Bound by Prophecy (Descendants Series) - By Melissa Wright Page 0,42

something else. Something about the ancient symbols. Something about Brianna. “What?” she whispered, half afraid to find out more.

My hands were still at her hips, frozen there, my thumbs resting on the bare skin above her jeans. The bare skin of the chosen.

I fell to my knees in front of her, pulling her down to face me. Her mouth hung slightly open, unsure whether to brace for hurt or anger or fear. I had trusted my room was secure. I had trusted we had privacy. I’d said anything I’d needed to say here freely, but not this. Not these words.

My right hand freed her waist to curve gently around the base of her neck. I pulled her in, the image of those same symbols carved into Brianna’s wrists clear in my mind as I pressed my cheek to Emily’s and whispered the words that could never be taken back. The words that would ruin her.

“Brianna is a decoy.”

Emily stiffened under my hand, but I held her there, my lips moving swiftly, my voice all but silent.

“Your mother hid your mark. You were born with the symbol, I can feel it on your skin. The tattoo is only a cover. Brianna’s are as well. She put them on the inside of her wrists so they would find them. So they would stop looking before they came to you. There’s a curve beneath the symbol of the serpent that spirals up and right. She traced the ink to the left and down. It’s a small change, but that’s all she needed. She marked you as merely Brianna’s blood, but she knew they’d find her first. She knew Brianna would be their target.”

The hands Emily had braced against my arms curled tighter as we stayed there. When I’d said all I could say, my head fell forward, resting an inch above her shoulder. Not touching, not now.

Everything had changed. In one instant, the constant we’d lived with our entire lives was gone, swept from beneath us in a heartbeat. It was Emily. Emily.

A long moment passed before I noticed her mouth moving silently beside me. I’d been lost in my own revelations, been shifting my own realities. I carefully eased my head back to see her, and caught the forms of several ancient words. Another prophecy.

She was repeating back her mother’s teachings, aligning them to her situation. Finding her truth.

Her lips stilled and she looked at me. But she didn’t see me. Her green eyes were hollow, a vacant stare from someone lost and mislead.

“I need to see Brianna,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

I nodded, helped her to her feet. There was nothing I could say. Nothing to be done. This was a blow that could not be softened. This one shouldn’t be eased.

Chapter Nineteen

Secrets

Brianna was waiting for us. She stepped aside the open doorway as we brushed past, and brusquely latched the door behind us when we entered the small sitting area outside her bedroom.

Emily spun, the tension that vibrated through her visible on every feature, and Brianna gestured for us to sit. “The room is secure, we can say whatever needs saying.”

Neither of us sat.

When Emily finally let loose, it became very clear that she had suspected, and suspected correctly, that Brianna had known all along.

Brianna’s voice was steady. “I will explain, just please—”

She moved toward Emily, hand outstretched, and I found myself shifting from foot to foot, hand running over my jaw. How exactly did one handle a girl fight?

“No,” Emily shot out, “don’t touch me. You’re not going to take this from me. Not this time.”

My fidgeting ceased.

“I wasn’t,” Brianna said. “I wouldn’t. But please, just sit down and let me say what I need to say.”

Something in Brianna’s subdued tone wasn’t right. Something about Emily’s words.

Emily chewed her lip. “Say it. Say it, then. Make it all right that you both lied to me my whole life, Brianna.”

Brianna waited, and Emily finally dropped onto a chair, but she stayed forward, elbows posted taut above her knees.

“You know why I couldn’t tell you,” Brianna said. “She made me keep it from you. To make you safe.”

As Brianna laid out the explanations to her sister, the reality of our situation came crashing down. Emily was the chosen. Not Brianna. Emily, who’d followed me to Morgan’s warehouse, who’d hunted me down for stealing her sister. Emily, who was only here because of us.

I turned away from them, facing nothing in that windowless room, and wiped the dampness from my palms. I’d