Page 4 of Shattered Heir
I watched as Mary turned on her phone and read through her messages.
“It looks like we are a half-hour away. Should we keep driving? Do you think? To be closer? This is the first cell service I’ve been able to get out here,” Mary said, looking to Shad and then at me.
Shad looked out of the window. “I don’t know this Ryker person,” he said. Shad didn’t know anyone anymore, not even himself.
“Yes, if it’s really only a half-hour more, it would be nice to be close so that we could get to him whenever he needs us,” I gulped. I looked over at Shad after I spoke. I could only see his profile in the glowing light of the hotel sign as he glanced out the window. I took in a shaky breath, trying to restrain myself from jumping into the back seat and kissing him senseless and begging him to come back to me, to remember me. Mary nodded and reversed out of the parking lot. As we drove down the twisted road, I drifted to sleep. The quiet of the car, the slow movement from the turns, caused me to calm a bit, and exhaustion finally overcame my mind; thankfully, my mind went blank.
“Emma, we are here. The hospital is only one block away.” Mary was unbuckling me and speaking to someone. “Can you?” she asked, and I barely heard her—for the sounds were muffled again. My eyelids were so tired that I couldn’t open them. I tried to move, tried to, but my body had given up, just as my mind had. The blackness of sleep was comforting. I wanted it back.
As two hands pulled me into two arms, I felt the electric current flow between us, and my eyes opened as his electric touch seemed to jump-start my body. Shad was carrying me into the hotel, and I knew that I had to have had the biggest smile on my face because my cheeks were hurting.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked as I lifted my head to look at him.
“You are carrying me. I don’t know.” I felt my face grow warm.How embarrassing, he will not only think that you are useless, but also that you are obsessed with him. Emma, stop it; play it cool,I tried to coach myself.
He rolled his eyes as if I were some idiot child that he had been forced to deal with.
Great, already lost this match; one point goes to Shad.
I don’t know why I am helping my captor,” he said, looking away from me. “Mary said your name is Emma and that you are a princess.” The way he spoke my name sounded so wrong as it fell from his lips with so much confusion and anger in its tone.
I looked at him, and I wanted so many things. Still, he was not himself—literally, and I would save him from that prison, just as he had saved me from my sorrow, from the snake that almost killed me all those months ago.
I can do this.
But can you?I pushed that negative thought away immediately after it popped into my head. I couldn't focus onthat.
I won’t fail. Failing isn't an option, not with him.“That’s what they tell me, but I don’t know what or who, exactly, I am anymore these days,” I answered, leaning my head against his chest as he continued to walk. “But we didn’t capture you.” I listened to Shad's heartbeat. It still sounded the same, beating in time with my own. I was still so tired, and my body still ached, but being in Shad’s arms made me happy and content inthe moment, and I didn't want to lose that feeling. I would take whatever I could get from him whenever I had the chance. I knew that eventually he would hate me; he would resent me, for lovingme had cost him his soul’s melody.
“Mary got two rooms. You are sharing one with her, and I am sharing the other with Keil.”
I nodded as I watched his mouth move, felt the vibration of his voice as I kept my head against his chest.
Words from our time in the cave floated to me.“I want to be the kind of friend whose lips know your lips so intimately—that I know them better than my own.”
I was sure that my cheeks were bright red. He looked at them and then eyed me with a million silent questions bursting from him, but he held them back. “You make me—frustrated.”
“I make you ‘frustrated’? How?” I whispered.
“I should know more about things, and you know them all, and yet you won’t tell me. It is cruel and frustrating.”
“And that makes you frustrated with me? Mary won’t tell you either.”
“Yes, and I know Mary’s reasons. She explained them openly. But you? Why are you not telling me? Are your reasons the same as hers? You think that this Keil will tell me everything I need to know better than you could?”
Our eyes met.
“You—something happened to you—in that cave. You remember the cave we walked through?”
He nodded and clenched his jaw, as though along with the memory came the deep pain that he had experienced while within.
“In that cave, that’s where you tried to be all heroic and save me.”
“It seems as though it worked, whatever I did,” he replied with a side smile that lit up my entire body. “You are saved, are you not, Princess?”
Oh, how beautiful it was to see him smile, even just slightly. I could forgo the use of “Princess,” however. I ached to hear him call me ‘darling’ again, even just once more.
“It worked, but at your expense.”
