Chapter Four: Emma Endless
2029 Words
Four
The day was past in a haze. I should have gone into work, tried to be productive, but all I could think about was Ben. Ben, trapped in one of Oberon’s dank, dark, dungeons. Or worse, Ben, turned into stone, which was Oberon’s trademark.
Bradley and I made it back to my apartment thanks to an Uber. We were both very proud that neither one of us had puked. We managed to crawl back up the stairs to my apartment, where we crashed, one on top of another.
“Do you think Clark really…” I hesitated.
“Yes,” Bradley answered without me even finishing.
“I haven’t----”
“Yes,” Bradley answered with a groan, “you two have had a strange connection ever since you were born. When you came into the world, it was like you became his. At first, it was brotherly, but well…you grew. He grew. Hormones, blah, blah.”
I sighed. “I don’t like this. What was Mother thinking, making a deal with a faerie?”
“She was thinking that she wanted Louisa to not be alone,” said Bradley, “the world of faerie is dangerous for young girls. Louisa----”
He paused.
I looked at him. “Louisa what?”
“Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Louisa was supposed to be the one for the faerie king. So was mother. Because of the deal Grandfather made.”
“Deal?” my breath hitched. “What kind of deal?”
“How do you think we got the estate?” he asked. “Or any of our money?”
“Grandfather sold me?”
“Not you, technically no. It was the oldest of the Endless daughters that was supposed to be it. Oberon made an exception, because of Mom’s illness, and when Louisa came she couldn’t bare to let her go. So, she made a deal with Oberon. She would have another daughter, if he would spare Louisa.”
I sat up, any relaxation that I might have felt earlier gone. “Father agreed to this?”
Bradley coughed. “There’s a reason we have a stone garden on the estate, Emma. It’s for people who oppose Oberon’s wishes. A reminder, of what can happen. The statue of father in there wasn’t commissioned out of mother’s grief when she died. Father was cursed, because he tried to rescue you. It was why he disappeared shortly after Clark showed up. Because he tried to save you, and Oberon found out.”
My mouth went dry. “Why….” I croaked. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Mother knew you wouldn’t understand,” said Bradley, “she loved you, Emma, she did but she was doing the best with what she knew how. If she lived, she would have married Oberon herself. She tried to convince him, after father was cursed, but he wouldn’t let her. The whole reason he wants to marry a mortal is for heirs. Faeries only have children everyone hundred years, and Oberon’s wife Tatiana killed his first born. He…he killed her in return for it.”
Any feeling I had was gone, as if I’d become hollowed, numb. I’d been a bargaining chip. I wasn’t even supposed to exist, except for to be the faerie King’s bride.
My cell phone rang then, making me jump. My bosses name, Anna, flashed across the screen dancing in time with the basic ringtone the phone had come with. Reluctantly, I swiped to the right to answer. “Hello?”
“Where are you?” she demanded. “Bella Brooks has a signing for her Salem High series. She forgot her bookmarks. You were supposed to be in hours ago!”
“Anna, I’m sorry. I won’t be making it in today. I should have called. There’s been a family emergency.”
She paused. “Everything okay?”
“My sister died,” I fibbed, mostly because I was picturing murdering Louisa and all of my siblings at that moment, “I’m sorry. I’ll need a week off work, I’ve got to go back home, to England.”
“Okay, okay. You take all the time you need sweetie. Let me know when you get back.”
“Thanks, Anna. I will.”
The call beeped as it ended, and I could feel Bradley’s gaze on me.
“Dead sister?” he queried.
“Well, she might as well be,” I said, “she’s over there lecturing me about responsibility when this was supposed to be her. Where the hell does she get off?”
He sat up on the couch. “She’s trying to keep you safe, in her own way. Why do you think she was so protective of you all these years? She wanted to keep you from getting turned into stone by Oberon.”
“Why does it have to be me?” I asked. “Why can’t it be some other human? Faeries used to kidnap humans all the time. There has to be a reason that it’s me.”
“There is,” Bradley answered, “it’s because of grandfather’s blood. Grandfather was bound to serve as gatekeeper between the faerie and the human worlds. With an Endless as his wife, Oberon will be able to come and go as he pleases. His children will be too. The gatekeeper will be virtually useless.”
I stiffened. “What happens to Lou, then?”
“Well, she’ll still be gatekeeper. It won’t get rid of problems between faeries and humans. But it means that she won’t be able to forbid the court fey from coming and going, because they’ll have your blood. Our blood.”
“If he hurts Ben, they won’t,” I said darkly, “I’d rather turn to stone.”
“Why don’t you negotiate with him?”
“What do you mean? I’m trapped, with nothing to offer.”
Bradley grinned. “Well now, that’s not strictly true.”
Out of all of us, Bradley was the one who had taken most advantage of having access to a magic world. There were things he had done that even I didn’t know about, didn’t want to know about. From the look on his face, I could tell this was one of those things. If it were normal circumstances, I wouldn’t want to know it.
But my fiancé had been kidnapped by faeries.
Not just any faerie either. A cold, cruel faerie king, who turned people to stone when they didn’t give him what they wanted.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“Come with me,” he said.
He grabbed my hand and dragged me from the apartment. I was still wobbly, still buzzed from drinking mimosa’s at brunch. Bradley had, apparently, gotten a motorcycle since the last time I had seen him.
A motorcycle that was waiting for us outside.
He handed me a helmet, and together, we bolted off, to goddess knows where. With the roar of the motorcycle engine in my ears, it was hard to hear anything making talking impossible, so we didn’t. It seemed, though, that we were heading into Brooklyn.
We didn’t stop until we came to what appeared to be a sketchy, abandoned building. Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, there was a painting of an anti-faerie rune on the front, in gold paint. Along with some others that to the untrained eye, would have looked like nonsense.
I got off the motorcycle, took off the helmet, and handed it to my brother. “Bradley, what is this place?”
“C’mon,” he said with a grin, “you’ll see.”
He took my hand, and pulled me inside to the old, abandoned building. Inside, the room was filled with treasure, after treasure.
I looked around in awe. “Bradley----”
“Please don’t give me some moral, lecture. I realize you’ve got your own burden, Emma. But you aren’t the only one whose tangled with magic and lost. Remember?” He took off his leather jacket, where I could see the emerald, green, scales that had crawled up his arm.
They tended to come out with the cool weather, retreating in the warm, which was why he usually stayed in a place with a beach. The scales were a result of a dalliance with a witch, who had cursed him.
The same witch that my sister insisted on using for help with her gatekeeper duties. Of course, to be fair, Bradley had broken her heart. It was only natural that she would curse him as something.
He was lucky it was a dragon instead of a frog.
“I thought,” I said, “you were getting better with the stealing thing.”
He shrugged. “I lied.”
“You really think that there’s something in here that Oberon could want?”
He grinned. “I know for a fact there is.”
“What did you do?” I demanded.
His grin widened. “I took something of importance to him. The same way he was trying to take something of importance to me.”
“Show me.”
Gripping my hand, he led me through the treasure trove, filled with gold, rubies, emeralds, chalices, sabers…. but nothing we passed seemed like it could be important enough to use as a bargaining chip with Oberon.
That was, until I saw the glass coffin in the back of the room, along with the sleeping, Tatiana, Queen of faeries with in. “You stole his wife’s corpse?”
“Cursed wife,” Bradley reminded me, “I stole his cursed wife. She isn’t technically dead. Faeries can’t die in the traditional sense. They can, however, go into a cursed slumber for thousands of years.”
“How?” I asked.
“I’m a dragon,” he replied, “I have my ways.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my sister, who I love dearly. I wasn’t about to let you go into a marriage with the faerie king without having a bargaining chip of your own. Besides, if Clark isn’t able to save Ben, at least now we know for sure we have a way to get him back.”
I hugged him. “Whatever happens, I love you.”
He squeezed me tighter. “I love you too.”
I looked around the cave of wonders once more. “What the hell else do you have in here?”
“Porn, mostly,” he added, “faeries make great, weird s*x art.”
I chuckled wryly. That was Bradley for you, able to diffuse even the tense situations. “There’s just one, small problem with your plan, brother.”
“What’s that?”
“If we offer this up, he’ll know you stole her.”
His face fell. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You do remember what happens to thieves in faerie don’t you?”
He swallowed. “They tend to die.”
“Yes.”
“I think we’ll---er—pardon the pun---sleep on this for now.”
“Good idea,” he agreed, looking very pale suddenly, apparently only now realizing the gravity of what he had done.
- Writer
