Imperial (Insight #8)(35)
Mazing glanced over her shoulder at Rasp, who was now coolly staring at the springs. “Rasp told me why…the other sovereigns were invading the Veil. They’d suspended enough of the dead that reaching The Fall was no longer a hard feat. It was a simple few steps. You would have been discovered.”
I felt a sick rage in my core. I suppose deep down the girl inside now thought that Vade could no longer live without me, and he fought to reach me. But this revelation brought the sovereign I was front and center. He not only knew where I was but chose only to come for me when he had no other choice. I was a fool; he’d fed me, serenaded me with glorious music and candlelight, told me I was his rush—all the while knowing that he’d placed me on a shelf, like all of his other priceless possessions.
“So we were removed so we would remain a secret, not because we were missed or needed?”
Mazing recognized the wrath in my eyes instantly. “I believed we were missed, painfully missed.”
“We are not possessions that can be locked away, or worse, set free only to have chains around us, chains that take our power,” I seethed.
“The way I see it, you and I have nothing to lose. Our line is strong and will always be under the reign of Vade. If your absence comes once more, I will stand with you and claim any vengeance you want. It’s hard to fear death when you know exactly what is waiting for you on the other side.”
The internal battle began again. The real me, the girl, had everything to lose, and that everything was Vade, the rush he gives my soul with a thought. The sovereign in me was infuriated and screamed that he could not feel the same way if he’d knowingly locked me away.
“Rasp,” I stated evenly, still staring at Mazing, letting the energy around us fall so he could come closer.
Though we had walked a vast distance from him, he had heard my voice and manifested at my side.
“You are still bound by truth to me.”
His icy eyes glanced to Mazing, then to me as he nodded once.
“Am I considered a possession by your king? Tell me now.”
“In a sense, yes.”
“In a sense?” I fumed, throwing a glare at him.
“Is not one’s soul their possession?”
“One’s soul?”
Rasp smiled; I missed that cool, sensual smile of his. “He states often that you are his soul.”
“Does he?” I said under my breath as my failing glare appraised him from head to toe. He was so strong, perfectly sculpted, a breathtaking creation, one that I could see the likes of my rush within. Maybe that was why I could not take the full effect of my glare from my eyes at this moment.
“I want to know why I was shelved and now retrieved.”
“I cannot give you truth that I do not know,” he said, holding my stare and not daring to waver under the fury he could see there.
“You are at his side near constantly. You never heard him speak of such reasons?”
“I may be at his side, but I am not in his thoughts,” he said, raising his brow in a somewhat humorous way. “What answers has Vade given you to these questions?” he asked when he saw that I was in no mood for humor.
“Nothing clear.”
“Lack of words,” Rasp said tilting his head and letting his eyes rain down on me, as if he were trying to get me to see the obvious.
I turned to walk away, not wanting to look weak in front of him. He reached for my arm as I passed him. Staring forward, in that deep whisper he was known for he spoke, “My king, and closest friend, tried aimlessly to release the command to bring you home long before the Veil was thinned. The Creator chose not to give him words until such a time as He deemed necessary. The desire was there. The fiercest desire you could ever witness…” His icy eyes found their way to me. “I was pleased when his words came, for I feared that very soon my king would lose his faith in his Creator, and if he did so our line would lose the favor of the Creator and would face defeat, for the last symbol of our beginning would perish.”
“It would not, for I believe in the Creator.”
“Do you?”
“Why would you question that, Rasp?” I asked with disdain.
“A beautiful sovereign told me once that when you believe in something, you do not ask questions about how you will reach the point you feel called to—that point and the paths open for you when you believe there is a reason for everything. That if you are walking through hell at this moment, you can guarantee that bliss is on the horizon. That is, as long as you believe the former.”
My words. I spoke them to him not long after I was raised from my first death. All I felt then was bliss, I was young, feeling a deep rush for a favored king, the hell of my past life was gone, and nothing threatened my future. I never understood the hell I lived through as child, but I believed it would be nothing but a distant memory, that I had a fate calling me that I could not see. I held that belief, and because I did, I’d found my way here.
“I have missed you,” I finally said.
He tried to hold in a smile. “Barely noticed you were gone.”
When my mouth fell open, he laughed and pulled me to his chest. “You know they have a word for when old friends meet again; it’s called ‘hello.’ Even phrases like ‘How you doin,’’ ‘What’s up with you these days.’”