Imperial (Insight #8)(48)

“If that shocks you, then you don’t want to know what I was thinking when I died the first time. My mother was screaming at me to repent, but in my thoughts I committed every sin I could think of with you in my mind.”

His eyes grew wide, first with anger, then with disbelief. Vade despised the likes of my birth mother as much as I did, and the idea that I would have thought such things back then was more than he could understand.

“Every sin,” he mused to himself as he took a bite of the icing.

“They were only sins because she thought they were. They were acts I wanted to feel with you.”

His eyes rapidly moved across my image. “All this time, and we are still discovering each other.”

I glanced away, knowing that he had no idea what internal battle I fought, that the girl in rags still existed.

“Acts,” he mused, taking one more bite.

“Do not turn my words,” I playfully scorned. “There were emotions with those acts.”

“Which are...?”

I moved my head from side to side once. “You are relentless.”

“A good trait?”

“For a king, yes.”

“I’m not royalty right now. Neither are you. We are us.”

“Good for us, too.”

He reached across the table and moved our hands so our rings would connect. My side of the eternity ring was feminine, his side was regal and powerful, yet they fit together perfectly. “I would chase you across eternity,” he whispered.

Humans speak of eternity as something that can never be reached, but as a sovereign I had witnessed a thousand eternities in my existence, with Vade at my side and in my heart. That time with him was so blissfully consuming that I knew that it would take an infinite amount of eternities to even come close to satisfying the raw hunger his essence gave me.

After Xavier had told me how deadly that one word was, I fought with my thoughts, my core feelings, and had to reshape them. I needed to do that now because even though in the Veil I thought of our last fight constantly, I also thought that my only regret was not expressing to him what he was to me.

Of course, in my mind those words were shaped into a carefully plotted argument that I would have used to hurt him as badly as his absence had hurt me. I wanted to recreate that fight and prove my point more clearly, prove that obviously I cared about him and my line more than he did. I wanted to redo the fight not to make up or create peace, but to bring him agony. I hated myself for that. I really did, especially knowing that his thoughts were not even close to being as dark as mine.

Come to think of it, the word that I feared to say because it was so sacred, because it was my duty to protect those that felt it, could not even come close to the emotion I felt for him…no word could.

“I’ll let you catch me,” I said playfully.

“Not without a fight. I understand the Reaper had to kick you out.”

I playfully squinted my eyes at him as I took another bite of my cake. I swear, there was not a more blissful taste in all the food that had thus far been created.

I was sure Rasp had told him how cruel I was. That, or he had watched my reaction from the springs.

“I didn’t kill Rasp.”

“A peace offering from the Queen of Wrath,” he teased.

“I couldn’t any more than you could have harmed Silas, or even Mazing.”

“How did that go?” he asked as he reached his finger that was covered in icing to my lips. As I devoured that sweet taste, I almost forgot his question.

“Not good. He thinks he will die if he returns with me.”

“Why is that?”

Damn it. I was trying to avoid the word of the night, not bring it up again.

“As far as you know, has there ever been an Escort that was a Witness as well?”

Vade swallowed nervously as his eyes shifted away before returning to me. “I think it is clear that the past will serve as no clear reference when it comes to our lines. Fated Escorts of ours have not only risen to their fight, but joined with lights.”

I now knew the purpose of his wary glance. “Do you think they will create the metallic energy that you dreamed to create?”

His eyes slowly danced over my innocent image. “I know that they will protect it,” he said in a near ghostly whisper.

I would give almost anything to see the thoughts and emotions he was shielding me from. “Silas states that his emotions for the girl in question, Charlie, are a necessary evil.”

That statement made Vade smirk with pride. “That is a different approach, I suppose.”

“I know he does not have a deep rush for this girl, but he does care for her. I think he would regardless of the predicament they are in, but nevertheless he feels he must have this war of hearts simply because she is a light and the one from your line, Draven, pulls from her. Charlie rose him to what he is, saved him from the grasp of Xavier, and now if she falls, so does he.”

“Interesting.”

“I’m sure there is more. All I know is what I just said, along with the fact that he feels that he must end evil. Silas is protecting someone more than that girl...maybe his army. The Witnesses with him were young.”

I glanced up from my cake at Vade; every part of him was rigid. He was staring at me, waiting; waiting for what, I do not know.

I rushed over what I said in my thoughts, what I had discovered since I had been back. Then it hit me: Vade had told me Silas was protecting something, something that was precious to Vade, to me.