Imperial (Insight #8)(55)

My soul seized. I knew he did guard something, something that Vade saw as precious.

“Do tell,” I said smoothly, not wanting him to see my earnest curiosity.

“I don’t think you can handle it.”

“You have no idea what I can handle.”

“Do I not? Do you think I don’t see the past abuse in your eyes, that pain and agony, that feeling that you are unwanted, appreciated, or loved in the slightest way?” he stated all too coldly.

“That agony did not come from the life of an Escort; long before it,” I admitted.

“I see that the life of an Escort has done wonders for you, allowed you to bury those demons. You should put that on the brochure so when you pop up and tell someone they are yours they can just read about all the perks.”

“Are you quite done?”

“It hurts you because you feel no love; if you did, whoever hurt you before would not even be a memory. I don’t want to wallow in my misery.”

“Yet, you do.”

“No, I don’t. I can’t even clearly remember mine. It’s been entirely too vague—that is, until you put my nose into hyper drive. I know that abuse comes from a scent you know.”

“I already told you that it did. Xavier.”

A hiss left his lips as his chest swelled. I assumed he was remembering that was the abuse he thought he had in the past. I made a mental note to look in the springs and see what horrid things that king did to my Fated just so I could add it to the reasons to kill him.

“I am rare; no other in my line remembers or cares for any harmful past, I assure them of that.”

“Then why do you have it?”

“What are you guarding, Silas? Give me a reason to leave you to do just that.”

“Come,” he said as he vanished and appeared at the broken doorstep to the chapel. I manifested at his side instantly, eager to learn his secret.





Chapter Fourteen





I could smell the rotten, decaying wood and the nature that was slowly consuming what was once a place of worship. I knew whatever he was guarding could not be that sacred if this were the home it was given. What beauty could be within this shack?

Silas glanced down at me. “Are you sure you want to see this?”

“I’m waiting for a reason to let you to stay as I found you.”

He pushed the door open. I expected darkness, a one-room chapel with a few pews, but that was not what I saw.

It was nothing less than majestic.

I had walked through numerous chapels of Earthly kings, but this one humbled them all. It stretched as far as I could see.

I stepped forward, trying to understand how the shack I walked into looked like this on the inside.

With my next steps, my soul seized. I heard an angelic chorus of voices; they were speaking as one, singing as one. Each word was carefully shaped in such a way that you literally heard bliss. They were all youthful, yet you could hear the power of them.

I kept a steady pace as I made my way through this massive chapel, and though I searched earnestly for them, I could not see the creators of this sound. I felt them, though, all around me.

“What is this place?” I whispered, not wanting to cover their voices.

“These are the souls of tomorrow, the children of them. The ones that will raise the human race above negative emotions, allow them to see each other as one.”

I gripped the pew that was next to me. I had lost the strength to move forward. “Are they metallic, their energy?”

When no answer came, I looked up at him to find him staring at me through a furrowed brow. “No,” he said under his breath.

That wasn’t a powerful enough denial for me. These were the souls Vade had dreamed of.

“This is the mist of the light,” Silas spoke so gently that at first I wasn’t even sure it was him beside me. I was glad to see that the awakening I had given him was starting to sink even further in, that the terminology was coming to him now. “I fight with others to forge their path…they are the souls that will end the evil that destroys.”

The mist of light…and they were guarded by one of my own. I knew there was truth to this simply because the voices around me echoed a sacred past and promised a blissful future. No doubt, these were the souls that were needed to defeat the evil I had seen created.

“I have to feel love for them in order to protect them,” Silas said quietly to me. “Your vocabulary lacks that word, for fevers are felt in passion and a rush is something that can only be felt for one. They need me to feel that emotion for all.”

“Yet, you do not. I’m here right now because you have threatened a line that cannot fall—if it does, it kills you. Do you understand that?”

“Not one damn word; it makes no sense to me.”

I slapped his chest for cursing in a place like this.

“They have heard worse. They don’t judge.”

“I’m not judging you. I’m protecting you. That is my charge, just as much as consuming emotions.”

“What do they call it? A catch-22? Instead of talking to me, why are you not talking to the others, raising them up to your palace in the sky, teaching them control so they won’t hurt Charlie? I would have no reason to hurt them then.”

“Charlie will slip away from you. You know that. Even if the Draven boy you fight had more control than the king himself, you’d be in her face, speaking her past. You are stirring the kettle because you know she is your lifeline and you cannot let her forget you.”