Bound by Prophecy by Melissa Wright
Chapter Eight
Mr. Smith
The keycard I’d swiped was to an executive queen on the fourth floor. Basically, this meant the room consisted of a lone bed, a dresser holding a small television, and a desk and chair with access to the internet. After where we’d been sleeping, it seemed like the Ritz. I didn’t even bother checking the windows. At this level, and in this part of town, they’d be sealed. If anything were to happen here, we’d have to fight our way out.
I tugged off the jacket and tossed it on the bed, and then scratched my hair after taking the ball cap off. Emily was leaning over near the end of the bed, lifting the corner of a blue patterned comforter.
“What are you doing?”
She straightened, her face red and hair askew from being upside down. “Bed bugs.”
I bit my cheek. “Why don’t you go ahead and clean up. I’ll check the bed.”
She nodded, but then turned back on her way to the bathroom. “Is it safe?”
“Absolutely.”
She narrowed her gaze on me for a moment, but the temptation of clean water won out.
I picked up the phone and pressed the room service key, trying to mimic the gruff voice of the man whose credit card was on file. I ordered a salad, a fruit plate, and then decided Emily was a cheeseburger girl. “Extra fries,” I said. “And the cherry cheesecake.”
As I returned the receiver to its cradle, I heard the water shut off in the shower. The bathroom door cracked open and in the reflection of the mirrored closet doors across the narrow entry hall, I could see Emily peek out through the opening.
“No one here but me,” I said. “Still safe.”
She didn’t say anything, but the door clicked closed for another few minutes. When she emerged again, it was in bare feet. Her wet hair hung in dark waves over her dirty gray tee shirt, and her jeans were rolled up at the hems. She held the damp towel in her hands.
“Are you going to shower?”
“Nah.” I smiled. “I’ve got a few more days.”
She made a face as she pressed the towel to the ends of her damp hair. She absently glanced around the room, dark carpet, beige walls, generic still life painting over the bed, and then her eyes fell on me.
“Your arm,” she said, suddenly recalling the injury.
I glanced down. “It’s fine.”
She crossed to me. “It’s not fine.” She leaned closer, examining the wound. Her eyes came up to mine.
“It’s fine,” I said again.
She took a corner of the damp towel and brushed a section of dried blood away. She swallowed, not able to look at me.
I took the towel from her hand. “I’ll clean it up.”
I stood to go rinse it in the sink and Emily backed up to sit numbly on the bed.
I left the door open as I washed the blood away. Nothing remained but a thin pink line. I wadded the towel and tossed it to the floor.
When I returned, Emily was still sitting motionless on the side of the bed near the nightstand. I would have to wait, I thought, tell her in the morning.
I sat beside her, but on the far end, and that was how we stayed, unspeaking, for the next twenty minutes. It was so still and quiet, I could actually hear her stop breathing when the impatient knocking echoed loudly through the room.
“It’s okay,” I said, reaching out to touch her forearm as I spoke. “Room service. I’m sorry, I should have told you.”
She swallowed, and began breathing again. The bellman’s knuckles rapped the door three more times.
I glanced through the peephole, but he was staring, annoyed, at the tray of food and not the door or the hall. I heard the bed creak behind me as I slid the chain, switched the lock, and opened the door. She was watching again.
“Good evening, Mister”—the bellman glanced at the tray—“Smith.”
I winced.
“May I come in?”
“Please,” I answered, moving out of his way only long enough to let him pass before securing the door once more.
He crossed to the desk and slid an extension out from the bottom. “Lovely weather this evening.”
“Yes,” I said. I grabbed the ticket from the tray as he removed the dish covers to display our dinner. I tipped him well, but not enough that he would mention it to anyone.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, only nodding to Emily before heading for the door. “Have a wonderful stay.”
I touched his shoulder as he passed. “Here,” I said, brushing away his memories of the couple in 402. “Let me get the door for you.”
He walked, slightly dazed, from the room, and then seemed to remember himself halfway down the hall.
“What?” Emily said from behind me.
I’d jumped. Again. “Nothing,” I said. “Let’s eat.”
She peered out beside me in time to see the bellman enter the service elevator. I pressed her back into the room and latched the door.
Emily stood staring at the plates of food, so I unrolled the napkin and handed her a fork. I kept the knife, and began cutting the sandwich in half, and she followed my example by dumping the condiment bowl and portioning out salad. There was only the one chair at the desk, so she moved the plates to the center of the bed, and climbed in to sit cross-legged by the headboard. I sat on the opposite side near the end, and picked up half a cheeseburger from our shared platter.
I was on my last bite when she said, “So… Mister Smith?”
Unprepared, I almost choked.
She smirked, quite nearly a smile, and bit into a French fry. “Where did you learn all of this?” she asked. “This cloak-and-dagger stuff?”
I laughed. “Cloak-and-dagger?”
She shrugged.
“I didn’t,” I said honestly. I picked up a grape and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. “This… this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Emily leaned forward, and I regretted giving her any clue to the unreliability of the prophecy.
I dropped the grape. “I was never supposed to be on the run. Before all this, it never crossed my mind I’d be doing surveillance, or misleading Council, let alone protecting someone. It wasn’t part of the plan.”
“The plan?” she asked.
“They had it all figured out,” I explained. “Taught us everything we’d need to know.” I met Emily’s eyes. “They trained us all right, just not for this.”
“Us?”
“Morgan,” I said. “Morgan and I were educated in the ways of the blood, learned in the ideals of Council.”
“Morgan,” she said, “he’s the one I saw at the warehouse? He’s your brother?”
I nodded. “My older brother. The first born.”
“The chosen one,” Emily whispered. She’d lost her appetite as well, dropping her last fry back to the plate.
“He came into this world knowing he would rule,” I said, thinking of the devastation he would cause, of the thousands he would kill, of the rest he would send to war. Of the end of our lines. All for power. I let go of the thought, finding Emily once more. “When I came along a few years later, he decided I was to be his underling, that I should serve and bow to him.” I wiped my hands on a napkin and tossed it onto the tray. “He feels he’s owed this by Council, by all of us. Nothing in this life will ever convince him any differently. The idea of the prophecy has warped his sense of being, his principles.”
Emily pulled her knees up tight, tucking her hands over her bare feet. “And so he’s been waiting? All this time, searching for Brianna?”
A harsh laugh escaped. “He’s not exactly been sitting idle, no. Morgan has had an abundance of unpleasant pursuits in the years before we found her.”
Emily sat up, suddenly rigid. “We?”
“Council,” I said. “We of the blood.” I stood to collect the tray. “But it was one of his minions who finally tracked her down.”
“How did they know?” she asked. “How did they know, after all this time, to look for her?”
??
Emily paled, and I knew she was remembering the words of the prophecy. The prophecy that, not so long ago, had only been a fiction in her mind, the ramblings of an eccentric parent.
I gave her a moment to gather her thoughts as I slid the tray into the hall. When I returned, she was already recovered and waiting for me to continue.
I sat on the bed opposite her. “The prophecy says that ‘a daughter of great power, born of the serpent with eyes of the sea, will bring absolute conflict’. That’s not much to go on, really. So Council has been watching for the other clues. Namely, ‘the heir to the dragon’s name will rule with their union.’ It doesn’t seem like much, until you count the fact that the dragon hasn’t had an heir in a few hundred years.”
“I’m sorry,” Emily said, “but my mother… Well, maybe she did explain it, but I guess I didn’t really listen to everything she said. I just thought it didn’t matter, that it was a story.”
“Where did I lose you?”
“The dragon?” she asked.
“I don’t suppose you could know that,” I said. “A lot of the words in the prophecy actually mean something else. They were written in the old language, and even we don’t reference things the same way now. The dragon points to my family’s bloodline, one of the Seven. Those who had ruled in the past. And an ‘heir to the name’ is an unusual one, since names weren’t even passed as such when the prophecy was written, but it says that the chosen one must be male.”
“And there weren’t any before?”
I shook my head. “Not for a very long time. The blood was passed mother to daughter until Morgan was born.”
“How do you know?” she whispered. “I mean, how can you be sure?”
I shrugged. “Council has been studying the prophecy since before any of us were even born. I suppose we just trust them to understand the clues and hidden meanings.”
“Have you seen it?” she asked.
I smiled. “Yes. Only me—they didn’t trust Morgan with it.”
She leaned closer. “Was it… Did you know?”
I leaned forward as well. “I did.”
A sad smile crossed her lips as she leaned back against the headboard. “I wish I had seen it. I wish, so much, that something could have convinced me. That I could have believed her.”
“You did,” I said. “When it counted.”
We sat silent for a moment, and I could see exhaustion take over Emily’s features. I glanced at the brown plaid chair in the corner, and then brushed my hands over my jeans before standing to go to it.
Emily grabbed my arm. “Aern?”
I turned back to her.
“Tell me Brianna is safe.”
“She is,” I promised. “She will always be safe.”
She drew me toward her, gaze dropping as she pressed me back on the pillows to curl against my chest. The motion was tentative, but she had done it nonetheless.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “You will both be safe, Emily. I swear by it.”