Page 86 of Emma & Edmund

Molek threw his head back and laughed, the sound ricocheting off Emma's walls and ringing in her ears. She was at the other side of the bed in an instant, her finger in his face.

"Shut your mouth!" She seethed through her teeth, ears trained on the hall and staircase just beyond her door, waiting for the rushing footsteps of Heidi or Jonathan, but they never came.

On the other side of her forefinger, the sickly grinning lips of Molek mocked her.

"Only those I want to can hear me," his voice sunk lowly, eyes burning. Despite desperately clinging to her pride, Emma couldn't deny the instinctual fear rising within her.

The fear turned to abject horror when one hand shot up between them, coal-tipped black fingers twisting around her raised wrist.

In the next moment, she was on the bed, the wind knocked out of her. She only barely registered the fact she had been thrown onto her mattress with lightning speed before her sight was consumed by red.

A weight pressed down on her chest, trapping her as both hands were captured above her head, claws digging into her skin.

"Let me go," Emma tried to keep her voice strong, but the eerie, wide grin baring down on her made her nerves stumble.

"You know," Molek cupped her face in a hard grip, smooshing her cheeks together, "I might be starting to see what he sees in you. If you finally shut your mouth, you're not so bad to look at."

Even with her contorted cheeks, Emma managed to spit into his face.

But rather than making him pull away, as her saliva dripped down his nose, Molek's smile grew only larger. Ripping his hand from her face, he clutched at her thigh through her nightgown, drenching Emma in a cold sweat.

"Although, there's nothing wrong with a bit of feist either!" His hissing words burned in her ears.

"Stop it!" She flinched away from the thumb drawing circles over the sensitive parts of her leg but could barely move at all.

"Would it be better if I looked like him?"

Before her very eyes, ruby turned to emerald, short strands of hair lengthened and wrapped themselves at the nape of a thick neck. Mass grew around her, but the weight bearing down on her did not change. And from one moment to the next, the demon haunting her morning had transformed into Lord Edmund Lockhart.

"What about now?" It wasn't Edmund's voice that came from familiar lips, nor was it his earthy smell that filled her nostrils. Worst of all, even if the eyes were the same shade of black, the kindness that shown through Edmund's was completely gone. It was replaced with something vicious.

Out of everything, that fact was the thing that insulted her the most.

"Oh, not so much? How about this one, then?"

As quickly as she could snap her fingers, Edmund shrunk and pinkened, shifting now to William Tate.

"Enough of this," Emma hissed, struggling against his hold as if she had any hope of escaping.

"Still not enough?" Suddenly, it was Margaret holding her down.

"What do you want from me?"

"Well, right now, I am trying to bed you."

"Are you just here to mock me?"

"No, dearest Emma," her friend melted away, and it was Molek's own evil face before her once more. "I'm here to bring you home."

Chapter 25

Aringing filled Emma's ears, knowing immediately what it meant just as a chill swept through her. Her mind snapped to the woods, to the path, to the cabin. To the being within.

But why would Molek say such a thing? Was it only to mock her?

Although that couldn't stop the onslaught of thoughts, his plan coming to her without her permission.

Molek can change his appearance as easily as blowing out a candle, it seemed. He could pose as her father, rent them both a carriage, and she could once again make the trip back to Edmund. Her heart swelled at the thought.

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