Imperial (Insight #8)(24)
“You heard what you wanted to,” he said under his breath.
That was his classic line. The King of Anger knew all too well that you cannot listen or see the manifestations of life when you are enraged.
“You know what? Sometimes it’s better to just be blunt. Would it have killed you to tell me that before our fight became laced with fury?”
“I cannot tell you what to hear or what to see. It was clearly explained to me that you see life the way you are meant to. That you are not me. That you are under no one’s control. You heard what you wanted to—and in that fight, you declared that you did not need me to tell you how to care for your line.”
“Do you really want to relive that fight? Right now? We can. I’m sure I have it memorized.”
“No,” he stated flatly as he reached for my arm and let his fingertips send a powerful hum straight to my core, causing my toes to curl. Thankfully, I was strong enough to hold in the sigh that wanted out, the urge to seize his rush once more and let these revelations come to light in a delayed fashion.
“I assumed that you knew something that I did not, that the Creator had spoken to you as well. That you were seeking a new source of energy for your mist. I was overprotective. I’ll give you that.” He glanced at my dark auburn hair which was resting against my ivory skin. His eyes grew distant as a thought took him far from this room for an instant. “Still am.”
I reached into his essence, searching for that thought, what would cause that fierce protectiveness wrapped in tenderness to come to light, but he was valiantly shielding it from me.
All I could do was stare at him as I heard that last fight in my mind. During that fight, he was viciously overprotective. You would have thought that my essence was his. In the past, he had guided me, let me find my own way. Not that day. He was demanding for the first time ever with me. Even now I didn’t understand his actions, and clearly he was not ready to explain them to me, which wasn’t odd; our Creator works mysteriously. He will tell you of your course but strip your words from you. Even when asked, you cannot clearly explain what you are doing or why. Until now, I’d always seen that as a precious gift. If you did not speak your path aloud, then there was no one to talk you out of it. No one to put damning thoughts into your mind.
“Who has our mist? Can we still claim them? Is that why you delayed coming for me? Were you trying to right all the wrongs first?” He offered no quick answer. “Can you at least tell me how the kings taking our mist would hurt you?”
“Us,” he stated contemptuously.
“Okay, us. You’re guarding your intentions and thoughts from me, Vade. You are going to have to use words.”
He stretched his shoulders wide as he took in a deep breath, finally allowing his eyes to meet mine again. “Our energy is entangled. I would dare say it was from the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
“I knew that,” I murmured, failing to hide a crimson blush.
The scent of roses left his skin at that moment. For some reason, it always amazed him that I adored him as he did me. Which was foolish, he was the king, the favored king at that. Even though I never saw him that way. I always saw a boy that had claimed my soul. It was still humbling to think that he would find my emotions for him hard to believe.
“The only way for a line to be properly disbursed is for it to die from the ground up. It can only perish if the sovereign ends each by their own hand.”
“In hindsight, that makes sense,” I said, clenching my jaw.
“Everything is clear in hindsight,” he said. “The only other way for a line to be destroyed is if the line is at war, civil war, if marked petals or Fated Escorts fight to the death.”
“And neither of our lines would do such a thing,” I offered, knowing that we were seen as the kindest sovereigns, ones that had never forsaken one soul under our watch.
“At first glance, no, but if our Fated Escorts were taken as mists, raised by another sovereign, blind to their regal essence, then set on a course where they had no choice but to end each other, it could occur…it will occur.”
“Our mists are at war?” I gasped.
“A war of hearts, it seems.”
The only way to stop any war of hearts was for the sovereign to end those who were raging against each other. These wars rarely occurred because our lines knew we had such a power, that without notice or reason they would perish with a thought from us. That is why they never occurred. Yet, if Vade’s mist and mine were blind to us, they would not know of such a risk.
Vade had the same weakness I had; he could not strike anyone in my line without seeing my image. He knew I would feel the pain, and pain was something he would never volunteer to let me feel which meant if my mist were at war with his, there was only one way to end it: each of us would have to end the ones in our own line in order to save the others, to save our kingdoms.
Being torn into shreds and cast into the life of The Realm would be far less painful than ending one of the precious souls under our watch. The pain would be eternal, felt in our essences forevermore. Whether it was necessary or not, no one could get over ending something that was created from the core of our being.
“They are ours, though. I have been absent. If I go to them, claim them, and explain how they were played against each other, they will see. They will stop.”
I needed him to tell me that my words were true. It didn’t matter that I never knew the Fated. They were mine. They never should have known the evil they are surely fighting now.