The Grim (Ravens #3)

xix. and all time stood still

A/N: I have been saving the gif above since I started this book, but sadly still can't put her on the cast page bc it gives it away to future readers. So finally, we have Marie Avgeropoulos as Emma Gail Harlem. 

And all time stood still.

She couldn't breathe; he couldn't breathe; the world stopped turning. The far-off chatter of the market place went silent, the breeze ceased to prickle their exposed skin, the dogs stopped barking, and their hearts quit beating. All time stood still, for it was her.

It was Emma, standing in the dark alleyway. Emma, with her hair cut short but still her. Her gray eyes cold but still hers. They saw her now—all of them—for the first time. The real her for the first time. Because before them was not a little girl who needed protection, was not a warrior flaming in a blaze of glory, not the bratty younger sister of a boy far more respected. No, before them was a statue, a story so twisted and turned that she couldn't even wrap her own mind around it.

While the others saw her, she saw herself for the first time too. In looking at Sebastian, the stoic leader who wore his heart out on his sleeves and couldn't move in this frozen shock yet still had teardrops welling in his eyes, she saw herself. She was supposed to kill him. Murder him. He was her brother, and she had agreed. Sure, she broke the rules, she warned them to run, but she had still agreed. She had not fought back. She was a coward.

"Emma," he said, his voice hardly more than a breath. He was hesitant to say her name aloud, as though she might disappear before him, as though she was not even there at all. At the sound of her own name, her heart broke, but only her eyes gave any sign of recognition. For three months now, she was Vanessa Doe. But she was Emma. She was Emma Gail Harlem and not Vanessa Doe and she was both and neither all at once.

Only one soul in all of Monarchia knew her name, and he only ever said it in whispers where no wandering ears may overhear.

And Sebastian's voice... it sent her down a rabbit hole. The ground beneath her felt so weak and she was wobbling and falling and sinking into the earth. Her heart was screaming, her mind blaring that she must run to him, fall into his arms that had always been stronger than she. But again, she didn't move. The muscles in her jaw stayed tense, and only her eyes softened slightly.

She couldn't turn to look at Donny. Even if she wanted to, which she couldn't quite say she did, she could not take her eyes away from her brother. Her beautiful big brother. But no, not big brother, for big brother was in her arm, hiding in the tracker that watched her every move. She'd read 1984. How ironic. It had become her life.

Big brother is watching you, Vanessa. He is always watching. Emma, you must move fast.

"We don't have a lot of time," she hissed. There was once a time she was shocked by the powerful undertones of her voice, how it had become crisp and clear and unbothered by the petty tendencies of man. She had grown used to it now, but Sebastian had not heard her speak in six months. Donny had not heard her speak in six months. She was a child once. A child until her brother stabbed her in the neck, shooting chemicals down her veins, and she woke up chained in darkness accused for murder, when in truth she had saved the lives of forty. They broke their own laws by exiling her, but she was not free. The chains of darkness had swallowed her whole.

"You're alive." The other six might as well have disappeared completely, for there was no one in the alley other than the two siblings, standing four feet apart, unable to move, eyes transfixed on their family before them.

"They want you dead," she said. Her words sent shudders down the others' spines. She saw her fear clutched their bodies, the shift in their postures. "You need to get out before they give the job to someone else."