Blakeshire (Insight #9)(53)
“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 karma. 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.
I stopped just before my passage. “Are you ready for this?”
She smiled boldly up at me.
“That is an odd response,” I mused.
“You just passed another test. I thought you were going to stuff me away.”
Called that one right.
I raised my brow playfully. “Do I look like a fool?”
Before she could answer, I pulled her to me and gracefully let my lips meet hers. I tried not to give her a gallows kiss, one that would forecast an end to us, but I couldn’t hold back. Her body fit mine perfectly; our day together, even though I had stopped time, wasn’t long enough. I wanted to be alone with her, not walking on this stage.
She nipped my lip as she pulled away. That gaze in her eyes was full of heat; it was one that told me to hurry up and do what I had to do so we could find more time to steal.
“This is the stage. We both have to step on it for this to work. The only other choice is for me to go mad and kill them all and we run like hell.”
She knew I wasn’t joking.
“Not running anymore. I think I can read you pretty well. Know when you mean something and when you don’t.”
“If you see anything that is not right or if I push you too far, then I want you to glance away and look at the ground.”
“You want me to look down like a broken woman?” she bit out.
“No, I want you to do that thing you do when you’re mad: look away, then down. I know then that we need a break. To stop what is going on.”
One nod; that was all she gave me.
I let my fingertip trace her bottom lip once more, then took her hand to guide her through the passage that led to my kingdom.
Madison
After we stepped through the gray haze, the entry hall that was made for this passage came into view. Normally no furniture was in this space, but now there was one chair with a regal high back in the center. Sitting there was a man in a black robe. The stench of sulfur was present in the air, but that wasn’t as difficult to handle as the face of the man in the chair—it was nothing more than a wave of black ink. If I had any fear at all in my emotions, I would have dove back into the passage.
I held my breath as I glanced to the ground at my side.
“We are not having this same conversation again,” Drake bit out to the man as he stood to face us.
“We are going to have it a million times over if that is what it takes to get through to you that you have a kingdom to run and no time to take a hiatus in those passages.”
I knew that voice; it was Alamos’, the only man I knew Drake really trusted in his court. He was his guide, a father figure—and he never before smelled like this, never had a wave of ink across his image.