Blakeshire

  Everything about this experience was new, yet it felt regal at the same time, like two lovers discovering each other after a painful absence.

  I urged his shirt up, and right when my lips met his neck I heard him moan and felt him pull me against him. We wanted to be skin-to-skin, and urgently, yet gracefully we made our way there, savoring each piece of flesh that was revealed with a tender kiss, a gentle caress. The fire we were both feeling made our skin glisten within the rays of sun that were breaking through our canopy.

  Hours went by as if time had stopped. Each moment led us closer to the point of no return.

  Just before we crossed a sacred line, before I gave him something I had never given another soul, he hesitated. His eyes fell into mine as his fingertips traced my bottom lip. In a breathy whisper, he said, “First, last, forever….”

  I froze beneath him. I felt that emotion I was calling love explode inside of him. He was seconds from saying that, but if he did I would run because I knew that loving me would do nothing but put him in mortal danger. We could never let the evil we were fighting know what our weakness was. He was mine; as much as I hated to admit it, he had been my weakness from day one.

  “We can stop...” he whispered as he breathed out and let his hypnotic gaze reach into my soul.

  I reached my trembling hand for his firm chest; there, I felt a strong, rapid heartbeat. “First, last, forever…”

  The scent of roses saturated the air as I felt what could only be the emotion of love bellow within him. His lips connected with mine, then with gentle care he moved so our bodies became one.

  He embraced me tightly through the pain. The second it faded, I lost control of myself and fought to lead the moment. He would give in to me, but only for a moment or two before his passion forced him to find that same control.

  I knew without doubt that our hearts were pounding in unison, that I could feel my essence reaching for his, our energy twisting together. Ecstasy. That was what this was. Time did not exist in his arms. I was invincible.

  The fire he brought my soul swarmed through every part of me, bringing life to the dark corners of my obsessive being. The jealousy I felt before vanished simply because I knew that today he not only had revealed thoughts and secrets that he had never shared before, but that this moment, in this life, was a first for him, too. A first he saved for me.

  I could only hope I was healing him in some way, as well, that the coldness he thought was within vanished at that moment. If it didn’t, I would find another way. I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt him, no matter what it cost me.

  I loved this boy. I always had.

  Chapter Eleven

  ~Drake~

  I had never been more grateful that I knew how to stop time before this moment. I knew that time in this dimension alone was vastly different than my own; that alone allowed us to steal precious hours. I wanted us to have lifetimes, yet I only had the power to give us days. I doubted she even sensed the stalled day. She had drifted to sleep in my arms more than once. I held her as tenderly as I could, but at times I knew my grasp was too tight. I feared the cold, that Donalt would seize me right here, right now. My soul told me the fire she brought me would keep it at bay. I could only hope that was true.

  I traced every part of her body, watching her skin glow under my touch, feeling a hum reach out for me, nearly grasp me and pull me within. I wanted it more than I wanted anything else in my life, including my crown. She shared her body with me, more than a few times, but asking to merge our souls was something I was not brave enough to do yet. She needed to be stronger for that to happen. She needed to be able to protect herself from whatever evil there was lurking deep within.

  My fingertips were gliding across her back, revealing a hidden mark beneath her skin. A mark that consisted of four rings and an array of symbols, four rings that looked a lot like the looking glass in my palace. I remembered this mark from my dreams, myself asking her about it, assuming it was a crest given to angels. She had told me she was from the line of The Selected, warriors of light. That was as far as her explanation went. In the center of the symbol, there was a circle with two lines branching out. Even though I didn’t understand how I knew—I knew there were supposed to be five, that once there was five her life plan would be complete, our life plan would be fulfilled. I wondered if those three marks were the sacrifices that Zander was warning me about. Deep down I knew they weren’t, that they stood for something more sinister, a path before her that I didn’t want her to walk alone.

  Her eyes fluttered open, catching me tracing her back with undisguised wonder in my eyes. Instead of casually urging me away, she began to caress my chest.

  Her eyes drifted to my arm, and at that moment she jolted up and pulled my tattoo closer to her.

  “I made it permanent,” I whispered to her as I leaned in and let my lips rest just behind her ear.

  “When?” she breathed.

  “When you were you sleeping.”

  “It’s almost healed,” she said in awe.

  I raised my arm to see the mark. The last thing I had focused on was the slight burn I’d felt from that mark, so I didn’t notice that not only was it not burning, but also the skin was not raised. It looked like I’d had it for weeks. “That is odd; it still burned when we left to come here.”

  “Fast healer,” she said with a smile.

  She rose up and got a drink from the basket so she never saw my curious stare, my questioning what else this goddess of a woman could heal—if she were the remedy to the cold evil I battled within.

  I couldn’t hide my disappointment when I saw her reach for her clothes.

  “I don’t want to leave here,” I said under my breath as I watched her cover her body.

  “Leaving here is not going to bring me any regrets,” she swore.

  “How sure are you?” I breathed. Because if that were so, I would never let this hold on time go, at least not until I knew she was happy.

  “It’s not going to be easy to act like I don’t know this side of you, but I can handle it. I know we have to be careful.”

  “It shouldn’t be like that,” I said as I sat up and reached for my clothes. “I don’t want to hide this. I want to stand you in front of my kingdom and tell them I found my soul, that a new Golden Age has begun.”

  If it were only that simple. We both knew that my enemies were going to put me through hell, and I wasn’t looking forward to having her watch me proclaim love to Willow for the sake of a dying court.

  “What we think about, we bring about. So just imagine that day over and over,” she said as she watched me dress.

  “You would stand with me? You would rule with me?” My tone was so disbelieving that her gaze moved from carefully watching me dress to my eyes.

  “I’m not going to wear some gown and stroll through that palace gazing at artwork, having people wait on me hand and foot and only look forward to stealing a moment alone with you or random balls and dances.”

  So this is what hope feels like. “That will just be our stage. We can travel anywhere. And I’ll be damned if you ever have to fight for a moment alone with me.”

  “I just know that even though your world is dark, others are, too. There are damned that need to be saved, wrongs that have to be righted. That is the freedom that I have to have, why Aden told you that smothering me would do you no good.”

  “You don’t like to be protected?” That simply would not work with me. Did she not clearly understand how dangerous my world was?

  She pulled on her boots before she answered me. “I like feeling safe, just not helpless. We all have a fate to fulfill.”

  “I’ll chase your obsessions with you,” I swore.

  She tensed for an instant. “I only want you to chase the ones that feel the same way about you. If you are just there to guard me, then you will not help me, but hold me back.”

  I moved closer to her. Carefully, I reached my hand for her jaw as my thumb traced her bottom
lip. I stared into her soul as I spoke. “You are my obsession. My air. I doubt that we would overcome what was between us if our views and dreams held any vast differences.”

  “I don’t want to be an obsession.” Before I could argue, she went on. “Obsessions fade. I couldn’t tell you how many things I have been obsessed with, how I exhaust that idea or project until it blends in with life, until it’s accomplished, understood. The lifespan is too short for me to ever want to be one for someone else.”

  “I can’t get over this, Madison Marie. You can’t possibly understand how much this time has meant to me. This is the first instance that I haven’t felt alone. The first instance that I felt like the hell I have been through was worth it.”

  “I thought those were my emotions I was feeling?” she said with a blushing smile.

  I raised my brow. “That is how you feel?”

  “Why are you surprised by that?”

  “Because I know love scares you.”

  She looked away. I ducked my head to chase her eyes. She was scared to tell me she loved me. I knew she was. She thought it would be my death sentence. But I already knew that my death had been predicted. A braver man would not have encouraged any of this. He would have let her be. But I’m selfish. Even if my life was meant to be short, I wanted to feel this. Because if I did, it would all be worth it.

  “I have no fear. Remember?” Halfway there, Madison Marie. She told me without telling me. Clever girl.

  “When that comes back?” I pushed.

  “I’m not walking away from you. I’m going to figure out how they hurt us in the beginning, and I’m going to stop them from bringing hell to us or anyone else.”

  She reached for the locket that I was still wearing and squeezed it tightly.

  I had to wonder why Zander had all but told me to come here with her. If I had led her to another piece of the puzzle she was piecing together. What did she know? And why would she not tell me?

  “They?” I questioned.

  “They. I think there are seven of them.”

  “Where did that number come from?”

  “Long story,” she muttered as she grabbed my jacket and stepped out of our fortress.

  I lost my focus. Time slammed forward, and the sun fell from the sky. Night was born. She stood frozen, trying to work out in her head why that had happened. I was too wrapped up in the fact that she had said seven to explain. From more than one source, I had heard of seven emotions. Seven kings that must fall. Seven Escorts, rather. I knew Donalt was one of them; Xavier another. If they had focused their sights on her after all the precautions I had taken, I was going to come unglued. There would be no more playing nice king. And if there were someone else after her, all hell was about to break loose.

  We made it back to the car and were on our way back to town before I pressed her on her resolutions and dreams.

  “What happened to lead you to seven?” I asked.

  “Seems like a lot, doesn’t it?”

  “No, I was sure there were far more that we had to defeat.” Not all truth. That statement was referring to my court. Plus I didn’t want her to fear anyone coming after her, for the seven that she had to be speaking of were more powerful than any army at my command.

  “Maybe so, but I think there are seven that we have to bring down to reach a New World Order. Who stands before those seven, or how many we will have to face before that point—I don’t know.”

  Damn it. She knew.

  “Where did you get the number, though?”

  “Hypnosis.”

  My perplexed grin made her blush.

  “My mom is a spiritualist. She uses that exercise to explore the soul. After I started having bad dreams about you, she put me under. I said seven, a New World Order. And last night, I think my dreams said that again.”

  I tensed as I gripped the steering wheel. “You had bad dreams about me?” I had terrified Willow in the dreams we had shared; if I had done that to her, I would never forgive myself.

  She stared out the window. “You were using my memories to convince Willow to love you. The rejection was the worst agony I had ever felt. I even opted out of sleep. Lived on energy drinks to the point where I thought my heart would explode or my kidneys would shut down, one of the two.”

  I reached for her hand and held it tightly. “I thought she was you. I was fighting for you.”

  “Some of those visions were of her; not many, but there were some. I knew it was physical, but that still hurt.” She hesitated. “I don’t blame you or her for that anymore. We were set up to be like this, and we will kill them with their own weapon.”

  “Are you going to tell me about the dream?”

  She grimaced. “It’s awful. All the evil people had ink as faces. They made me drink blood. I fell into freezing water. A muscled arm or something pulled me down. I drowned.”

  “You were executed?” I seethed.

  “Is that how they kill people in Esterious?”

  My jaw was clenched. My hand that was holding the steering wheel gripped it so tightly that my knuckles were turning white. “The imagination of executioners is vast.”

  “I think that was my first death. That something there broke a cycle, allowed them to weave Willow into your life, and by doing that they gave doubt to two different couples that had the power to bring evil down.”

  “Where are you getting this from?” I asked as I parked the car in the spot we found it in.

  “My head. I don’t know how to explain it. There was a dream before that dream. That must have been the one that you heard me speaking about in my sleep. Before that dream, I wanted to go back to the beginning. Figure out a childhood trauma.”

  “Who hurt you?” I asked harshly. They were as good as dead.

  “It might be a what. I saw the reflection of a harsh looking woman in the ocean. She told me to run, and I did. There was an octopus involved, too. I’ve feared water ever since then. But I saw her again at the palace.”

  “My palace? You saw that person there?”

  “Kind of. She was in the paintings, telling me to run. I’ve come to the conclusion that she was trying to keep me away from you, or that palace, and if that is the case then something I need to make this right is there.”

  “You were really terrified?” I said. The emotion was saturating her beautiful image. My dream. The glass boat. It was shaping in my mind. Dread was sinking into my gut. I could see how scared she was then, see how doomed we both felt.

  “You can say that,” she said as she reached for my hand to comfort me.

  I had to figure this out. I was not going to let her relive that dream. No way in hell. “Do you remember any words they said to you in that dream?”

  “Chants.”

  That really infuriated me. A ritual death. That would have surely cursed us both.

  “You think it is the same thing you saw in your dreams? The glass boat?” she questioned timidly.

  I wanted to talk to Zander. He needed to spill whatever he knew because another detail of that dream was now screaming in my mind.

  “I heard crying when I had the dream,” I confessed before I could tell myself not to.

  “I don’t remember crying…”

  “It was from an infant. I saw robed men wrap cloth around the baby’s mouth to stifle the sound. I was petrified because I didn’t know how I was going to save you both in time.”

  “You saw a child with me?”

  Oh Creator, I felt sick. So sick. This could not have happened. No way, no how.

  My jaw clinched as my eyes rapidly moved across her confused image. “It’s not clear. I only had that dream once, and Alamos woke me up in the middle of it. I never saw the end or had it again. I just remember it because of the emotions. Even with all the ones I had of war and strife, I never felt anything like that dream.”

  “Whatever happened is over. I’m right here. So are you. Karma is law.”

  “Maybe so, but I plan to hand deliver my karm
a. You have to show me who this woman is.” I reached in my coat and pulled out a pen, then dug around in the basket to find a napkin.

  “I’m more of an expression artist, but I’ll try.”

  I needed an enemy to fight. Whoever had done this to us then was now at the top of my list. Donalt could wait for his execution as far as I was concerned.

  She had barely sketched out the image before rage took over me.

  I took the napkin from her and opened my door harshly. Before she could get out, I was on her side, helping her out.

  “In a hurry?” she quipped.

  “You just sketched Horace.”

  “You know her?”

  “Him. That is Xavier’s son, or so he claims. He returned to the palace with him. You didn’t see images in the painting—you saw him. Mind games.”

  “You’re furious,” she pointed out the obvious.

  I stopped my rapid pace up the sidewalk and cupped her face with my hands. “Willow finally said the hell with all of us—took a dangerous risk by seeking you out and then bringing you to my deathbed. Those bastards tried to scare you away from me. They had no doubt it would work because they have been jacking with me from day one. I’m killing them.” I dropped my hands from her face, claimed her hand, then rapidly pulled us through the street that had thinned out in the late day.

  She didn’t speak again until we reached the string. “See, I have no fear, so I’m cool with you walking me right up to this person, but maybe you need to think first. What happened to being on a stage, playing this out?”

  “I said I was going to kill him. I didn’t say when or how. If I struck him right now, they would try to execute me. Sure, that was one of their endless back up plans, but I can get him out of my palace. I can figure out where he came from and how in the hell he found you when you were a child.”

  It took everything I had to take her back to Chara, to a place where I knew she would be safe. But I wasn’t a fool; she would hate me if I even dared to suggest that idea. She wanted to fight at my side, and Creator help me, I wanted her to.