Image (Insight #3)(11)

“Do you know something I don’t?” I asked under my breath.

“I just know how I feel, and that’s relieved to be able to protect you,” he answered with a crooked smile on his face.

“You’re insane. Anyone else would have run away - like you almost did when we were kids,” I said, finding a little humor in the memory of Dane’s young face so many years ago.

“Um, yeah...you zapped us to another place – freezing, if I remember correctly – then expected us to resume our game of hide-and-seek like nothing happened. I thought I was crazy,” he said, laughing.

“You thought you were crazy? OK, and what did you think I thought?” I said, laughing quietly.

“You didn’t look crazy; you looked like you were doing what you were born to do, like you do now,” he said, looking proudly down at me.

“Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean you should be dragged into it...stay,” I said, knowing his answer would be no.

“It’s just three days – well, two now,” he said, looking at Landen and Marc as they approached us.

“Promise,” I said in a whisper.

Landen picked up our bags, which were by the passage, then took my hand and led us inside the string. I could feel him struggling to suppress his anxieties. “What were you and Brady talking about?” I asked.

He looked down at me, then back to Marc and Dane, then forward again. “Did Olivia tell you about her dream?” he asked. I nodded “Brady thinks we should have taken her. I knew if we did, Chrispin would have come. And if Chrispin came, Brady would have come – they all would have come. It’s bad enough that Marc and Dane are coming.”

“I’m sure Perodine meant Dane. It just makes sense that he would be more of a protector,” I thought. I knew it was true that both Olivia and Dane had played that part throughout my childhood, but Dane had seen more; he’d traveled through dimensions with me. He was just stronger.

“I hope so. I told Brady if Perdoine said we were wrong about Dane, we’d come back for Olivia,” Landen thought.

“Did that calm him down?” I asked.

“No. He thinks the dream is a warning, telling us that we’ll be divided forever. In his opinion, I just left the key to finding them again there,” Landen thought.

“Preston told me it didn’t matter that Olivia wasn’t coming. Brady is wrong, I thought, trying to convince the both of us. Do you agree?”

“I know there’s nothing that will keep us from finding them again,” he answered.

“Brady said something else”, I thought, feeling Landen suppressing his anxieties.

He sighed and nodded. “Brady thinks that one of our past lives was in Analess. He has a theory that I was Oba and you were Jayda,” he thought.

I looked forward and took in his words. It wouldn’t be such a farfetched idea; apparently, we’d lived several lives oblivious to us. “Well, it seems we defeated this darkness before,” I thought.

“Yes, but only after the darkness had consumed me and I learned that I’d loved another woman and had children with her, leaving half of the ancestors believing that they could never find someone. I just don’t want to settle for anything in this life. I want to defeat this curse, and I don’t want anyone who comes after us to pay for the choices we make. It overwhelms me when I think of it in that light,” Landen thought, wrapping his arm around me tighter.

“You’re being too hard on yourself. You don’t even know if that’s true - and if it is, we can’t change what’s already happened.”

“That’s what Marc said. I just have to work through it,” Landen thought.

“Well, don’t waste your energy trying to hide your emotions from me; I know them as well as my own,” I thought, looking up at him.

He smiled down at me. “I’d imagine that you do,” he thought, smiling and bringing his perfect dimples to life.

“What did Preston whisper to you when he hugged you goodbye?” I asked.

Landen tilted his head, and I felt curiosity grow in him.”He said everyone deserves to be healed – why would he say that? I mean, who would I not heal?” he thought, looking down at me.

I raised my eyebrows as the memory of one person came to mind.

An understanding came across Landen’s face.” He was telling me to heal Drake,” Landen thought as his jaw tightened.

“So we will see him,” I thought, feeling plagued.

Landen pulled me closer to him. “I’m not concerned if we do, and I would heal him - even if I was the cause,” Landen thought, a little offended by Preston’s words.

I held him tight.”Let it go; you have no way of knowing why he said that. He’s just a little boy,” I thought.

“In this life,” Landen thought, smiling at the memory of Preston and Libby.

The gray, ashy passages of Esterious came into view.

“Landen,” Marc said. “There has to be a passage inside the palace. I can’t imagine Drake using the ones that we use.”

Landen stopped and stared at the passages along the wall. “I think when I fought with Drake that first time, I threw him in this one,” he said in a confident tone.

“Let me go first,” Marc said, stepping in front of Landen. Dane came to my side. Marc stepped through, then we followed him.