Page 16 of The Knight
“Why?”
“How am I supposed to know? I haven’t seen them since I was a child.” She looked into my eyes. So much sorrow was there, and I could feel her melody hum within the sorrow. Crystals were interesting. Some could guard or shield a soul completely, and some just dulled the melody. It seemed that the crystal that she wore was one that only dulled her melody.
“I am sure you know how to shield your soul?” I asked, letting the crystal drop from my hand resting against her collar bone.
“Don't we all learn as children?”
“Yes, so why don’t we give this crystal to Emma, who has no idea how.”
She grabbed the crystal. “I like Emma; I do, but Ryker, this was the only thing I still have from Terra, from my family. I have to believe they gave it to me for a purpose, and anyways, Glasson said never take it off. I know you are looking for one. I’m sorry that the crystals here are all useless now.” She paused and looked away from me. “He really likes her.” She motioned to Shad who sat by the side of the pool with Emma. The way her soul was blaring to life, I was surprised that I had not been distracted by it. She was so enraptured by him.
“I really dislike that prince,” I groaned.
“So he is truly the Embran Prince? I’ve heard rumors about him.” Ash looked at Shad with interest in her purple eyes—her very purple eyes, which I had seen somewhere before.
“Yes—“ I paused. It was so obvious. How had I not noticed before?
“Seeker?” I whispered. Ash snapped her head back to look at me. Terror flooded her face.
“No, I’m not.”
Clearly, it was a lie her melody sung the lie loudly between us.
“You have seeker blood. How else would your eyes be purple? Are you from Thorn or from Sorra?”
“My mother had these eyes,” she said, whispering. “Please, will you be quiet about it?”
“Is this why Glasson is guarding you? Because you are a seeker?”
“He is worried about what Terrans would do with someone like me.”
“Yeah, I would worry, too. He should have told me that I was keeping watch over a seeker!”
“Are you serious right now?” she snapped and splashed water in my face.
“What? You know what the seekers did,” I said with anger in my voice.
“Yes, but I am not one of those seekers. I have never had the ancient gift.” It was odd that a child born with purple eyes did not have the ancient gift of the seeker. I wondered if she was lying to me, but her melody never changed as it had before when she certainly had lied. Perhaps, she really did not know. Perhaps, she thought that she was telling the truth—because she didn't understand.
I said goodbye to Emma that night and told Ash that she better keep quiet about Terra when she was around Emma. I realized that things had become way more complicated than I had ever expected. What on earth is a Seeker doing here? I knew a few things for sure—I needed to figure out who killed Lamont and Ara, figure out how to get a crystal, and then, if it became necessary, take Emma back home, because Earth wasn't looking very safe.
Chapter 11
The Prince made an irritatingly great effort to be in Emma’s life. I wasn’t surprised. I was angry. I knew anger led to corruption, but I was sure my melody could never be fully released again anyways, so what did it matter? However, because Shad was helping Emma, I felt a gratitude for him, that left a horrid taste in my mouth. No matter how much I brushed my teeth, it would not go away.
It was bitter, and it tasted like metal on my tongue.
“How are things coming along then?” Prince Glasson asked as we sat at my kitchen table going over updates. Prince Shad’s friend, Keil, who was a warrior from the Kingdom of Reoll, had given mesomeinformation with the promise of even more. He confirmed, however, that soulless were being created. I was pretty sure they were being created by the same person who killed Emma’s parents. There couldn't be two soulless Terrans walking about reeking havoc on innocents. Could there be? Shad and Keil had found many soulless people in the eastern part of the country. Their information was mostly the result of the monitoring they had done of the soulless Terrans they had bothdiscovered and cared for before their untimely deaths. They both had record after record, as well as notes, documenting the measures they went to in order to try to keep them alive. They were trying to figure out a way to help soulless people live, even without having melodies, or to come to understand what it actually was about their melodies that made Terrans unable to live without them—seeing as humans on Earth went about their lives just fine without melodies at all, and for a time our people did not have melodies until they were restored after the Great War. I understood the reasons for their research, especially if such a large number of Terrans had been discovered, stripped of their souls.
“There are an increasingly growing number of soulless in all the kingdom colonies, and everywhere else, it appears—across the board,” I noted.
“That isn’t good,” Glasson remarked, typing on his computer.
“No, it’s not.” I tried not to show through my facial expression the horror that came over me. I knew how bad it really was. It was horrible. My people, all those Terrans, did not deserve such a fate, banished from their homes and then stripped of their melodies—as if they were mere animals, being turned soulless in order to be used and then slaughtered. At least my soul was shielded, and Glasson couldn't know the true horror and worry that I held inside of me.
“So what is the move then?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I am not sure why someone would want an army of soulless. Soulless die after a few months.” It was true; to a Terran, a melody was essential for life. Once stripped of it, we would slowly and very painfully die. Removing a Terran’s soul had only been imposed on the worst of the worst criminals before being banished to King Falcon's realm, under the mountain within the Dungeons of the Mist.
