Blakeshire (Insight #9)(21)

“Are we not going home?”

A breathtaking grin spread across his lips as he hesitated and obviously replayed my question in his mind.

“It’s not safe yet,” he finally answered.

“When is it ever?” I quipped as I watched him lie down and stretch out, barely adjusting the mountain of pillows this queen bed had been decorated with.

“I may not be able to make all of it safe just now…but there are parts of it that I can.”

“Then let’s go to that part,” I argued.

“Not tonight,” he mumbled as those eyes of his drank in every part of me.

“Were you talking to Aden just now?” I asked, wondering if he was the reason we were not moving dimensions right now.

“Chrispin.”

“Are they telling you to keep me here?” I bit out. In some way, the members of Chara made me feel like my friends and I were precious cargo. I hated that. I really did.

“When do I ever listen to anyone?” he asked as his eyes carefully moved over me.

Hearing him say that made me remember something I had pulled from his thoughts a few nights ago when I was digging through his mind, trying to find proof that he deserved for me to be as furious with him as I was.

I already knew at that point that he had told Willow that it didn’t matter that she had found me, that he loved her soul. I was looking for ammo to add to that moment when I saw in detail a fight he’d had with his mother instead.

I saw him sitting alone in a private, elegant room for what seemed like forever. When Alamos came in the room, the old man regarded Drake with a fatherly stare, and Drake told him to make the arrangements for each of us to have our own quarters in the palace. As Alamos suggested a secure wing, Drake interrupted him. “My wing, my hall. It’s the safest place...for her.’” Alamos left the room swiftly to do as he was instructed. Beth, his mother, stepped out of the shadows in the elegant room and carefully looked over her son. “That’s not the safest place.”

Full of rage and confusion, his smoldering eyes met hers. She walked gracefully to his side and placed her hand on his broad chest, then moved her other hand to his shoulder. “This is, son.”

He looked away from her.

“I promised you that this day would come. Don’t ruin it. Be the man your father wanted you to be.”

Drake stood then stepped away from her as if they were having an unspoken argument about whoever his father was. “I’m not him,” he said tightly.

“No,” Beth mumbled. “But your father loved a stubborn, witty woman who had to have her way, who thought that love was trying and meaningless, something that only fools indulged in—and with his wit, his patience, his guarded submission, he gave me no choice but to fall in love with him.”

“Guarded submission...odd reference, considering his submission is the reason we are here, a divided family,” Drake seethed.

The expression on Beth’s face turned cold. Up to this point I’d taken her for the passive sort. “It was my decision. I told him not to fight. I told him that because I was selfish. Because I did not want my sons to grow up without a father. He submitted to me, and only me.”

“You need to explain that to your other sons. They blame me,” Drake said as his eyes filled with the remorse that was flooding his soul.

“No, they don’t.” Beth slowly walked away from him, but not before glancing back at him. “When I looked into her eyes, I saw the echo of everything I was, I am. Don’t question my certainty, son, or your heart.” She then left the room in haste.

In response to her last words, Drake picked up a priceless vase and flung it across the room; the sound of it crashing into the wall sent a shiver down my spine, bringing me back to the reality I was in. That fight had happened just before he came to dinner in Chara, just before I was struck and forevermore damaged in the way of insights.

Seeing that argument with his mother was what sparked the compassion I felt for this boy. I was sure that he was stubborn enough to ignore his mother, that he would make no attempt to hear her words. But Drake, as always, surprised me. He found his own way. And his way was an honest one. He never once tried to cover up the way he had or did feel about Willow, and he never once used his childhood as an excuse. Actually, Drake never supplied excuses, only facts that led to his reasoning. It was almost like he knew there was nothing he could do about the past; instead, he carried a heavy grief for what had happened to him, to his family. To us.

So knowing what I did know, I could not figure out why we could not go to whatever wing he had thought would be safe enough for us a few days ago.

“Aden was right, you know,” I muttered.

“About?”

“About the fact that I don’t like to be smothered. I don’t need someone to think for me. To protect me.”

“Do you want me to sleep on the couch?” he asked with a sigh.

“No, I want to go home.”

That smile was there again, a disbelieving one that matched his astonished emotions. I could not figure out why he felt that way, and that was driving me mad. “What’s with that look?”

He shrugged his shoulders against the pillows they were lying on.

“Why can we not go? If we stay here, they will find a way to talk you out of letting me go with you. Charlie will place some guilt trip on me for leaving.”