Water {Elements of Power 2}

Chapter 28: Jasmine

"It was you, all of it, wasn't it? But why? What have I ever done to you?"

He gave me a stern look. "You have spent far too long with the Arcans. Do you honestly have no idea?"

"My parents." I hazarded, remembering what the Queen had told me about Emmanuel's desire to kill me when I was a newborn. "But I didn't even know who they were until two days ago. I couldn't have posed a risk to you or the Queen."

"You may have been too dim to figure it out. But it didn't take more than a glance at you to make the Brizans start to wonder. They weren't too blind to see the similarities between you and the Queen, or to think about all those months no one saw her for during the Occupation. Only the Air-Head Arcans weren't suspicious."

"So why try and hurt me?"

"Kill you, actually," he corrected callously. "To stop the rumours. No one would worry about them too much with you dead. There would be no point and no way of proving anything either way.

"But you had to keep escaping. You kept asking about your parents."

"Why shouldn't I know? Why shouldn't everyone?" I took a step away from him, but Emmanuel had already positioned himself so that he was blocking the doorway. I couldn't escape that easily.

"Because the Queen was stupid. She was young and naive and she let herself get swept up in her emotions. She didn't think about us—her Realm—just her lust for that arrogant Helian. He was as bad; throwing away an entire military campaign out of love for a pretty girl!"

"The Queen said that he didn't really love her. That you... You!" My eyes widened in realisation.

"Oh, finally the mutant manages to work something out for herself. Of course he was in love with her. But if I had told her that, she never would have realised the mistake she was making; she would have tried to keep her mutant baby and bring it up, all the while letting the Helians control our lands. I couldn't let that happen. I had to save her from herself. So I told each of them that the other was only using them and—gullible fools that they were—both believed me. I guess they must have always been suspicious—they had that much sense at least.

"I told the Helian that the Queen had lost the baby—that she was pleased about it, because it meant that the ties binding her to him had been severed. I made him believe that she had never really loved him to begin with, that she was going along with it to protect herself and to try and find out what he was doing to her Realm.

"He was heartbroken and he started to make mistakes. He didn't notice the reports of uprisings; didn't listen when his advisors told him that the other Brizan Protectors had escaped. When we launched our counterattack, he was too depressed to even notice. I'm not sure he realised what was going on until he woke up in the dungeons beneath the castle." Emmanuel laughed again and I was overwhelmed by the desire to send a burst of flames at him. I felt my fingertips begin to tingle, but before I had the chance, he focused on me once more.

"I tried to have you killed immediately. It would have been so much easier if I had. The Queen wouldn't hear of it and she watched you vigilantly, perhaps guessing that I would try something. You were her little mutant darling and even if she knew that she couldn't keep you, she wanted to know that you were out there, somewhere, alive. The only surviving element of her lost love.

"It was terribly tragic, really. And of course, now that she's seen you again she wants even more; she looks at you with such a keen sense of loss, of desire. She informed me last night that she had told you who you were and that she was going to ask you to stay here in the Brizan Realm with her, so that she could get to know you properly."

My heart caught in my throat. Had she really said that? Or was it another one of Emmanuel's lies?

"I mean, really, what does she think? That her people are idiots? That they won't see it as confirmation of the rumours? It's ridiculous! So yet again, I'm going to have to step in and save her from herself—and get rid of you once and for all."

He advanced on me, a manic grin spreading across his face.

Reacting without even thinking, I let the flames flare up at my fingertips—silently offering up a prayer of thanks to the Air God that they had actually worked when I needed them to. I didn't know how to fight—combat hadn't played any part of my training with Rowan—but on instinct, I was ready to send whatever I had at Emmanuel in order to save my life. Before I had the chance, he sent a torrent of water at me, dousing me from head to toe. The flames flickered and died in my palms.

Emmanuel laughed.

There was a huge flash of light.

Then there was nothing but darkness.

{Well done everyone who guessed Emmanuel! Please vote/comment to let me know what you think is going to happen next!}