Breaking Dawn

Everything was silent again as the others caught up to where I was already.

“An immortal child,” Carlisle whispered.

I felt Edward kneel beside me, wrap his arms over us both.

“But she’s wrong,” I went on. “Renesmee isn’t like those other children. They were frozen, but she grows so much every day. They were out of control, but she never hurts Charlie or Sue or even shows them things that would upset them. She can control herself. She’s already smarter than most adults. There would be no reason. . . .”

I babbled on, waiting for someone to exhale with relief, waiting for the icy tension in the room to relax as they realized I was right. The room just seemed to get colder. Eventually my small voice trailed off into silence.

No one spoke for a long time.

Then Edward whispered into my hair. “It’s not the kind of crime they hold a trial for, love,” he said quietly. “Aro’s seen Irina’s proof in her thoughts. They come to destroy, not to be reasoned with.”

“But they’re wrong,” I said stubbornly.

“They won’t wait for us to show them that.”

His voice was still quiet, gentle, velvet… and yet the pain and desolation in the sound was unavoidable. His voice was like Alice’s eyes before—like the inside of a tomb.

“What can we do?” I demanded.

Renesmee was so warm and perfect in my arms, dreaming peacefully. I’d worried so much about Renesmee’s speeding age—worried that she would only have little over a decade of life.… That terror seemed ironic now.

Little over a month…

Was this the limit, then? I’d had more happiness than most people ever experienced. Was there some natural law that demanded equal shares of happiness and misery in the world? Was my joy overthrowing the balance? Was four months all I could have?

It was Emmett who answered my rhetorical question.

“We fight,” he said calmly.

“We can’t win,” Jasper growled. I could imagine how his face would look, how his body would curve protectively over Alice’s.

“Well, we can’t run. Not with Demetri around.” Emmett made a disgusted noise, and I knew instinctively that he was not upset by the idea of the Volturi’s tracker but by the idea of running away. “And I don’t know that we can’t win,” he said. “There are a few options to consider. We don’t have to fight alone.”

My head snapped up at that. “We don’t have to sentence the Quileutes to death, either, Emmett!”

“Chill, Bella.” His expression was no different from when he was contemplating fighting anacondas. Even the threat of annihilation couldn’t change Emmett’s perspective, his ability to thrill to a challenge. “I didn’t mean the pack. Be realistic, though—do you think Jacob or Sam is going to ignore an invasion? Even if it wasn’t about Nessie? Not to mention that, thanks to Irina, Aro knows about our alliance with the pack now, too. But I was thinking of our other friends.”

Carlisle echoed me in a whisper. “Other friends we don’t have to sentence to death.”

“Hey, we’ll let them decide,” Emmett said in a placating tone. “I’m not saying they have to fight with us.” I could see the plan refining itself in his head as he spoke. “If they’d just stand beside us, just long enough to make the Volturi hesitate. Bella’s right, after all. If we could force them to stop and listen. Though that might take away any reason for a fight. . . .”

There was a hint of a smile on Emmett’s face now. I was surprised no one had hit him yet. I wanted to.

“Yes,” Esme said eagerly. “That makes sense, Emmett. All we need is for the Volturi to pause for one moment. Just long enough to listen.”

“We’d need quite a show of witnesses,” Rosalie said harshly, her voice brittle as glass.

Esme nodded in agreement, as if she hadn’t heard the sarcasm in Rosalie’s tone. “We can ask that much of our friends. Just to witness.”

“We’d do it for them,” Emmett said.

“We’ll have to ask them just right,” Alice murmured. I looked to see her eyes were a dark void again. “They’ll have to be shown very carefully.”

“Shown?” Jasper asked.

Alice and Edward both looked down at Renesmee. Then Alice’s eyes glazed over.

“Tanya’s family,” she said. “Siobhan’s coven. Amun’s. Some of the nomads—Garrett and Mary for certain. Maybe Alistair.”

“What about Peter and Charlotte?” Jasper asked half fearfully, as if he hoped the answer was no, and his old brother could be spared from the coming carnage.

“Maybe.”

“The Amazons?” Carlisle asked. “Kachiri, Zafrina, and Senna?”

Alice seemed too deep into her vision to answer at first; finally she shuddered, and her eyes flickered back to the present. She met Carlisle’s gaze for the tiniest part of a second, and then looked down.

“I can’t see.”

“What was that?” Edward asked, his whisper a demand. “That part in the jungle. Are we going to look for them?”