Equites : Book 4 of the Heku Series (58 page)

On the last stall of the row, Emily
leaned back against the stall, trying to catch her breath. She
grinned when Chevalier, Mark, and Kyle walked past her and easily
broke the locks with their hands. She got a rope and led each horse
out into the corral to get some fresh air and exercise.

“
Damnit, Damon,” Emily
growled, and started dumping out the water in all of the stalls.
She pulled the hose out and put fresh water in for each of the
horses as the heku poured them all fresh food.

Emily grabbed a pitchfork and started
to muck out Patra’s stall. She was completely covered in sweat and
her clothes were dirty and caked with straw and horse
manure.

“
Are you going to muck all
of them?” Chevalier asked from behind her.

Emily didn’t even look up, “Nothing’s
been done and this place is disgusting.”

“
Fine, then I’ll help,” he
said, and headed into the storage room.

“
No, I got it. It feels
good to do something,” Emily said, piling new, clean straw into
Patra’s stall.

Chevalier nodded and then leaned back
and watched her. He had her dinner delivered out to the stables,
“Come eat.”

Emily washed her hands in the hose and
grabbed a sandwich, sitting down on a bale of hay to
eat.

“
Kyle and Mark’s coronation
is tomorrow, after that, Kyle was wondering if he could take you to
the island for some R&R,” Chevalier told her.

Emily nodded, “Sure, it’d be nice to
get away. Can’t you go?”

“
No, I have some things I
need to do here.”

“
Ugh, another
coronation.”

“
I figured you can wear
your new leather dress, if that’s what you want to call it,”
Chevalier chuckled.

“
Oh that’d go over well. I
think I’ll stick with a formal.”

Emily got back up and started to clean
out the other stall. By midnight, she was moving slowly and her
arms were tired and sore. Chevalier returned the horses to their
stalls, except for the one she was working on currently. She threw
clean straw into it and leaned back.

“
I think that’s enough for
the day,” Chevalier said, and took the pitchfork from her after he
put the horse away.

Emily took Chevalier’s hand and he led
her into the palace and up the stairs. She moved slowly from the
work in the stables, so he slowed to match her pace.

Emily kissed Alexis good night and
went into the bathroom. She froze when she saw the shower, with its
clear glass doors. It was suddenly hard to breathe, and the
bathroom seemed large and open.

“
He’s not here,” Chevalier
said, kissing the back of her head.

“
I know but...”

“
Will it help if I join
you?” Chevalier grinned and pulled her shirt off over her head,
tossing it into the corner.

“
Maybe…” Emily said, and
unbuttoned his shirt.

***

“
Get away from them!”
Emily screamed at the Encala. They were approaching her slowly,
their red capes blowing in the wind.

“
You can’t kill us all,”
Vaughn said, smiling.

Emily turned and looked
behind her. Thousands of Equites were gathered behind her and
cowered away from the approaching army.

“
I can try,” Emily said to
him, angrily.

“
You’re just a mortal. One
gun can’t kill us all,” Vaughn laughed.

Emily looked at her hand,
and all she had was a single bullet in a small revolver. She
glanced again at the terrified Equites behind her, and then turned
back to Vaughn.

“
I’m warning you. I don’t
have to kill all of the Encala… just you,” Emily said, and leveled
the gun at Vaughn.

“
You can’t kill me with a
gun. I thought you were smarter than that,” Vaughn said.

“
She’s not smart at all,”
Keith said from beside Vaughn.

As the Encala jumped at
Emily, she
jerked awake and sat up, out of
breath.

“
Em, why are you always
trying to protect us?” Chevalier chuckled.

She looked around the room as her
heart slowed back down. When she saw that everything was as it
should be, she curled up next to Chevalier.

“
I don’t know,” she
whispered, and yawned into her hand.

Chevalier grinned and shut his eye as
he picked up the swirls from Emily’s sleeping mind. He woke just
before dawn and dressed quickly, heading down to check on the
coronation preparations.

Emily woke up suddenly when he felt
she was alone and looked around the room. She put on a nightgown
and poured herself some coffee from the steaming pot on the table.
Alexis ran out a few minutes later and crawled into Emily’s lap.
She dug into the strawberry crepes as Emily ran her finger through
the baby’s hair and watched the fire.

“
Daddy?” Alexis asked, and
Emily saw she was covered in sticky strawberry juice.

“
After a bath,” she said,
and went into the bathroom to run a bath for the toddler. Emily had
her cleaned up quickly and threw another ruffled dress on
her.

Emily pulled on clean jeans and a
t-shirt, and walked Alexis out the door. Silas picked Alexis up and
followed Emily and her two guards down to the council chambers. She
peeked in, but the room was empty.

“
Coronation room?” Silas
suggested.

Emily walked in and saw hundreds of
heku cleaning and putting up Equites banners and green
embellishments. The three Elders were in their chairs discussing
something. Alexis and Silas headed for the Elders while Emily
watched the heku above her. He was perched precariously on the edge
of a ladder that was leaned against the wall almost thirty feet
from the floor.

Emily and her guards ducked when he
dropped a hammer and it landed beside them. She stood up and
grabbed the hammer, and then headed up the ladder. The heku looked
nervously toward the Elder as she approached him.

“
Thank you, Ma’am,” he
said, and took the hammer when she handed it over.

“
Let me hold it for you,
it’ll go faster,” Emily suggested, and leaned away from the ladder
to hold the banner to the wall while the heku hammered it in
place.

“
Seriously, Lady Emily,
must you do that?” her guard asked nervously.

Chevalier picked Alexis up and threw
her into the air before hugging her, “Good morning,
Princess.”

Silas fell in behind the Elder and
watched his little charge.

“
Where’s your Mom?”
Chevalier asked, looking over the great hall.

“
Es Mommy,” Alexis said,
pointing up high.

“
We’ll wait for her.”
Chevalier grinned, and kissed her on the forehead.

“
Actually, is that Emily up
there?” Quinn asked, pointing to a small figure up on a
ladder.

Chevalier sighed, “Why is she up
there?”

Silas shrugged, “I have no idea, Sir.
When we left, she was on the ground.”

“
Looks like she’s helping,”
Maleth chuckled.

“
I’m just… not going to
look. If she falls… call an ambulance,” Chevalier said, and turned
back to Alexis.

A few minutes later, Maleth looked
over to the other end of the coronation room and grinned, “She’s
down, you can look.”

Chevalier watched as Emily made her
way to him. He couldn’t help but smile at the terrified look on her
guard’s faces. Alexis put her hands up for Silas, and he picked her
up just as Emily arrived at them.

“
It’s looking good,” she
said, looking around.

Chevalier smiled reassuringly at her
guards, “Please stay off of the ladders, mortal blood would stain
the green carpets.”

“
Ha-ha,” Emily said, and
sat down on Chevalier’s lap.

“
Mommy, tookies!” Alexis
yelled.

“
Oh that’s right, we’re
going to make cookies,” Emily said, and stood up.

“
Aww man, that stuff smells
so bad,” Silas joked.

“
Stop complaining, you can
always stay here.” Emily started up the aisle followed by her two
guards and Silas carrying Alexis.

“
How is she?” Maleth asked,
when she was far enough away she wouldn’t hear.

“
She’s ok, had a small
incident in the bathroom, but I’m having curtains installed in the
shower so no one can see in.”

“
Disgusting is what that
is,” Quinn glared.

“
I can see it,” Maleth
said, and then spoke quickly when Chevalier glared at him. “What I
mean is, he obviously had feelings for her, and when we gave him
power, he abused it to get closer to her.”

“
Really makes you wonder
what all happened in Paris the night she and Damon got into a
fight,” Quinn said.

Chevalier nodded and then frowned when
he saw Alexis running down the aisle toward them, alone.

A loud crash came from the foyer and
the Elders blurred through the Great Hall. Chevalier grabbed Alexis
as he passed her. They stopped when they reached the foyer and
Chevalier growled.

Emily’s two guards, Silas, and the two
door guards were standing in a line facing a group of seven Encala,
and all of them were crouched low. Just as the Elders started for
the face-off, Emily jumped in front of the guards with her arms out
and the Encala turned to ash in front of the shattered front
doors.

“
Damnit, Em,” Chevalier
said, and ran to her as she wiped the blood from her
nose.

“
What?” she asked, turning
around.

“
Child, we don’t give you
bodyguards so you can protect them,” Maleth sighed.

“
We outnumbered them!” the
door guard said angrily.

Emily sat down on the stairs and held
her nose to stop the bleeding. She opted to not react to the
headache. She could take some ibuprofen later when no one was
watching.

“
Did they say why they were
here?” Quinn asked, looking at the door.

“
They started to, but the
second they saw the Lady, they fell into attack. We had them, Sir,
I swear,” Emily’s guard growled.

“
I’m sorry, ok?” Emily
said, and leaned her head back.

“
Are you ok?” Chevalier
asked, his voice started to sound angry.

“
I’m fine,” Emily said, and
stood up to pick up Alexis. The second her hands left her nose, it
started to bleed again. She headed up the stairs with the baby in
one arm, and held her nose with her free hand.

“
Why do we even guard her?”
one of the newer guards asked angrily.

“
Because one of these days…
she’s going stop trying to protect the heku and let us protect
her,” Chevalier hissed.

“
It’s humiliating… to be
protected by a mortal,” her guard hissed, and headed up after
her.

Silas sighed and ran up after
them.

“
Damn, how do I get her to
stop trying to protect us?” Chevalier asked Maleth and
Quinn.

“
Maybe we never will. The
guard has a point though, why exactly are they there?” Quinn
asked.

“
Just… keep them with her,”
Chevalier growled, and walked up the stairs.

“
She’s napping,” Silas said
as he headed back down with Alexis. “Lexi and I are going for ice
cream, it seems.”

“
How’s she napping? She
just barely got up?”

“
I don’t know, maybe she’s
hiding the headache she obviously has.”

“
Of course.” Chevalier
blurred up the stairs and into the bedroom.

Emily was taking some ibuprofen as he
watched her. She turned suddenly when he shut the door and
swallowed the pills dry.

“
Don’t be mad, ok? I didn’t
think,” Emily said softly.

“
I just wish you would let
the guards do their jobs. They live for the fight, and you took it.
By now, the Encala would still be dead, but you wouldn’t be
suffering and the guards would have a natural predatory high,” he
said, sitting down on the bed.

“
I just need a nap,” Emily
whispered, and laid down on the bed.

Chevalier watched as she fell asleep
and then went back down to the Great Hall when she was in a deep
peaceful sleep. He sat down on the chair with the other Elders and
watched the finishing of the decorations. He kept quiet while
Maleth and Quinn visited.

***

Emily came down just before the
coronation started and took her place beside Chevalier’s chair. He
could tell she didn’t feel well, and the dark blue slip dress
accentuated her pale complexion and the weight loss from the past
few weeks. She stood silently beside him and watched as the heku
gathered. He noticed she wasn’t commenting about the looks she was
getting, and he looked up at her several times to make sure she
wasn’t about to pass out.

Emily took Chevalier’s hand after the
coronation, when it was time to greet Kyle and Mark, but still
didn’t speak. Her hand felt cold to him, and after Emily shook Kyle
and Mark’s hands, she disappeared out of the room through the back
door. Chevalier remained cordial and joined the rest of the heku in
the Great Hall for the reception.