All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 31: Revelation ~ Willow Polson

Music soundtrack:

“Distance to the Sun” – Spock’s Beard

“The Last Angel” – Pallas

I took a deep breath before I rounded the corner and steadied myself, trying to will my body to stop shivering. It felt like this hand was for the whole pot and I was playing against the house. And I know the house usually wins. Emma realized I’d stopped walking and looked back. I hoped my concentration face looked like I was preparing myself to talk to the Savior and not making last minute calculations for how to win. She merely watched me for a moment, then went on around to where I knew Gabriel was waiting for us.

After another steadying breath, and clenching and unclenching my hands a few times, I slowly rounded the corner.

Emma was kneeling at his feet again, and he was petting her hair like she was a dog. He leaned over her, paying no attention to me at all, and murmured something quiet that I couldn’t hear. She looked up at him with adoration like a child. It turned my stomach to see her like that. My Emma, my strong, beautiful, leader and fighter... she had been turned into a simpering little pet at the knee of her master.

My vision blurred and it felt like I was about to cry tears of blood, my ears ringing and my heart pounding. I cleared it just in time to see her hand him something shiny. It glinted in the faint light of the night sky, the failing city lights reflected off the clouds that blew past, and I could see what it was—the crystal prism we had held together so long ago.

Gabriel caressed her face, and then stood up as if he’d only just noticed I was there. I could see that he was finely dressed in a well-tailored sharkskin suit. Strangely out of place for meeting with a group of refugees in the middle of the wilderness while the lights went out in Los Angeles below. A black wool overcoat was draped over one arm of the “throne” he’d just left.

“What is it you want?” he asked me. I looked at Emma, and she looked back... almost. She couldn’t quite meet my gaze.

“You know why I’m here,” I replied, still looking at Emma. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

He approached me, one hand out, and I felt strangely rooted to the spot. I think if I’d tried to run, my knees would have folded up and I would have fallen on my face again. He reached out and time seemed to slow down as I realized he was going to touch me, but before I could flinch out of the way, I felt his hand on  my shoulder. It was strong and warm, and it was almost as if something passed from him to me through the contact. My hands stopped shaking.

“Walk with me, David,” he commanded, and I found myself matching his stride, any weakness in my legs suddenly gone. He left his hand where it was as we climbed over a low rise and then disappeared down the other side, leaving his throne and followers and Emma behind.

“Poor Mr. Blunt,” he murmured in that slippery voice of his. “Always playing hide and seek. You’re obsessed, you know. You’re never going to have her. You’ll die first.”

“Shut up,” I growled at him.

“Oh, I don’t mean it in a cruel way,” he said, finally releasing my shoulder. It felt as though I were a puppet and someone had just cut a few of my strings. Not all of them, but just enough that I couldn’t walk straight anymore. “I’m simply being factual. The comic relief never gets the girl. Don’t you watch old movies, David?”

“Shut up!” I rasped at him through gritted teeth. Why did it feel like I was inside a slowly closing trap?

“I’ve seen you. In dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these lives. You fail all the tests. Do you want my advice?”