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“Family isn’t who you’re born with. It’s who you’d die for.” Emerson takes a deep breath to let her words sink in.
“Come on,” Luna says after a while of silence. “We need to get back to Calveron. I think the soldiers should be gone by now so we can get back safely.”
“Yeah, right. Safe. In Calveron.” Emerson smiles and they head out back into the overgrown tunnel.
* * *
“Em? Em?” I wake up, lying on my bed with Luna perched over me, prodding my face with her finger. I groan and sit up. My head is still throbbing from this morning, and from the impact of where it just hit the carpet.
When she sees that I’m alive, she smiles and envelopes me in a hug. I smell her jasmine scent and melt in the warmth of her embrace. “I guess some things never change, hey?” She smiles and hands me an ice pack. “Here, you hit your head pretty hard on the way down. You’ve got a lump, but nothing I know you can’t handle.” She laughs again. At the sound, the room is filled with a sweet, floral sensation.
I try to process everything I just witnessed. We had found a way to escape. How come we didn’t use it? How come when I ran away and Hugo captured me, Luna wasn’t there?
“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks.
“We found a way to escape. Do you remember that?” She looks at me blankly. “That’s what I just saw,” I clarify. “We were in an overgrown tunnel, and we had to hide from the soldiers, and you said, ‘at least we found our escape route’. What happened?”
“Hugo.” She says, her voice brimming with a new type of sadness that I’ve never seen. It is the sound of the ultimate betrayal, a hurt so deep that no bandage will ever cover up the wound it left. “He overheard us, he told Albert. He HURT you, Em. And there was nothing I could do to stop him.” The tears are flowing openly, and I want to do nothing less than to punch Hugo in the face for making his sister hurt like this.
How dare he hurt her. I will make him pay.
“Lu, it’s okay.” I speak. “He made his own choices.”
“Albert has done something to him. I can tell. He’s not the same.”
“I think he is the same. I think you’ve known that for a long time.”
“But I thought I could save him.”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, Luna,” I say, trying to restrain the anger in my voice. “You told me years ago that he already made up his mind. He’s made his choices, and nothing you could say would stop him when he’s made up his mind. You can never force someone to change, Luna. No matter how much you thought you could save him, it would have been out of your control. People don’t change, you just become more aware of their cruelty the longer you know them.”
After a while of silence, Luna speaks, “We didn’t escape together because I said that I didn’t want to. Mum was in hospital again and I wanted to be there for her. When you tried to escape, you did a good job. You should have made it. You should have gotten out. But Hugo was there waiting for you. I don’t understand how he knew. It’s my fault. I should have talked quieter, I should have-”
“It’s not your fault,” I interrupt. I know the whirlpool of doubt too well. I will not let her drown in it. “None of this is your fault.”
“But we won’t fail this time,” Luna says, her eyes gaining a devious glisten to them.
“What do you mean, Lu?” I laugh nervously.
“We’re going to have to try again. I’m ready to leave. I wouldn’t be able to do it on my own. But together…” Her words drift off. Her mind is on another planet entirely.
I laugh, “Escape?” I don’t want to crush her bubble, especially since she looks so happy about it, but I can’t help but think seriously. “You know we won’t be able to. They would have tripled security in that area the moment I was found there trying to escape.”
“You doubt my skills.” She says with a frown.
“Absolutely.”
She looks down disheartened, but then shakes her head. “No, Em. I’ve waited seven years for this moment.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“And in those years, I’ve had a lot of free time to think and plan and to look around to find every passageway in this building. I know this place like the back of my hand.” I am about to interrupt her, to tell her that we can’t just plan things when they’re not going to work out. We both know how well last time went for me, but she puts out her hand to silence me. “Now before you go and get all grumpy on me and say that it’s not possible. I need you to hear me out. I need you to trust me.”
I sigh and stare at her beautiful eyes, large with emotion and about to burst from the anticipation of my answer. “Fine,” I say, and she squeals. “But don’t think that this means that we’re going through with it.” She doesn’t seem to care though, and she grabs my hand and rushes out of my room.
Chapter 31 - Emerson Clarke
Imust admit her plan is pretty sound. She has thought of every possible thing that could go wrong, as well as everything that we would need to consider. She’s even thought of the type of shoes we would need to wear.
