Imperial (Insight #8)(22)
Their cravings to relieve or express emotion would haunt them, but they would not feel the need to feed for lifetimes, that is, unless they accidently tasted the power of raw energy. They wouldn’t, though. Vade was too fierce a leader to let anything happen to those he led.
“Could you sense if they were Fated? Did I take that from you?” I asked in a meek whisper.
He let out a sigh as he rolled to his side to face me. I let my arm fall and pulled my pillow closer to my neck so I would be level with that diamond stare of his.
There was something in his stare that told me they were more than that. I had a horrible feeling that I had taken more than Fated souls from him.
I cringed as I recalled another dream of Vade’s. One that he had only shared with me. To create an Escort with both light and dark energy. To create metallic energy.
Vade wished this for a very simple reason: he wanted peace. He wanted mortal souls to be powerful enough to rise above the emotions that chain them. He never came out and said it, but I think he intended for his Fated to rise with unheard of metallic energy. In Vade’s mind, if that were to occur then the other kings could invoke dark emotions all they wanted, but the souls would rise. In effect, we would return to our given charge without war, without the loss of life.
Even though I believed metallic energy to be impossible, the thought that I had hindered him from, at the very least, disproving himself was overwhelming.
“They are Fated,” he said as he reached to caress my lips.
“Are,” I repeated with wide eyes.
He leaned in and let his humming lips caress mine. “Are,” he breathed against my skin.
I smiled, thinking that maybe that was why I was freed today: his ambassadors were restoring our race, and any threat to me had vanished. “Congratulations, your majesty.”
I felt him tense and questioned him with my eyes. When he offered no answer, I pressed him for one. “What?”
“They were stolen,” he said as his pristine eyes became drowned with anger.
“By whom?” I asked as I rose fiercely from the bed. With little effort, he pulled me back to his embrace.
“By several,” he responded as his fingertips traced across my brow in an attempt to wipe away my anger.
“Why are you calm? Why are you not out destroying every single line that has crossed you!”
The hum within his skin intensified as he eased his hand down my shoulders and along my waist before pulling me against him.
“Glory, it is a very complex problem.”
“No, it’s not. They stole what belonged to you, and they will return them.”
“My adored, they have taken so much more from you…they have declared war, they have signed their death warrant.”
Chapter Seven
I had never heard words so fiercely spoken in that classic seductive tone of his. They were so powerful that I felt myself quiver. Not understanding the response of my vessel, Vade pulled me closer to his humming skin.
“You will be avenged. I swear to you.”
“I don’t understand what they could have taken from me. You are in my arms, Mazing is within this mansion, and I released my line.”
His brow furrowed for an instant, then he gained control over the emotions he was clearly fighting.
“You cannot release a line completely, not in the way you assumed. They were freed from you, they were blinded from your existence, but their cravings and desires remained. They ached to be claimed by anyone that would explain their purpose to them.”
My breath stopped. The very pulse of my soul stopped. “Are you telling me that my line exists still? That another sovereign is ruling them now?” Before I could rise with well-deserved fury, his powerful arms flexed around me.
“Yes. And that sovereign will release them to you the moment we decide that we no longer want to be in this room which, for me, is not this one or the one after.”
“Who?” I breathed, feeling agony. I’d always imagined my line living out lives of peace. I admit in the back of my mind I searched for them in the procession of death, for I knew their souls would not understand why death had come for them, that they would seek a stay from the Reaper. I never saw a single one of them. Never even came close to sensing the essence that I would know as well as my own breath.
Knowing that they were harmed while I was imprisoned was more than I could handle. It also meant that I had every right to go after Xavier–two wrongs do not create a right. He’d breached our agreement, or rather allowed me to make an agreement that had no merit.
A smile reflected in that diamond stare of Vade’s. “I found them all, claimed each by name. Rasp called them home the moment you stepped foot within these walls.” A slow, sweet smile infused with an amber blush enveloped his visage. “Do you feel them, Glory?” he whispered.
Every lean muscle in my body relaxed as I breathed in. I felt them. I’d felt them long before this moment, but I assumed it was their ghostly memories. “You did that for me.” That young girl deep inside was speaking now. It was as if he had arrived at my doorstep with endless roses.
“Would you have expected any less from your rush?” he questioned as he gently tensed his brow, so much so that his luscious eyelashes nearly masked his eyes.
Those words made me smile, like the girl I was deep down in my soul.