“Emma, please. Don’t make this harder than it already is. You know that your life is in danger. Come with me to my master, he will protect us.”
Emma shook her head.
“If he cared, there wouldn’t be coercion.”
“It’s because he cares, that there is coercion. You are stubborn; everyone knows that. But this isn’t a time for your stubbornness or for your relentless ego. The balance of the world is at stake, and will completely crumble if you are in the wrong hands. We can’t take chances. And that’s why coercion is an option-should in case you are not aware of the fate in your hands, we will force you to see it. Come, my master will train you on how to access and use all your powers.”
Emma furrowed her eyebrows, watching her sister rant like some religious fanatic with that desperation in the latter’s eyes.
“Do you know my other sister? How would you know that I am the one that is the prophecy?”
There was silence. A pregnant one which told Emma that Amelia hadn’t been aware of that equation.
“Your master wasn’t aware that I wasn’t the only child of my mother? Then, how can I trust him if he doesn’t have his facts right? How do I even know that I am the one? What about my twin?”
Another deep silence.
Amelia sighed, and paced in the room, from one end to the other, probably trying to gather her information right. She stopped just at the same moment that her eyes twinkled with some sort of enlightenment.
Emma wondered then if her sister was communicating with someone else telepathically, just as she did with Prescott. That would mean that the jaguars possessed the same quality of telepathy with the Derek’s people, her people, the werewolves.
Who had Amelia just communicated with? The master? She wondered, noticing the tug at the lips of her sister, and the surprise tint in the latter’s eyes.
“Now what?” She asked, when she couldn’t bear the silence anymore. The daze which she remembered sometimes seeing in Derek’s eyes was gone, and yet the girl didn’t want to talk.
“Well, according to my master, you may have more than one sister.”
Emma cackled, running her fingers across her head. “Please, don’t tell me that my mother gave birth to triplets.”
She laughed harder at the thought, a laughter that got stomped when she saw the seriousness in Amelia’s face.
“Master had seen your mother at the airport with a redhead as you. If you mentioned a second sister, then it would mean that you had seen her back in England, back at your school. So, there is no way she would have been here. So, it could only mean that your mother had started tracing you all. Master mentioned that she had gone to the matron who had been in charge of the delivery at first. The matron refused to speak with the master. Bad for her, because the master would have to use coercion.”
Emma shook head, her ears becoming dull at this point. “Your master must be a bully, using coercion at every point. You are telling me that he will torture the woman, just to get information? So, what does that say about him? And how are you, Amelia, okay with that?”
“It is necessary, Emma. It is for the greater good.”
Emma shook her head. Her sister was gone.
***
Margo twitched on her seat when heavy silence descended on the room. She bent her head low, not wanting to see the emotions on either Ketura, or the Queen’s face.
Again, she was grateful that her cousin, Tempest, wasn’t here. It would have made this confession harder. It would have made her feel more guilt, not that she wasn’t already swamped with that.
Apart from the bullying incident, it was one of the reasons why she had left. She hadn’t been able to bear Tempest’s fawning and Malone’s pretense.
Malone.
She had been a little relieved when he had died. She had thought that her secrets would be safe, but then, the saying was right. There was really nothing hidden under the sun. It might take time, but it will surely be revealed with time.
“Margo, what are you saying? You can’t be saying what I think you are saying, right?” Ketura spoke first, breaking the silence.
Margo shifted her feet, her mind besotted with assumptions of what the Queen would be thinking.
“You are saying that Malone….”
There was a pause of unbelief.
Margo couldn’t stop the tear from falling, especially when she heard Queen Zipfarah’s question.
“What happened Margo? Tell me everything. How did this happen? I never saw you with Malone. There had never been a hint, as there was with Leonarya. Please, clarify this.”
Margo shrugged her shoulders. “Malone wasn’t decent. There isn’t much to explain about that. I don’t know if it was an achievement to him as a mere human, sleeping with witches, but he wasn’t sincere. I would have liked to claim that I had been drunk with the wine of gods-I had taken it to pass off time, to quell the feeling of loneliness that had suddenly sprouted within me at seeing Tempest gallant around the community with a glow on her face. But I hadn’t been really drunk. I had just pretended to be when Malone had come to my place, looking for Tempest. I told him that his love wasn’t here in a drunken voice, and he had laughed at me, asking why the nerd was drunk today. I had given him no reply, other than telling him to leave. Then, I returned back to my wine, and my books. I had thought he had left, until I had felt his hands around my waist.”
Margo paused, not knowing how to go further especially when she heard Ketura’s sharp intake of air. Would they believe her account?
” I’ve always wanted you, not Tempest. He had said this into my ears, whilst his hand began to roam into unchartered territory. Of course, I didn’t believe him. But I had needed to live a little. And so, I had pretended to be drunk, and he had thought me too drunk to know what was happening, and it had happened.”
***
Maya and Freya stood outside the Alpha’s residence, their hands on their waist, in disbelief at what Yodah had just disclosed to them.
Eva was possessed?
Maya wouldn’t have believed it, but for the strangeness that she had felt around Eva in the dining hall today, how the latter barely noticed her presence, unlike before. That was coupled with the fact that the information came from Yodah. The ancient was reliable, and had no reason to lie.
“What do you think we do?” She asked Yodah and Freya who were right beside her, looking deep in thought.
“Well, you have to fight me.” A voice sounded from behind them, causing them to swivel around.