Camille stood up and Dominic stopped leaning on the door frame, tension seeming to rise up real quick with Marius's words.
"No fucking way."
Dominic spoke before anyone else, and Camille followed up.
"You're overstepping your boundaries, Marius."
He raised his brows, not seeming intimidated at all with the threats.
"If you want my help in stopping something that I am in full support of, and risk my life while doing so, you have to offer me something that will at least be worth my while. You can take my offer, or you can have fun trying to fix this alone."
"Who do you think-"
Emma held her hand up, silencing Camille. Dominic looked at her questioningly.
"Emma... Do you know what a blood oath would mean?"
"I can explain what it exactly means, and what I expect you to do." Marius casually stepped into the conversation again. Dominic was about to speak up but Emma held her hand up to him as well, listening to Marius. That made him look more content.
"Finally someone who listens to reason...", he cracked his knuckles again, watching her, "You will swear loyalty to me and listen to my orders. That will include joining my rebellion, coming over when I call you over, and helping in matters I order you to do. I won't accept any sort of noncompliance, and I will start a blood hunt and personally hunt you down if you disobey my orders or don't hold your end of the agreement."
The tension in the room rose up. Everyone else, even Danielle seemed to object.
"You are expecting a very huge favor from me Emma. I won't compromise, you can either take my offer or watch me get up and walk away."
"How does my blood oath benefit you more than the elimination of the ancients?"
He smiled, seeming to appreciate her intelligence.
"It's not just you that I seek obedience from. I just think having an ancient under my control would be amusing enough to be worth my while."
She looked at him doubtfully.
"Hysteria is dead, and I am not as strong as Jacob or Jean."
He shook his head and tutted his tongue.
"Naïve, naïve Emma. If I didn't feel her presence in you I wouldn't have made this offer. Don't take me for a fool."
She felt uncomfortable at the idea of being under someone else's orders, but at the same time his help could decide the outcome of the battle they were about to enter.
"I'm the only one who can stop Jean without killing her. If you want to have any chance at somehow reaching out to her without getting mauled you should consider my offer."
"..." he had a point.
"Emma, you don't have to do this. We can find another way."
She didn't feel too swayed by Dominic's words.
"I appreciate the concern, but we're running out of time.", she looked up at Marius, "I accept your offer. You will stall the Crusader and create an opportunity for me to get to Jean, in return I will swear my loyalty to you."
Marius smiled. The tension felt like it was cracking and Camille stood up as well, meaning to object but getting cut off by him immediately.
"You have guts, I respect that. I will hold my end of the deal and help you out, in return I expect you to hold your end of the deal as well."
Emma nodded, "I'll make an oath once this is all over."
She felt tense, it felt like she would never be able to completely comprehend the actual repercussions of the deal she just made, but she didn't feel like she had the time or luxury to consider other options. She had none, and time was running out. Marius stood up.
"I make sure to honor my promises so you will get my full support in this matter, and if you try to back out I will make sure you regret that decision."
Everyone else in the room seemed to be in disbelief at what was happening, but none of them could speak out. Marius reached his hand out to Emma one more time and after a second she took it. He leaned down while holding her hand, it felt like a respectful gesture.
"Cheers for a long partnership in the future."
He pulled back, leaving a paper slip in Emma's hand and heading to the exit. The silence ensued up until he walked out of the front door, leaving it open and not looking back once.
"Emma..."
Dominic looked at her in disbelief, so did Danielle and even Camille. The only person that seemed to keep her cool was Kat.
"It was the only way."
"We could have found an alternative way, we did it before-"
"By stabbing her in the heart with a wooden stake and keeping her locked up for decades, left to rot in a cell?"
Her words were cold. She didn't even know if she was alright with the deal herself, and she was doing her best not to lose it every passing second. That sentence seemed to quiet Dominic down, but Camille started getting mad.
"We have been here since before your grandparents were even born. Just because your intelligence was praised a few little times don't think you are superior to any of us here."
Emma didn't answer, looking up to meet her gaze. Camille looked like she was about to lose her cool and the silence made it worse.
"Fine. Go do your god damned blood oath. It will be a good riddance."
She turned and headed upstairs, her boots clacking on the ground loudly with her angry steps. The silence continued for a while before Dominic finally broke it.
"She doesn't mean that, but you pushed on a sore spot there."
"You made the right choice.", Kat joined the conversation for the first time since they arrived here, "None of our feelings matter here if we can't take the right steps to break Jean out of her frenzy. Not even Jes can do a thing against Jean, nor any other ancient. Not when she's protected and manipulated by some psychotic supernaturals."
"Jes...? The rotten gal?", Dominic seemed a bit confused, "What does she have to do with any of this?"
Emma shook her head.
"Nothing, she just saved my life during my stay in the Underworld, that's about it."
Dominic creased his brows, looking doubtful. He opened his mouth but then changed his mind, letting out a sigh.
"Nevermind... We can talk about that later."
When the tension in the room calmed down a bit Emma looked at the paper Marius had slipped into her palm. It was matte black with a handwritten phone number and a short quote, 'I love the name of honor, more than I fear death'. Emma raised a brow at that, then looked at the number long and good to memorize it, pocketing the card afterwards.
* * *
"You can't be serious... You just arrived here, at least rest for a while."
Danielle was pacing around the bedroom in worry, trying to convince Emma to somehow change her mind.
"I can't..."
"You can, you won't be of any use anyway if you go out there in your current state."
"There is nothing wrong with-"
"Emma!"
Danielle raised her voice, seeming angry, but more than that seeming extremely worried.
"You're killing me with worry. Every day I wake up not knowing if I'll ever see my best friend again, and knowing I can't do anything about it drives me mad. Please, Emma-"
Just as Emma was about to reply, her eye caught the blurry figure at the peripheral of her vision outside. She instinctively ran and jumped over to cover Danielle before the silence of the night was broken with the sound of glass exploding, the tall window covering the wall shattering into a million pieces and flying inside like shrapnel. The shock of it barely hit Emma when her skin was cut, the wind hitting her face and throwing her hair back.
"My, my... I wasn't expecting you to be back here so fast."
The voice was familiar but gut wrenchingly different at the same time. Emma turned her head towards the voice and looked up. It was Tristan standing there with bright red eyes and a deranged smirk on his lips, his black jacket flying with the wind from the now broken window, and the long scythe in his hands shining under the moonlight. Emma felt like her vision was zooming in as she switched into an alarmed state. The scythe was the clearest if not the most obnoxious proof of Tristan's identity as a supernatural, a reaper. He seemed to notice the change in her expression, raising a brow and looking at his scythe.
"Ah, this thing... Right, I forgot that none of you here can fight back."
He chuckled, taking another step forward. Emma looked away just for a second to take Danielle in her arms and run to the door, but the wooden frame shook as the door slammed shut with the scythe thrown into it.
"Nuh uh... We can't have you escaping now."
Emma hardly dodged as he leaped in and pulled his scythe out of the door, creating a pretty nasty slash in her arm.
"You are either with us or against us Emma, and I can see through your lies."
He spun his scythe before swinging it at Emma again. Having Danielle in her arms was making it so much harder to dodge properly, the glass shards cutting into her skin as she jumped to the other corner of the room to dodge the blade. Then it hit her nose.
Blood.
Not her own, but fresh, warm blood.
She looked down at Danielle, finally being able to stare for more than two seconds to see her holding her neck, her face looking pale with beads of sweat on her temple. One of the shards had impaled into her neck and she was losing a bad amount of blood despite looking conscious.
"Big mistake."
With a sharp swoosh in the air, Emma felt the scythe jab straight into her chest and pierce through her back. Her voice got stuck in her throat, not able to make a sound other than a guttural gasp as he pulled the scythe back with a splash of blood. She felt her consciousness starting to fade, but not because of the stab wound, it wasn't nearly enough to kill her in a single hit. No... this felt like her consciousness was being ripped out of her mind as if something was forcibly separating her from her body. She barely felt her body hit the floor when she lost her balance, her vision getting blurrier and blurrier as the worried expression and the silent cries of Danielle calling out to her faded into the void.
* * *
As Emma felt her mind fading into the dark something grabbed her by the wrist. Something... someone? All of a sudden everything was blindingly bright. It wasn't the type of brightness that calmed you down and soothed your soul, no, it was the type of bright that made you feel like you were put in the middle of a building set ablaze, fuchsia flames burning the walls down and trapping you in the middle with no exit.
Fuchsia?
That reminded her of somewhere, someone....
"Emma..."
A distant voice. Someone was calling out to her from outside the building.
"Emma!!!"
She recognized the voice, it was very familiar, in pain and broken. She had to get out of here. She looked at the flames around her, taking the nearest object she could find and throwing it at the walls, but it disappeared between the flames with no effect. There was no exit in sight, she had to make one. Her eye caught a crack in one of the walls. A crack just big enough for her to break through. She steadied her footing and began running. The flames got hotter and brighter as she neared the wall but she didn't stop, body slamming the wall with her shoulder and crashing through.
The room lit up with a blinding light and Emma took in a choked breath, opening her eyes in shock. It felt like her soul was ripped out of her body and then forcibly pushed in again. She blinked and looked down with the burning feeling on her chest. There was a palm sized, charred burn mark right over her chest and the fuchsia stone on the necklace was gone. There was a yell, and when Emma looked up she could see Tristan covering his eyes from the light, seeming just as shocked as her. It took him a few seconds to understand what had just happened.
"That bitch gave you her necklace..."
He held and spun his scythe, and right as he was about to launch at Emma again a figure broke through the door and slammed into him, throwing them both out of the window. Another person ran in, it was Kat.
"Holy shit."
Seeing Danielle's state, Kat quickly slit her wrist and crouched next to them, pressing her bleeding wrist on Danielle's lips. She seemed less and less responsive as time passed, barely able to swallow through the pain. There was a horrible amount of blood covering her neck and top, blood that stained Emma as she held onto her friend tightly.
"This will hurt just for a second... Hold on."
Kat leaned in and held the shard on her neck, then pulled it out in one swift move and pressed her lips on the gash on Danielle's neck. She opened her mouth as if wanting to scream but no sound came out, closing them again with a pained expression and tears running down her cheeks. Kat pressed her wrist onto her lips again, not pulling back from her neck. Emma didn't exactly understand what she was doing at first but helped hold Danielle up as she drank Kat's blood, her pained expression relaxing a little bit as time passed. Kat pulled back after a while and the bleeding on her neck seemed to have stopped, regenerating almost like how Emma's skin did. Oh right, vampire blood boosted regeneration.
Another yell from the outside took both of their attention, but this time it was Dominic. Kat got up to run to the window but Emma stopped her by holding her wrist and pulled her back down.
"Stay with Danielle."
She stood up after making sure Kat had Danielle in her arms, leaving them both confused as she ran to the window. She looked around the garden before her eyes spotted Tristan and Dominic, and the scythe that had just gone through Dominic's chest.