Exaltation (Insight #11)(17)



Carefully he leaned Emery against the wall under the bleachers. His gaze slowly eased over her as his hands moved down her sides, his thumbs grazing her chest seconds before reaching her hips and squeezing slightly before he leaned his forehead to hers.

Emery moved her hands up his chest, doing her best to hide the fast breaths that he still, to this day, elicited from her.

“What are we going to do?” she whispered. Duncan had caused hell in their lives in the past. He’d harassed, stolen, threatened. He was a nightmare, and now he was back and their daughters had recognized him as a threat.

Jamison leaned down, let his lips linger before he kissed her. Nice and slow at first. Just a hello, I’ve missed you kiss, but then his hands moved around her waist and he pulled her flesh against him and deepened the kiss.

Emery gave in momentarily. High on the sensation of him. On the feel of him against her in their stolen moment. But then she pulled away and reached to cradle his face as she looked into his eyes. “You’re distracting me on purpose. Tell me what you sense.”

Jamison’s eyes searched hers rapidly. He didn’t want to tell her he sensed danger. An Escort, more than one, in this school, and they were from the very line Raven was set to rule one day, Exaltation. He didn’t want to tell her Duncan wasn’t the issue, it was them.

“Someone from my past is lurking close.”

Emery dropped her gaze, her hands, and flushed as she looked away, fearing it was Raine. Her return was a dread that stayed with Emery; she knew the deity Raine could rob her of her bliss long before the girls’ fate. “Then she should meet her daughter.”

They didn’t disagree or fight much, and when they did it was silent fights. Emery struggling with her thoughts and him striving to earn a trust she would not completely surrender.

He’d told her a million times every detail of Raine’s time in his life, and to this day Emery didn’t accept it was as simple as he claimed.

Jamison furrowed his brow then dipped his head to catch Emery’s stare “There is no Raine. I don’t know how else to prove it to you. Her purpose was served and the Creator moved her on.”

His truth made little sense to Emery. In her mind a woman that gave him a child would surely always mean something to him, and if she didn’t what did that say about the heart of the man Emery loved—did he see everything and everyone as transitory, replaceable?

Hurt filled with anger glinted in Emery’s green eyes. “And what is my purpose again? Am I to vanish as well now that they are young women?”

Jamison reached for her face. Anger was in his stare, but only minimally. “You’re mine.”

Emery sucked in a sharp breath just before his lips touched hers for an instant.

“Do I not prove that to you each day?” he asked, as his hands slid down her waist.

Emery squinted her eyes closed. Even though she was immortal now, she felt mortal in his arms. It was hard not to. The man had lived through ages of time, had seen everything, felt everything.

“Who from your past?”

Jamison stared for a second, not knowing how to explain it briefly. Emery had never met one of the originals from the coven named Reveca Beauregard, Saige’s true sister. He was sure Emery knew her story, though. Everyone did. She was the queen of the Edge, the space between life and death.

Jamison was there the day the Edge was created; he was there when the dark God Revelin took Reveca’s lover Kenson—and made Kenson a First, angelic royalty. The God Jamison’s very own daughter was now destined to slay.

Jamison had sensed Kenson, now called Rydell King, at a distance over the course of Raven’s life—each time his daughter faced darkness, the darkness the prickles always warned was coming.

Jamison knew Rydell King had recognized the soul that was set to bring Revelin’s line down was born. He was surely in survival mode, wanting to take out the threat before it took him out. For the prophecy undoubtedly stated the First must fall before the sovereign finds his death.

The only reason Jamison had not engaged him thus far was because he was trying to figure out how to save him. He knew Kenson’s destruction would destroy Reveca by default, and in turn Saige. There was no telling how far the obliteration would reach. Jamison doubted the coven would ever have predicted such a tangled web of fate, much less a resolution—that was left to him.

Saige and Jamison had been over and over the written words looking for a way around the inevitable—Rydell King’s death.

After an endless pause Jamison answered Emery’s question, told her who was now here from his past. “A warrior, he fought for our coven, perished, was risen by Revelin.”

Emery covered her mouth, her eyes wide—she clearly recalled the story. “The Creator cannot be this cruel, allowing this God to take him only to send him back to us as a weapon!”

Jamison agreed. The Creator could not be that cruel, but right then he could not see the reason behind it all.

“We have to let the girls know of their fate.”

Each time the girls faced darkness, fought a war, Jamison and Emery along with select members of the coven told the girls and Soren of their fate.

It terrified them, birthed paranoia. Each time Jamison told them he could take the memories away, that they could grow up and have a normal life and face their path when they were ready. They begged him for that resolution—each and every time.

Jamie Magee's Books