Imperial (Insight #8)(12)

She had a point. If that coupling had occurred between Colton and Cadence, then Cadence’s scent would not have been on a lower level; she would be with Colton.

“I didn’t sense Colton,” I replied as I tried to read her rigid body language.

“Lilies,” she said in a whisper.

That one word caused me to freeze. A lily was the scent of grief. An entirely different line, one that never caused any trouble at all. At least not during my reign.

“Are you telling me that the chosen petal for Colton was not from his line?” I seethed.

She swallowed harshly. “I’m telling you that the girl I pulled from Colton’s bed carried the scent of lilies. If she carried his line’s scent, I would have realized it was not in his control. I understood that he was playing me. Having his way with any and all lines.”

Wrath. That was seeping through my soul. It was so powerful that I felt the stare of Rasp and glanced behind me to find him gazing up at us from the stone he was on.

I glanced to Mazing once again. “So the Veil is as thin as a cloud, dead are trapped, battles have occurred on the first level of The Realm, humans were involved—lines crossed long before this day—and the Reaper suddenly decided to offer us a reprieve from death,” I summed up sharply, still not comprehending what was occurring now, why we were pulled back into this world.

Mazing rolled her shoulders once, a tell that said she was getting ready for a fight. “Bring it,” she fumed. “They would not be pulling us out unless they needed something from us. There is no telling what this boys club has been up to while we were chilling with the dead in the Cathedral.”

“No one is getting anything from me,” I stated with a stern stare. She was my only possession and she knew that. She also knew that she and Vade were never the best of friends—that the fact that her acts took me away from him was not going to win her any favors. “What happened between me and Vade had nothing to do with you. He will not harm you,” I swore.

Gently, she reached for my arm. “He would never do anything to bring you misery. For that I know I am safe.”

A sly smile edged to the corner of my lips. I reached to squeeze her hand before I casually brushed it away. I was beginning to tremble, and I didn’t want her to sense that weakness. “He already has. He left us. He did not avenge us.”

“How do you know that his actions have not led to what was below?” she asked as we rose further into The Realm, to levels where Escorts were more freely seen, not that I could see any now.

I was sure Rasp was cloaking us at this point. He was deliberately hiding our return. Something Vade could not have done. If anyone had seen Vade enter the Veil and return cloaked, they would have no choice but to believe I was with him. That he had finally woken up and claimed the rush that once was his.

That didn’t make me any happier. I never gave a damn what anyone thought of my actions. An argument Vade and I often had. He’d tried to teach me to rule with absolution, something that could only be done if you took your time and weighed every action, every outcome, and always saw your line as an extension of yourself. I understood my line was me. But with the emotion of wrath as my power, taking the time to think was not my style—at all.

I stared forward into the now purple sky. “Vade is anger. The one emotion that resides within every emotion. If he had acted out, there would be nothing left.”

“Is that what you would wish?” she asked humbly.

I really didn’t have an answer for her. I would not wish for destruction, but I wished to be vindicated. I wished that Vade had at least sent word that I was still in his thoughts.

Instead, he was calling me home breaths before everything our Creator had envisioned was sure to vanish.

“We are eternal, my dear First, and we will always be.” My words eased some of the tension in her body, but not all. “Did you sense Colton below, or now?” She would be able to sense him even if he were cloaked.

“I do not. And I did not sense him within the lilies below. I sensed her king.”

“Fielder?” That was the name of the sovereign of grief, though it did not do you much good to memorize it. He often changed his name and lurked within the human race. His emotions were habitually found in the fields the dead lie within; hence the name we call him by.

I’ve never spent much time with him. I really couldn’t see eye-to-eye with him either. He felt his emotion, grief, was the most powerful, the one the human race needed to be relieved of first and foremost. It was one emotion that my soul had never truly endured, so that reasoning was lost on me. Not to mention that, in my opinion, if you were saturated with grief you did not move forward, but lived in the past.

All the other emotions moved you to a new point. Anger tore everything apart, forcing you to rebuild the way it should be. Shock gave you a reality check and pushed you forward. Fear forced you to find new paths. Obsession pulled you toward your goals, whether they were material or ethereal. Trepidation plotted a new course, preventive actions. Exaltation pushed you to find that ecstasy once again. But grief, grief pushed you to live in a past that will never occur in the exact same way again. Pointless.

I was told often by those that had felt it that grief was the worst, and in most cases Fielder was considered a saint by those he relieved.

I’m sure the fact that he was built like a God had nothing to do with that. He was a charmer. Often gave gifts of paintings and such to those he adored. The paintings would capture a moment that had a deep meaning to whomever he adored—cute, huh? Yet what did that do but trap them in a past memory?