Blakeshire (Insight #9)(64)
Truth be told, he had almost convinced me not to go with Charlie when Willow came for us. I listened to my heart then. I needed to do that now, but it was hard. I had every reason not to trust Drake…but right now…he was the only one I did trust to protect me from this curse I was born with.
I went to ask Aden what he found, but he held his hand up to stop me as his eyes soared to the doorway. I glanced over my shoulder to see Alamos standing in the threshold of the library, only now there was no stench of sulfur in the air and his aged face was clear—not a wave of ink in sight. Now if that wasn’t confusing, I didn’t know what was.
“May I?” Alamos said with a nod, asking for permission to come in.
I nodded weakly. Aden stood with me, moving his eyes between Alamos and me, trying to see what version of Alamos I was seeing now.
When Alamos reached us, his gaze echoed the warm pride I swore I could feel coming from him. “I know that we have opened Drake’s calendar to give everyone time to adjust to your arrival, but I am afraid that we are going to have to appease the court tonight.”
“Meaning?” Aden asked coldly, still not trusting Alamos.
“Meaning that they saw him pass through the palace before. They were under the impression that he was in deep mourning all this time. Now that he has made an appearance, we need to have a meal with the inner circle.”
“Have you spoken to Drake?” I asked as I saw flashes that, in part, revealed my question. Drake did go to his study. The conversation looked tense, but I could not hear the words they spoke. I watched as Alamos went to get something, leaving Drake to roam his study alone.
“I have. He asked me to remove something.”
“Something?” I muttered, wondering if it was that tattoo, if Drake had really flipped his switch that quickly.
“Yes,” Alamos said as he looked down. “I have wronged him in so many ways, but my intentions were meant to aid him, protect him from suffering my path. It has been made clear that I was in fact fooled by my former king.”
“What did you do to him?” I demanded.
“Dreams,” Aden answered me first. Alamos nodded to confirm.
“After he was born, we took a part of his umbilical cord. It is said in ancient times that the soul was also nourished from that point. It held great power—it was what we used to extract past moments of his soul, and later what we used to create the dreams we wanted him to live out.”
“Why would you do that to a child?” I breathed as I held back the urge to rip him into tiny shreds.
“He was no child. Never has been. Donalt had me convinced that evil forces were going to once again take his fated love from him. He urged me to enforce the bond Drake had, he told me Drake would have to fight, that his lover had been spelled at birth.”
“And what exactly did you do to him today?” I asked as I saw flashes that showed Drake around candles, a bowl of herbs before him.
“I removed the spell—the loop of dreams that we wanted him to experience. When he was a child, Donalt would monitor his thoughts, and more than once he asked me to remove a dream from the cycle that Drake was living through.”
“And what good does that do now?”
“Now, well now, his mind will dream without the scenes fragmenting. He will clearly hear his own soul. Honestly, I should have done this for him as soon as Donalt fell…but at the time I knew this dimension needed a queen to protect our king, so I left them in place.”
“There is more to it,” I muttered as I tried to gauge what I was seeing around Alamos and Drake’s discussion.
“Tell her what he said. Let her hear it from you,” Aden all but demanded.
Alamos cleared his throat. “Drake stated that he didn’t want another woman beyond the one his soul belonged to in his mind.”
“And you complied?” I asked as I tilted my head and questioned exactly what he had done to Drake, as I questioned if Drake, after today, was still testing me.
On the inside, I scorned myself, told myself that Britain had planted that mistrust inside me, and I was not going to give him the pleasure of having me suffer through the painful suspecting thoughts.
“I never meant to hurt him. I was fooled, too. And like it or not, Willow did share a past with him. I did not fabricate that. I was very clear with him on that point.”
“Are you trying to make me mad?” I questioned, as if the last thing I would be jealous of was who was in Drake’s past. I didn’t trust Alamos. Not after what I saw before.
“No, I’m trying to honor my king. I only want him to be with the person that shares his soul.”
Aden and I glanced at one another. We knew for a fact that he and Xavier were plotting to take my vessel. The question became then, was Alamos on stage before us now?
“What dinner?” Aden asked dryly as he pulled his shoulders back. He wasn’t going to let either one of us walk into a trap. “Draven is busy. He is not going to pause his life every time you need to fabricate something for the bastards in the court.”
“We have you,” Alamos stated as he glanced at him. “Though your energy is vastly different, we are in mourning, so everyone’s should be altered. This is a silent meal. Words are still prohibited as we reflect. All you have to do is sit at a table and eat.” He grimaced. “Well, you may not eat.”