So this is something I’ve felt the need to address in my own words for quite a while now. It’s something that’s quite easy to mistake or misread, but the decision was a very purposeful decision that I made when writing Dead Night. If you look twice at how the characters react to one another, you’ll see what I mean; at first glance, it’s easy enough to miss.

    I am of course talking about the relationship between Cye, James and Emmett. To start off, I want to make something very clear. I get this a lot, actually, so just to dispel any judgements that may have been made:

 

    Cybelle, James and Emmett are NOT and were never intended to be a love triangle.

    I know what you’re thinking. They are very misleading, largely because they are the three main characters in the ‘romantic’ subplot. It’s a little more complex than that. The long and short of it is this:

    Cye loves James, but won’t see it. James loves Cye, but won’t say it. Emmett THINKS he loves Cye, but doesn’t understand it. Cye feels guilty for being UNABLE to love Emmett.

 

    That is not a love triangle. That’s a poor bloke who got rejected by a lady…

 

    I’ll walk you through it, character by character. Then you’ll see what’s really going on:

 

    Cybelle is a solitary, proud and stubborn woman, so that’s a recipe for disaster on its own. What basically happened is that she did indeed fall head over heels for James, in time. They may have spent many years apart, but upon being reunited as adults, they did grow quite close. In fact, Cybelle’s feelings for James seem obvious to everybody but herself in the novel! The thing is, look at her past: most people she ever cared about were taken away from her, she’s had TERRIBLE luck with men (just ask Zach Hallows!) in general, let alone relationships, and her close friend confessed his love for her when she could not return it, no matter how much she wanted to see him happy. There is actually another thing, and it’s a BIG subplot in book two, that prevents her from having normal relationships. So for all these reasons, she long ago decided that she wasn’t going to give her heart to anyone. It was safer that way. It’s worth mentioning that she greatly valued Emmett as a friend, and like any of her friends, feels the need to be loyal to him. She is not in love with him by any stretch of the imagination, but as I said before, she does want him to be happy, so perhaps she sometimes wished she could love him in that way, for that reason alone.

 

    As for James, well, he’s a little simpler. He fell for Cybelle just as she did for him, but given her stubborn nature and her fears, she of course did not tell him. For this reason, he kept himself to himself and never told her of his feelings either…I suppose he just knew he would be disappointed and didn’t want to make things awkward. He loves her as a friend too; he wouldn’t want to threaten their friendship.

 

    Emmett is another, slightly more complicated case. First of all, take into consideration what happened to him. He was taken away by the Council for a ‘crime’ and tortured, mentally. He was sat in front of a window, while his sister was beaten and assaulted, and there was nothing at all he could do to stop that (See ‘The Best Dreams Are Nightmares’ on the Short Stories page). This really damaged his ability to see how his actions affect other people, and how to deal with disappointment and heartbreak. In fact, it seriously damaged him. So, before I go into why he thinks he fell for Cybelle, I need to introduce you to the one other person involved in this mess…yes, there’s someone else. You don’t follow? Allow me to draw your attention to something Lina says in Chapter 15:

 

“Emmett never told you about the girl he saved, did he? I suppose I don’t blame him, it would be dangerous just to think about it.”

 

    Yes, Lina and Emmett have met before, in between the ‘old days’ and the Guild. In fact she lived with Emmett and Avangelene for a time before they were taken away, a detail that is quite easy to miss. During this period, Emmett did find himself falling for her, and of course, he loved and lost. Lina had gone without a trace by the time he was free, and that was something he really struggled to come to terms with. So Cybelle was effectively a very delayed rebound, but because his mind works in such a way that can’t cope very well with these things, he slowly convinced himself that it was Cybelle all along, so that he wouldn’t think about Lina and realise she was gone.

 

    So a love triangle? No, not really. In fact to put it simply, I would say that this is less a three way relationship than it is two relationships that get a bit messed up together.

    Ah, but there are loose ends, especially with Lina back in the picture and Cybelle and James official, so to say...as to those? I am afraid you will have to wait for the second instalment of the saga…