Enflame (Insight #6)(38)
“How?”
“Unweave your spell.”
“What spell? It was a curse before now. And that doesn’t even make sense. That boy with Landen told me I was darkness that because of that, I couldn’t feel other dark people. If that is true, why would Donalt ever create a spell, curse—whatever—to join me with Drake? Phoenix said two people from darkness would destroy themselves. He’s wrong, so wrong. That can’t be true.”
Her pale green eyes drifted deep into mine. “You can call it a spell or a curse. You are fighting eight beyond the sun and the moon. But blindly in your past lives, you bargained against that spell, adding to it, and when you lived in illumination, when Landen became a Phoenix, other deals crossed. They were added to what you fight. Souls were pulled into this, and now it is so massive that the only way out is to follow your own path. When others cross your path, you fight with them. If they are not in your path, you fight alone.”
“Dane is in my path. What spell? I don’t buy that he is dark. I have felt him my entire life.”
“You are both dark. The only time you can’t feel someone who is dark is when they are not touched by light. Dane was bound to me long before I found him in New York.” Noticing my doubt, she went on. “You want another example? You felt Draven intensely. He is dark, but he has Charlie’s heart. Even if he didn’t, he has surrounded himself by light. His music alone gives him that joy. Stating that someone is dark is not an insult. We all have both.”
“Are you telling me I don’t feel Drake because he is not loved? That he is darkness? That Alamos isn’t either?” I argued, knowing I loved both of them in some way. I was sick of arguing about the absurdity of light and dark.
“I don’t understand the dynamics of them, Willow. Perodine could have had something to do with them for all I know.”
My head was spinning. I was in denial. I was not dark, or evil. I knew that. I had dark emotions. Battles with fear and anger, but I was not dark. “Then how was my light so tempting the last time I was in here? How did I get that Britain boy to go away?”
“You are not simply loved, Willow. You are loved deeply, and the light you carry is Landen’s. It has been with you through all of time, and in this life it has been with you from your first dream. Don’t feel shame for this. It is who you are, and it is not evil. Your intent has never been evil.”
“All right, fine. It all has to cross, then. You are my family. So is Dane. That alone makes it cross.”
“It’s more than that,” she said as the ground behind me gave way, giving us a pedestal to stand on. Below, I could see a raging war in a lost time. In the distance, I could see the burning pentagram off to the side of the battlefield, with three shadowed images around it.
“When Landen was a Phoenix, he had one goal: to find you and take down Donalt. He knew that The Realm was that gateway, the place where Donalt fed off the darkness of Esterious. Landen also knew that the only way to get into The Realm was through a mass of people creating the same emotion. In that time, the only way to find a mass of people was on the battleground, and the emotions were the darkest: shock, fear, grief.”
I felt my insides crumble as the guns exploded, as I watched bodies fall to the ground, as the cries of the innocents bellowed into the night.
“Landen and Phoenix would ride the fallen souls into The Realm and search for his way to you—and your victory. What he did not realize was that when he escaped The Realm, the energy he harnessed could not, that it was sent to the core of the power Donalt was drawing from. Landen was aiding him, not hurting him.”
She nodded in another direction of the battlefield, to a man holding a woman who was covered in blood near the front steps of a beautiful home that had been ravaged by gunfire. There was an eerie figure of a man in a cloak standing above the couple.
“I’ve loved Dane through time. He had my light, my essence with him. On this same battlefield, my vessel was destroyed. At my death, a man bargained with him, told him that if he gave part of his soul, a part that would not be missed, that he would save me, bring me back. Dane agreed without even looking at the man. He thought it was the wandering voice of God in his thoughts.”
Nervously, I glanced from her to the couple, to the burning pentagram in the distance.
“My body came back to life, but Dane’s soul, part of my light, followed the souls that Landen rode into The Realm that night. The hole that was left in Dane allowed him to be overtaken time and again.”
“What is Landen doing right now?” I gasped.
“He’s trying to open the gateway to let the souls he rode in out, to let them rise or fall as they wish. He is taking the energy away from Esterious.”
“When he opens that gate, will that part of Dane’s soul come out?”
“In theory.”
“What do you mean by that?” I gasped.
“No one knows until it happens, and if it happens, there is a chance that all that Dane did when he was overtaken will be undone.”
“How can that be bad?”
“Deals were made, spells were cast to counter his actions. There is no imagination that could grasp what would occur if that did happen.”
“Let me throw your words back at you. He needs to fight his own battle, find his soul and what will be, will be. By not doing that, he is fighting others’ battles, stopping his path.”