Enflame (Insight #6)(53)

My eyes flew open as I felt Landen push me forward. I looked up to see him standing between Phoenix and Brady.

Brady stepped back, almost in disgust. “What happened to you?”

“An awakening,” Landen answered as the compassion Chara had instilled in him absorbed his soul at the sight of Brady.

I stood slowly, evaluating the heavy emotions I could feel coming from Brady.

“What’s wrong?” Landen asked.

“Where do you want me to start? Let’s see...you take off without a word...seconds later, I find out my sister is dead...oh yeah, then my daughter—remember her? Allie? Oddly, at the eleventh hour, no matter how awake she is, she falls asleep, longer naps each eleventh hour...and if that is not odd enough for you, Libby, Preston, and Monroe fall into meditation at that hour, too, longer each time. They’re slipping away. And if you still care, Donalt’s death was announced, the mourning was lifted, and Drake is in a power struggle.”

I knew then why Clarissa had forewarned me about this echo: she must have known the children were being consumed by a deep meditation. They were our clock. My foolish struggle between Landen and Drake had caused us to be blind to this big picture, and because we were blind, the echo could not move past the one planet that could have caused us to expand into a powerful arm that would surely bring victory. We thought we’d won those past trials, but really Donalt had. He was winning now, in his own twisted way.

“I knew about this,” I stated.

They all looked at me at once, in obvious shock.

“Well, not completely. I had a dream with Drake. He told me that in The Realm he saw a clock stop, with Libby and Preston beneath it. Just before I saw Silas in The Realm, he said that everything stops at the eleventh hour, that it’s hitting a shift or something and the echo couldn’t move forward. Clarissa told me not to worry about anything. I was told that it was the past echo, that the only way to know if what I was doing now was wrong was to move through what we’ve planned.”

“Clarissa,” Brady stated, in obvious grief.

“She is not lost to us,” Landen said quietly.

Brady’s eyes rushed over Landen as he pushed his grief down. “What plan do you have?” he asked, glancing between Landen and Phoenix.

Landen started to explain everything we’d been doing, what had happened to him, but I wasn’t listening; I could see Skylynn leaning on a headstone a few feet away and I slowly walked over to her, feeling the stares of Phoenix and Landen on my back. She kept her blank expression as I approached.

“He should be out by now,” I said to her.

“That’s fast. You are good,” was her dry comment.

“He was keeping his distance from his brother.”

“His twin brother,” she said firmly.

I raised my brow. “So you were focusing on the wrong image?”

“Maybe a time or two, but I rarely focus on his image. only his energy.”

I leaned against the headstone next to her, noticing how both Landen and Phoenix were more focused on Skylynn and me than easing Brady’s worries.

“They don’t like you talking to me,” Skylynn said quietly.

“I can’t feel Phoenix, but Landen is just protective.”

“He has every right to be. He fought hard for you.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh.

She glanced to her side at me. “I wouldn’t have taken you away from them. I doubt I could have.”

I smirked. “I know. A woman scorned can say and do insane things.”

“Scorned? You act as if you have been down that road.”

“Maybe I have.”

“In what life? He has always chased you. You were the one that was blind.”

“He was taken into The Realm a few days ago. I was more than crazy at that point.”

“What do you mean, ‘taken’?” she asked as her body tensed and she locked gazes with me.

“A girl named Bianca. Landen thinks she’s a mirror. Aden and his brother, the girls with them, helped me get him out. That’s how I know them.”

“You know Aden?”

“I know Draven the best out of all of them. Aden seems like a good guy, though.”

“You see him like that because he is light and you are darkness.”

“Whatever. He has a balanced mind, loves his brother, and wants to free the damned souls.”

“Have you seen him play?” she asked me.

“I’ve heard him.”

“Music...he led me to music.”

“What’s your story? How do you have this connection with him but you have never met him?”

“I haven’t met him in this reality,” she sighed. “I saw visions of when we did meet. I yearned for him before the visions ever came. I didn’t understand that. I used magic to figure out who we were, what this all meant.” Her eyes gazed forward. “I’m impatient, and I wanted to learn the craft faster than my mother would let me. I was so worried that I would never find him. In the end I put a divide between us. I became what I am. He was blinded to me.”

“I can’t feel you, but I see doubt in your eyes.”

She sighed again. “It’s not doubt, its worry. We all connect, Willow. I want to know why. I want to be past this hell, but it keeps pulling me deeper.”