is ripped,
revealing the batting beneath. “What do I have to offer you?”
Lady Thalia extends a manicured finger and runs it along the edge of Emmett’s jaw. He shudders, perhaps with disgust, but also like he hasn’t been touched in a very long time.
“You are gorgeous,” she answers. “And so, so sad. It’s delicious.”
Emmett’s eyes drop closed.
“I used to be Bram’s, but I could be yours,” she whispers against his skin. “I bet that would make him very mad.”
My vision tunnels, the darkness closing in like curtains at a play.
Show me more.
The image shifts and we’re in a dim bedroom. The bedclothes are a tangle of dark silks, and Emmett’s pale form lies stark
among them.
Lady Thalia crawls across the bed to him on her hands and knees. With agonizing, methodical slowness, she undoes the buttons
on his shirt one by one.
His eyes are dark and desolate. The bruises beneath them have never looked bluer.
I don’t want to watch, but everywhere I turn, there they are. I try to close my eyes, but I can’t stop seeing. I’m without
a body, without eyelids to close. The only thing I can do is witness. The force of it carries me away like I’m being swept
out to sea.
She lays her head on his chest and smiles like a cat that has caught a fat mouse. “We’re going to have so much fun together.”
Show me more. I have to see; I have to know the truth.
The room shifts again and again until I’m dizzy with it. I’d be vomiting if I had a body, but I am nothing, no one but these
memories.
Lady Thalia dancing with Emmett at a revel, her pupils blown out and glassy while he stares blankly at the ceiling.
“You’ve never made a bargain?” Lady Thalia asks, one perfect eyebrow quirked. Emmett shakes his head and she smiles venomously. “Then I’m honored to be your first. Let’s make it a good one.”
Then they’re in a dark room, standing opposite each other, a third person in navy robes between them. The room is lit with
thousands of candles flickering against the dark.
Emmett takes Lady Thalia by the hands. A garnet ring on her finger glints in the firelight.
Emmett tilts his head up to the ceiling, then looks back at her. “I do.”
Something inside of me shatters.
But before I can even understand what I’m seeing—what he’s doing—the room shifts again.
More. I need to know more.
He’s with Lydia, sitting on the chair in her room in front of the fireplace. His legs are slung over the armrests, his head
in his hands. His hair is getting longer and the bruises under his eyes are worse.
Lydia’s face is red and pinched with fury. “You married her!” she screams, and Emmett flinches. “You promised me you’d never
make a bargain, and then you went and made the worst possible one.”
“A political marriage. I did it to protect you.” He sounds so dejected.
“You fed yourself to the wolves!”
“She’s angry Bram cast her aside for you. She only wants to get him back. She took the changeling proposal off the table immediately.
She’s convinced three lords to stay here instead of going with Bram to England to torture humans. Already I’m getting more
respect at court. I didn’t know what else to do!”
“Anything but this!” Lydia shouts. “You deserve real love, Emmett.”
“Ivy’s gone.” Emmett’s voice goes quiet and his eyes well with tears. “Ivy’s gone and she’s not coming back, so let me do this. Let me help you.”
More. Please. Even in my own head, my voice is nothing more than a broken whisper.
The scene lurches and I’m back in Lady Thalia’s room. It’s unbearable, but I have to know more.
Emmett is asleep in bed next to her and rolls over, exposing the long column of his throat. There, fresh and red, is the bruise
I left when I bit him at the revel.
This memory is recent, I realize. It happened the night we were both dosed with love potion. There’s his long hair, his single
earring, his familiar doublet discarded on the floor.
It’s like my heart has been replaced with a hot coal and it’s burning everything around it, ruining it until it crumbles to
ash.
It would be one thing if Emmett had taken other lovers while I was gone and he believed me to be dead, but to be in another
woman’s bed just days ago is devastating in a way I didn’t anticipate. For the first time, I hope that maybe I am dead. That
way I won’t have to go back and face him.
My heart isn’t broken seeing a version of Emmett who doesn’t love me back, it’s that it no longer matters if he loves me.
That’s beside the point. He’s gone from me, and I have to watch it all play out, vivid and gruesome in its detail.
I can take no more.
As quickly as I fell into the memories, I am spat back out.
I come to, shaking, sobbing on the hard dirt ground.
Blinding white light clears from my vision and I blink against the sun.
Bald tree branches sway gently above me, stark against the bright blue sky.
I’m outside the cave, I realize.
I gasp for breath, my stomach aching as if the wind has been knocked from me, but the movement only causes me to cough and
the coughing causes me to vomit.
Someone pulls my hair off my neck. Their fist is cool where it rests against the base of my skull. “There, there, get it out.
You’re all right. You’re safe,” says a soft voice.
I look up through watery eyes to find Lydia. She, too, is pale and shaky, but she’s on her feet, which means she is faring
far better than me.
“I’m alive?” I rasp.
Lydia’s pale face consumes my field of vision as she stands over me, examining for any signs of harm.
“What did you see?” she whispers.
I push the visions of Emmett down; I don’t want to remember. “You first,” I answer grimly. She doesn’t reply.
Lydia pulls me to my feet and wraps me in a tight hug. “You were in there for nearly an hour.”
“And you?”
“They tell me I was gone only twenty minutes before I wound up here.”
My empty stomach drops. “So, I won?”
Lydia nods gravely.
That’s the thing about sisters; you can’t hide anything from them. She knows I didn’t want this. “You won.”