Exaltation (Insight #11)(15)
Chapter Five
Staring down at Emery in his arms, seeing the worry in her eyes caused Jamison to reflect on the path the pair of them had traversed both together and apart. How it lead them to this moment of reckoning. He knew time was running out, that they could no longer shelter the girls from the fate clearly beckoning more and more each day.
As the coven leader, Jamison was always there for the naming of the babes, the small ceremony. Those days brought peace to him, outright bliss, for he knew that birth meant the coven, all its power, would live on for generations.
It was different with Emery’s name day. The entire day he’d felt nervous, had some odd vibration of energy that, in all the ages he had lived, he’d yet to experience. It jarred him. It was one of the very few moments in his existence he could recall being caught off guard.
It bothered him so much that he left her ceremony far earlier than he should have and made it a point to never cross her path unless it was beyond necessary. It was easy to do because back then Jamison primarily spent his time with the coven originals, more so Saige than anyone. Births and deaths, those were the instances he visited others.
The first time Jamison saw Emery after her name day was when she laid her parents in the grave at the age of seventeen. That eccentric feeling was even more insane then. It wasn’t a distant feeling, one you knew was there but thought it better to ignore. No, the surge of energy was so intense it nearly knocked the wind out of him.
He couldn’t handle it, feeling something so unexplainable, so he made it a point to ensure the coven gave her everything she needed for the finest schools. Then he watched her leave town.
It was nearly ten years later when she surfaced in the Quarter again. Emery had caused a stir in the coven for more than a few reasons. For one, she was striving to become a mythologist and was eager to learn of her family’s history—but not so she could immerse herself within it, it was purely research to her. You can’t research the lifestyle; you have to live it to understand it.
She had also decided she wanted a family, wanted her parents’ legacy to live on. She had both physical and emotional issues withholding her desire. Her body refused to be a temple and her spirit refused to rescind its independence—to fall in love with another.
Her only choice was to grasp unconventional ways of obtaining her babe, which shocked the orthodox followers of the coven. Several members came to Jamison, asking him to reach out to her, explain to her how precious her blood was, her vim, how she had to be careful.
Jamison did his best to avoid the topic, knowing that if he went anywhere near her he would feel the eccentric pulse and pull once more.
One day he gave in, or rather saw her in the Quarter and thought to himself it wouldn’t hurt to take her out for coffee, see how she was doing, you know, do his part as the coven leader. As he approached from a distance, he not only felt the hum deep inside, but he felt his heart ache.
Emery was staring into a window, one with baby displays. There was so much love in her eyes, a humble longing. In that moment he knew nothing would stop her from having the family she wanted.
Instead of speaking to her he went to the doctor the coven utilized and gave his donation. Cleary situations like that are anonymous and Jamison wanted it to stay that way. He wanted to leave it to chance, the fates he respected. He told himself at the very least, out of each of the files Emery had, there was a chance she would not only carry on her parents’ legacy but also the power the coven had at its core.
Emery left town not long after on one of her long research adventures which took her across the globe. As far as Jamison knew she had let the idea of being a mother rest for a time.
Three months later Raine crashed into Jamison’s life, cast her net of seduction around him. The year she was in his life, staying in his home, he rarely left, had next to nothing to do with the coven. He was too busy trying to figure out how to protect the child he knew without a doubt was on the way.
Jamison didn’t realize he and Emery had created life—that she had, indeed, blindly chosen him. At least not until Raven’s naming ceremony.
The entire coven came. Thelma Ray brought bags and bags of clothes. Food, laughter, and joy were available in abundance, so was clandestineness. No one dared to question where Raven’s mother was, why she left, who she was, and Jamison chose to not explain. The day was long and not once did Jamison put Raven down. Each time he’d dared to do so since she was born she cried and he couldn’t handle it.
Once the party was over, as he rocked Raven in his arms and stared out his window, he watched as Emery made her way up the street with a dual infant stroller.
The volt of energy he always felt around her was three times as strong at that moment. His eyes rushed to the babes, to her. It took all the willpower he had not to manifest at her side. Not to gaze down at those babes and see if he did, indeed, sense his essence as he was sure he did.
All at once the haze around Jamison, around the impact Raine made upon him, lifted. He glanced down to Raven then to the babes with Emery, and nearly lost his ability to breathe. The emotion was so rich it virtually drowned his soul with a melody of bliss and fear.
Ages before, in another dimension, the Dominarum coven wrote the prophecy of a coming Rapture. Jamison fell into their world not long afterward, a lost soul looking for a new beginning. He knew each word of their predictions by heart.
Some stated that fallen angels would bring forth a child of exaltation, that the father would bring forth twin female guardians—the original line of the coven would bring forth a solitary male guardian. The three guardians would stand in trine as they protected the rising Sovereign of Exaltation.