Blakeshire (Insight #9)(52)

“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.”