The Grim (Ravens #3)

xxx. she would be freed

A/n: Lol so I wrote this a week ago and forgot to post it I guess. Probably not going to be online much tonight, but I might as well put this up before I get more behind??

Her name echoed across the motel bedroom, ricocheting off the walls and shattering the ceiling lights. It rang in their ears, the five syllables repeating time and time again, and then followed by her next eight words.

I'm alive, and I'm your goddamn inside man.

In the silence that prevailed for just long enough that nobody on either side of the radio could quite exhale, three things were found to be true: Sebastian realized that Skylar had lied to him and taken his sister's side, President Grey's worst nightmare had risen again, and Emma Gail Harlem had condemned herself to death. She could back out, yes, but from the moment the proposition left her lips, she had signed her name in blood. There was no backing out. Not for her.

"Emma," Ms. Grey began, the first to speak over the radio. "I'm surprised to hear from you. I'm relieved—"

"Cut the small talk," she cut her off. Her heart was racing, beating faster than it had in months. But the others would never know. Her eyes were trained right on Sebastian, whose eyebrows furrowed as the details of his sister's plan slowly became less vague and more dangerous. "You need a Fortress citizen to get arrested and for Hunter to skip the trial. It's a simple procedure."

The president hesitated. "I'm not sure I see what you mean."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Emma snapped. Her gray irises may as well have turned red with the undeniable anger stabbing at her heart as she heard Ms. Grey speak. It was the woman who exiled her, the bitch who stole her out of the closest thing to Eden, and in an act of so-called mercy returned her to hell. The bitch who sold her soul to darkness. "It won't be hard for me to get arrested. All you have to do is make me a citizen."

"Emma, you know I can't do that. We have laws in place. You were exiled, we can't just overturn the past—"

"That's bullshit and you know it."

"Em!" Sebastian snapped, but was quickly silenced by the menacing glare he received in response.

She tossed the radio gently into the air, rolling her shoulders back and standing up just a little straighter. "If this plan fails, I won't survive. So if I do this, I either end up dead, or I'll have saved probably hundreds of lives from the ring. Chances are you're never going to have to deal with me in your city, and even if I lived, why the hell would I want to go back?"

Before she could speak again, Sebastian ripped the radio out of her hands. "Emma, you can't do this," he argued. "Once Hunter realizes you removed the tracker, he's going to want you dead. I'm not—I can't let you do this. I'm not going to let you walk into your death."

"It's too late for that," she said. Months too late. She'd been walking towards the reaper from the moment Sebastian stabbed drugs into her neck and brought her tranquilized into the Fortress. She had forgiven him, she thought. Forgiven, maybe, but she sure as hell had could not forget. "I have to. It's the only way we can stop this."

"You don't have to be the one to stop this," he begged, eyes wide with concern as the truth began to grow right before him, as the future seemed to lose its secrecy. "You don't always have to be the one to fight. You can stop fighting."

"The fight's all I have left," she muttered. "I'm taking control. Following your orders, big brother."

"Emma, think about what you're doing." This time it was Donny interjecting, pushing himself off the bed to stand beside Sebastian. "You could run. Seb's right, Hunter's going to kill you..." He continued to speak, but Emma didn't hear him. She already had the radio back in her hand.

"Emilia, tell me what the hell I have to do to pull this off."

If the president noticed the blatant disrespect in the girl's words, she didn't say a word. Emilia Gray could swallow her pride, Emma could not. She knew that well. "We're going to need hard evidence," she said. "I'm not sure if a testimony after the fact would be enough. And a testimony against any previous battles would be irrelevant since you weren't a citizen, and therefore everything he did was legal."

"You're assuming I'll survive," said Emma. "That's too risky. You need a recording. It can't be tampered with, it shows everything, you don't have to rely on me winning. That would work."

"What's your motive here, Emma?"

"Excuse me?"

"I'm not naive," Ms. Grey claimed, her voice hissing through the radio. The others in the room had never heard her sound so cold, but that was the sound of the serpent Emma met in the hospital cell so many months before. "I know that you have a different reason for volunteering. You wouldn't sacrifice yourself so easily. You're a murderer."

"You're right," she said. "I am. I didn't get the privilege of sitting pretty in some walled city, so I did what I had to. Your point?"

There was no more arguing, as both parties had realized that this grand martyr was not only their only option, but inevitable, for Emma Gail Harlem had been playing with fire from the moment she dug a knife into her arm and freed herself from the king's bonds. There was only so much time before the match would set her hand aflame.

There was no water to keep her from burning, but she could set the world on fire, and that she would.

The plan was simple. When the others left Thursday morning, Emma would run. That was the most challenging part, of course, getting away, but she would manage. She wasn't afraid of a knife. Much to Emilia's—and likely most of the group's—discontent, Ezra would leave with her. Although he was not present in the motel bedroom and fully unaware of the plan, and Emma was sure he'd have taken her brother's side, she refused to leave him behind.

"They're going to make this as difficult for me as they can," she had said. "If Ezra is here, I'll have to kill him, and I won't do that."

The renegade lovers would rendezvous at the rover with the others two miles out of Monarchia's territory, where more Fortress officials than they had previously planned would be waiting. There they would implant a small microphone behind Emma's ear. They in the Fortress would be able to hear and record everything she heard, listen to every single word, but she could not communicate back. Once she returned to the kingdom, she was on her own. But that was the easy part, wasn't it? All she had to do was suffer. The recording would expose the dark truths of the convoluted city.

As soon as Hunter realized she was gone, he would send out all guards to retrieve her, for to lose his prized assassin would be far too dangerous for his tenuous reputation. To be outwitted by a child? He would never allow that, and so he would walk right into her trap. Getting recaptured would not be hard, to prove her trial was skipped would not be hard, and from that moment on, she just had to fight death away one last time. When the final match in the ring was over, once the recording proved that they had condemned a newly-minted citizen of another city to death, the other cities could intervene. In one week, it would all be over. In one week, they could all be freed.

It was so simple, so easy, so fast. Emma saw Sebastian's eyes, Donny's eyes, Mai's, and even Skylar's fill with fear at the immense danger she'd subjected herself to, but she was filled with a strange peace. In one week, it would all be over. In one week, she would be freed.