Praetorian Rising, стр. 72
She screwed her face up as she listened, her brow creasing across her forehead and her eyes narrowing into tiny green slits of color. It was cute, and Theo wanted to touch the furrowed lines of her brow with his thumb to soften the skin back out. He felt desperate to give her a moment of ease and tenderness before the storm of chaos they were about to walk into, but he knew it wouldn't be well received. She was a ticking time bomb; ready to explode at any moment.
He hated what she was going through and wasn't even sure he wanted to know what she had been through in the last eight years of her absence. Would he ever be able to smooth out the broad lines of worry, terror, and hopelessness he was sure had grooved heavy lines into her soul?
"This," Theo said, picking up the silver amulet around his own neck, "is called a Blood Bond. It keeps the virus from fully taking over our bodies. The necklace is infused with Ephidra Lily, and we are unable to remove it, despite how hard we've tried when curiosity struck." A whisper of a smile moved across his lips, but he quickly stamped it down. He saw a flicker of understanding dance across her features; she must have tried to remove it recently without knowing the consequences. Why hadn't Vesyon told her what she was? Why hadn't Peter?
"If we're separated from the Ephidra Lily," Theo continued, starting to pace the confined area of the room. "The virus will take control of our emotions. The black you've seen spreading just under our skin is the virus, pumping through our veins in moments of intense emotion. We're unable to stop its appearance, but the Ephidra Lily keeps us sane and allows us to maintain control when the virus enhances our physical abilities."
"The black eyes—the ink beneath our skin? That's the virus?"
"A visible aspect of it."
"Okay," she said, exhaling. "I still don't see what this has to do with tonight."
"I'm getting there," Theo said anxiously as well as with a sense of excitement. He was relieved to get something off his chest but also in a slight panic over the time they were wasting. "LeMarc is after Ephidra Lily. He hungers for it and is willing to do anything to get it—clearly since he's sent the royal fleet our way."
He grabbed Camille by the shoulders then, intent on making his point clear without guiding her down a path of endless questions. "He can't get his hands on it, Camille. You must understand that above everything. Our freedom from his grasp, from his control, goes hand-in-hand with Ephidra Lily. We can't let him have it."
Camille was starting to understand, as she nodded slowly in response her eyes never leaving his. "Where exactly is it?"
"Vesyon orchestrated a leak about three months ago that we were storing some here in our underground vault. It took a while for the information to take hold, but several weeks ago we heard the King Regent was on his way to collect what we had with a handful of Equestrians. We assumed this invasion would be small and quietly contained."
"Obviously you were misinformed."
"Yeah," Theo snorted.
Camille scrunched her eyes in thought as she watched Theo pace the length of the room. "What happens when he finds the Ephidra Lily?"
"Oh, he won't," Theo said, stopping his march to regard her.
"He won't? How can you be so sure?"
"Well, to be honest, he can't," he replied with a wry grin. "We don't actually have any Ephidra Lily here; that was the whole point. We only needed to know when he was searching for it, and, now that we know, we will make our move to combat his efforts. The rebellion begins again tonight. The King Regent will arrive with an army, most of which will immediately infiltrate the compound. When he sends his troops down into the depths of the vault looking for the product, we're going to set off the fuses we've placed throughout the underground and blow the entire place to smithereens."
Her mouth fell open in complete shock. "You're going to blow it up?! The entire compound? But...but you can't do that!"
"Of course we can. And we will. Vesyon said we have two hours once the bell horn of the evacuation rang, and then we'll need to get out of here."
Neeko appeared to nod in agreement, and Camille hurried to gather her belongings with shaky hands. "Then we need to go! Why didn't you tell me?!"
Theo smiled with his hands out in front of him in a shrugging gesture. "I have been trying to tell you, Cam!"
Her traveling bag was packed in minutes, bulging with the few personal items she owned. The three of them headed for the door, but just as Theo moved to open it her chilled fingers grasped his forearm with intensity. "Theo, what happens if there's no Ephidra Lily in our bodies? What happens if someone removes our Blood Bond?"
"Well," he said, twisting the doorknob open, "we'd lose our ability to reason. The virus would take over our system, and there'd be no stopping us from whatever our goal might be. I've heard that our humanity would switch off—or, rather, we would have no way to control our ability to feel emotion."
She nodded in understanding, a question bouncing around within the confined space of her mind. Her hand slipped over the silver metal piece hanging around her neck, but she remained silent as she stood next to Theo.
"You tried removing it?" Theo asked, nodding to her amulet. She nodded, averting her emerald gaze. "There's only one person that can