Imperial ((Imperial) Web of Hearts and Souls)

  If anyone in a line was near their sovereign, they would be hard to sense simply because the sovereign’s essence was so powerful. Fielder, the king of grief, was always in the real world, not in human form like Donalt had done, at least not for extended periods of time, but he was always down there. I’m sure that was the reason why Cadence was hidden from Mazing now, but like Mazing, I hoped she was mirrored.

  Mirrored souls were ones that were basically imprisoned by their kings. They had done something horrid, and now their souls were trapped; only their images could roam The Realm, and they would stay that way until the king saw fit to release them.

  The springs had manifested my dear Silas for me. He was not in The Realm, but a dimension below. He was sitting under a tree, and a chapel was near him. It was old and decaying, the once white wood was gray and the windows had been blown out by Mother Nature, gray cloths that were once curtains blew through the broken glass.

  “I don’t think I need you. He is in the real world.”

  “So are the kings that betrayed you.”

  “On point,” I said under my breath. “Where is Rasp?” I asked, glancing around.

  “Vade called him. That is half the reason I knew you were here.”

  “I don’t suppose you learned any secrets with Rasp? Like him telling you there was a big, fat lesson in front of my face that I cannot see?”

  “Got that vibe, but no words.”

  I clenched my jaw as I stared at Silas.

  “Am I missing something?” I asked, glancing to her.

  “Just as much as I am, I suppose.”

  As much as I needed to go to my Fated Escort, my First needed me now. I turned to face her. “You harbored a deep secret for quite some time. I’m sure it feels new because we are back here, because you are near the anniversary of that cycle of eternity.”

  “I just wish I could have heard and felt the promises he did from the Creator.”

  I bit my lip and held in a sarcastic grin. I so knew how that felt. “Don’t we all,” I finally said. “It was real. You hear me? It was real for the two of you.”

  “I don’t know,” she said as she sighed. “It hurts like hell now, I know that much.”

  “We’ll figure out how Cadence is taunting you with his scent and stop it. That might help a bit.”

  “What else is on the agenda besides ceasing the memory of my torrid affair?”

  “Getting Silas home, then releasing the dead that are trapped in the Veil.”

  “Tall order.”

  “Even if we find a way to let a few loose, it will appease me. I may not be able to send the Reaper a bouquet, but I can send him a single stem, let him know that my deeds are to help him and others. I don’t want to go back.”

  She glanced away. I knew she was in the middle of an internal war. One thought told her that at any second she would perish because she had been coupled with Colton, who lives no longer; the other told her that she wouldn’t because it was not a blessed coupling. I did not envy her for that battle and knew that no punishment I could give her would be worse than what her mind was doing to her.

  “All right, then. I guess we are going to do this. I still want you to stay cloaked; Silas deserves to see me alone.”

  Her eyes moved up, then beside me to where Rasp was now standing. “Good meeting?” I asked him.

  Rasp grinned. “It was good to see my old friend again.”

  I turned crimson. “You guys are staying hidden. This is my moment with Silas.”

  “Where to, Sovereign?”

  I reached my palm for the spring, asking it to open wide for us.

  That instant, it pulled me in. I reached my essence around Silas and the scene he was in, shielding us. I hesitated, making sure I could sense Rasp and Mazing; oddly, Mazing was full of wrath. Maybe I should have asked her to stay. It was clear that she was being haunted at this point.

  Silas looked up instantly. He breathed in deeply as his eyes filled with judgment. “Mint,” he seethed.

  “Yup,” I said, not really caring to rehash words that had already been spoken.

  Silas stood as he took in another breath and tilted his head slightly as his eyes grew curious. “Who is with you?”

  “They cannot see or hear you.”

  He took two dominant steps toward the direction where Rasp and Mazing were standing, but he hit the wall of my energy. He could see the fields that were there, but not them.

  “I’m imprisoned,” he said, glancing scornfully over his shoulder at me.

  “No, you are shielded to have a private conference with me.”

  Silas breathed in again, then clasped his chest as if he were in pain. His eyes squinted closed.

  “Still processing the awakening,” I stated. His senses had to be on fire. Every sensation was new to him now, yet it linked him back to a past, one that was clearly showing him each step of the way what he truly was.

  “There was no awakening,” Silas said, gaining his composure and turning to face me.

  “My line does not lie. Learn that lesson now.”

  “Oh, but you have already breathed a lie to me.”

  I cringed as my hands formed into a fists. I never should have let him see a weakness in me, know my limits. We were going to end that now.

  “I see that you took my advice, found a place to think.”

  “You kinda cleared my calendar for the afternoon,” he said with a smirk.

  “That power could be yours.”

  “Tempting with power...tsk, tsk—that is clearly a trait of what evil does,” he said, moving his head from side to side in a sarcastically playful manner.

  “No, evil tempts with fear.”

  “True.”

  “I did seek counseling about your rare hybrid of energy.”

  “Is that what Escorts call it?” he said with another deep inhale.

  “Do you need to be restrained in order to listen to me?”

  “Not at all. I see now that a sense of humor is not afforded to real Escorts.”

  “There is no precedence for you, but basic lore states that when you are risen into an Escort that your past lives are just that, in the past. Any debt you have to Charlie or those in the form of Witnesses will be null and void. They saved you, and I will repay them for that, but you are mine and it is time to come home.”

  “I belong to my Creator, and my Creator alone,” he said, raising his brow.

  “And He has placed you in my care.”

  “Apparently, He took me out of your care,” he shot back.

  “Are you seeking a compromise, telling me that you can remain as you are and discard your emotions for Charlie?”

  “I told you before, our LOVE is a necessary evil.” I knew he meant that to be damning, or even sarcastic, but as soon as that sentence left his lips pain came to his eyes as he clenched his chest once more.

  “What is wrong with you? What is this pain?”

  Silas gasped as he breathed through it. “Oh, dear queen, this is not a new agony. But for some reason, your presence enhances it.”

  “How is it not new?”

  He had regained his composure once more and was standing tall. “I knew I was an Escort or something close to it before today.”

  “I know that you did.”

  “No, I knew.”

  “Okay, then. How?”

  “Where do you think that black smoke goes when I pull it from those evil bastards?”

  “Home.”

  “Evil has no home.”

  I had to think for a second. I knew when I pulled blackened souls out of the Escorts that reached The Fall that they went home to The Realm, but those clones I saw Silas fighting—I wasn’t sure they had a soul; therefore, I wasn’t sure where their home was.

  “Where does it go, Silas?” I said as I angled my head up at him and crossed my arms.

  His fist hit his chest. “Right here.”

  “You could not have possibly consumed that evil and still have the will to s
tand.”

  “I do consume it, and I send it to its death.”

  “Which is...?”

  “The light.”

  “You’re telling me that you pull this evil out, take it within you, and rise to some light and let it go?”

  “You make it sound so simple. It doesn’t happen that way. Each one that I kill marks my soul, and when the marks tear at my armor I rise and the light cleanses me. It then pulls any remaining essence of that evil out of The Realm.”

  “Is evil in you right now? How many battles do you live through before you need this release?” Maybe that was why he was so damn temperamental and stubborn; that darkness was in him.

  He smirked. “In the past I could go years, decades; recently, more often than not.”

  “And you think that is healthy? That your Creator designed you to be some kind of vacuum? A means to an end?”

  “You’re the one that said you were designed for a means to an end.”

  I guess I did say that. “We are above it; you are below it.”

  “Well, then I guess the goal is to meet in the middle, huh?”

  “There are more like you?”

  He held out his powerful arms. “One of a kind.”

  “You are not consuming evil anymore. That stops now, along with these emotions for this Charlie girl.” How could he want this for himself? I should have been a welcome sign of relief to him.

  “Not a chance.”

  “Listen to me. I can see into you. You can say whatever you want, declare whatever you want, but I know what is between you and her is not real.”

  “Still love her.”

  “Because it is necessary.”

  “For me to exist, yeah, I have to feel it for someone.” With those words, he clenched his chest again. I knew he was in far more pain than what he was showing me.

  “Perhaps someone else then, someone who is not firmly attached to a line that you cannot and will not bring down.”

  “Sure, sure, girls that dig boys that can fight and consume evil and live for eternities at a time are easy to come by. I’ll ask one out to a show. Get right on that.”

  “Are you always so sarcastic?”

  “I’m always a bit of an ass, yes.”

  That made me smile. I adored the fight in him.

  “Come with me, fight evil the correct way.”

  “No. I have a guard to keep,” he said, glancing at the broken chapel behind me.

  “Memories. This place will be knocked down with the next swift wind. Nothing here for you.”

  “You think I guard this building, that the Creator could find nothing better for me to care for?”

  My soul seized. I knew he did guard something, something that Vade saw as precious.

  “Do tell,” I said smoothly, not wanting him to see my earnest curiosity.

  “I don’t think you can handle it.”

  “You have no idea what I can handle.”

  “Do I not? Do you think I don’t see the past abuse in your eyes, that pain and agony, that feeling that you are unwanted, appreciated, or loved in the slightest way?” he stated all too coldly.

  “That agony did not come from the life of an Escort; long before it,” I admitted.

  “I see that the life of an Escort has done wonders for you, allowed you to bury those demons. You should put that on the brochure so when you pop up and tell someone they are yours they can just read about all the perks.”

  “Are you quite done?”

  “It hurts you because you feel no love; if you did, whoever hurt you before would not even be a memory. I don’t want to wallow in my misery.”

  “Yet, you do.”

  “No, I don’t. I can’t even clearly remember mine. It’s been entirely too vague—that is, until you put my nose into hyper drive. I know that abuse comes from a scent you know.”

  “I already told you that it did. Xavier.”

  A hiss left his lips as his chest swelled. I assumed he was remembering that was the abuse he thought he had in the past. I made a mental note to look in the springs and see what horrid things that king did to my Fated just so I could add it to the reasons to kill him.

  “I am rare; no other in my line remembers or cares for any harmful past, I assure them of that.”

  “Then why do you have it?”

  “What are you guarding, Silas? Give me a reason to leave you to do just that.”

  “Come,” he said as he vanished and appeared at the broken doorstep to the chapel. I manifested at his side instantly, eager to learn his secret.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I could smell the rotten, decaying wood and the nature that was slowly consuming what was once a place of worship. I knew whatever he was guarding could not be that sacred if this were the home it was given. What beauty could be within this shack?

  Silas glanced down at me. “Are you sure you want to see this?”

  “I’m waiting for a reason to let you to stay as I found you.”

  He pushed the door open. I expected darkness, a one-room chapel with a few pews, but that was not what I saw.

  It was nothing less than majestic.

  I had walked through numerous chapels of Earthly kings, but this one humbled them all. It stretched as far as I could see.

  I stepped forward, trying to understand how the shack I walked into looked like this on the inside.

  With my next steps, my soul seized. I heard an angelic chorus of voices; they were speaking as one, singing as one. Each word was carefully shaped in such a way that you literally heard bliss. They were all youthful, yet you could hear the power of them.

  I kept a steady pace as I made my way through this massive chapel, and though I searched earnestly for them, I could not see the creators of this sound. I felt them, though, all around me.

  “What is this place?” I whispered, not wanting to cover their voices.

  “These are the souls of tomorrow, the children of them. The ones that will raise the human race above negative emotions, allow them to see each other as one.”

  I gripped the pew that was next to me. I had lost the strength to move forward. “Are they metallic, their energy?”

  When no answer came, I looked up at him to find him staring at me through a furrowed brow. “No,” he said under his breath.

  That wasn’t a powerful enough denial for me. These were the souls Vade had dreamed of.

  “This is the mist of the light,” Silas spoke so gently that at first I wasn’t even sure it was him beside me. I was glad to see that the awakening I had given him was starting to sink even further in, that the terminology was coming to him now. “I fight with others to forge their path…they are the souls that will end the evil that destroys.”

  The mist of light…and they were guarded by one of my own. I knew there was truth to this simply because the voices around me echoed a sacred past and promised a blissful future. No doubt, these were the souls that were needed to defeat the evil I had seen created.

  “I have to feel love for them in order to protect them,” Silas said quietly to me. “Your vocabulary lacks that word, for fevers are felt in passion and a rush is something that can only be felt for one. They need me to feel that emotion for all.”

  “Yet, you do not. I’m here right now because you have threatened a line that cannot fall—if it does, it kills you. Do you understand that?”

  “Not one damn word; it makes no sense to me.”

  I slapped his chest for cursing in a place like this.

  “They have heard worse. They don’t judge.”

  “I’m not judging you. I’m protecting you. That is my charge, just as much as consuming emotions.”

  “What do they call it? A catch-22? Instead of talking to me, why are you not talking to the others, raising them up to your palace in the sky, teaching them control so they won’t hurt Charlie? I would have no reason to hurt them then.”

  “Charlie will slip away from you. You know that. Even if the Draven boy you fight had m
ore control than the king himself, you’d be in her face, speaking her past. You are stirring the kettle because you know she is your lifeline and you cannot let her forget you.”

  “Her life is threatened by more than the Escort that loves her. I have no choice.”

  “Then you are not giving me one.”

  “Are you telling me that you are willing to leave these souls unguarded for the sake of protecting another line?” Silas asked in utter disbelief.

  “That line is connected to mine. I’m telling you that the voices in this room are more powerful than all of the kings combined, that we will find a different way to guard them.”

  “You find that way, make it make sense to me, and I’ll come without a fight; otherwise, you are down to those two choices—prison or death—that you were so quick to tell me you had to handle the likes of me.”

  Dear Creator, he saw death the same way I did: just another day at the office. I offered him no quick response.

  “This is evolution,” Silas stated calmly. “I have no doubt that you—or as you say, our race—is failing. It felt no love, only loyalty to its line, and if they were lucky, a rush for another soul. To fight evil in a soul, you do not need some supernatural king and their line to remove dark emotions—you need love for yourself, for life. Your failure was declared at your creation. You expect humanity to move forward while using old ways. Impossible.”

  The voices around me were so numbing that I could not find the wrath that I needed to argue with him. He had scorned my race, my life, and he had no right to do so. He was too arrogant and youthful even to think that he had a clue about evolution.

  “I’ll let you mull over that. I’m due for a battle. Might as well do my job while I still have it.” And with that, he vanished.

  I should have stopped him, but the fact that he was able to break my energy field told me I was in a weak state. I felt hazy. My first instinct was to flash back and check on my line—their peril would be the only reason for me to feel this way—but then I realized I was weak because I felt no wrath. I couldn’t in this chapel. I could almost see the faces of the voices. Children. Precious children.

  I sat down on one of the pews and listened intently for an unmeasured amount of time. Something deep inside told me that my Creator had not left the universe, but had left us, because we had failed…the creation of my race failed. He moved on and created these beings.