Imperial (Insight #8)(64)

I was shaking violently. I had never realized how safe my armor of wrath had made me feel.

I paced the circle of the springs, looking at each of them once more, feeling them, sending my intentions to them so that one day they may understand, that they would know that it was not that I once again could not find the courage to leave one of my own to their own consequences, but that I realized that they all belonged together, that they had a higher calling than I ever could have imagined.

Vade appeared right about then. He looked exhausted and furious, but the moment our eyes met whatever had caused that was the furthest thing from his mind.

Tears poured from my eyes as I trembled once more. Anger came to him. He was prepared to smite whomever had dared to cause a foul emotion within me.

I held my chest with my fist as I slowly began to walk toward him. In my mind, I was reliving all of those firsts, all the moments after them, every instant that he invited me to feel what I dared not. I relived them because I knew he could see them, so that once this was over he would understand why I never told him what I was feeling before.

His deep gray eyes began to shine with shards of light as the anger released him and his shoulders fell ever so slightly.

When I reached him, I stretched my trembling arms up and let my hands run through his dark hair once more. I felt his arms go around me as his forehead leaned against mine, but I dared not close my eyes. I leaned my head back and blinked so I could clear the tears from my vision.

I pulled his lips to mine for one last sweet kiss; he dared not close his eyes either. I was sure I had confused him to the point of no return.

“Vade.” I swallowed as I caressed his strong profile. He began to speak, but I spoke over him. “I love you.”

As the words left my lips, my soul exploded from within. Pulses of energy I had never felt before rippled through me; they were so loud and so powerful that it took me a second to hear what he had said beneath my words.

We had said the exact same words at the exact same time.

No, no, no, no, no! Why did he do that?! My risen line needed a king! His line needed him. They were the last survivors of our kind. Now what? They would all rise into the care of another. That’s what. Our race was dying as we embraced each other.

“Say it again,” he said as he lifted me and wrapped my legs around him.

“I love you. I have from first sight.”

He fell to his knees, still holding me around him. He reached to caress away my tears. “Once more.”

“I love you, Vade, my stoic King of Anger. I love you more than that word could ever mean.” I felt that emotion flooding through me. There was no chance that my armor of wrath could ever suppress it again. It was such a beautiful pain.

His lips connected with mine. It was a kiss like no other. Both of our souls were pulsing at a level that had never been felt before, causing our vessels to hum viciously. I could swear the universe itself was trembling with the power of our essence.

He pulled away slowly, smiling with pure bliss. “Glory, you are love. You are my love, you are everything.” He smiled, caressing my cheek. “I have waited so long, so very long to hear that word from you, to feel it pulse from your soul now,” he said as his hands moved across my back. “Just when I was convinced that I was wrong for you, you saved me with that word.”

“I killed us,” I said with an ache in my voice. My legs and arms tightened around him. I now feared death. I didn’t know where my soul was going to go, but I prayed that the Creator would ensure that it went with Vade’s, that the sacrifice of our race, our lines, was worth that request.

“What?” he said, doing his best to loosen the grip I had on him so he could look into my eyes.

But I was staring at the springs, at the images of our lines, hoping for a swift end for them, that it would not bring them agony. I was dying with bliss in my heart and wanted the same for them.

“Glory, Glory, look at me,” Vade said firmly, shocking me into reality.

I leaned back so I could see into his eyes that had nothing but bliss within them. How could he invite death so openly?

“What are you saying?”

“I killed us. I said it. I felt it. And now we are dying.”

He furrowed his brow in absolute bewilderment. “Now we are truly living,” he whispered.

I guess that was one way to look at it. We had lived eternities, but the last moments were the ones where we were afforded the gift of feeling what the souls we protected did.

I kept moving my stare from him to the springs, waiting for it to come, having a hard time choosing between what I would stare at as I died.

All at once, they went black. My soul seized.

“Now look at me,” Vade said. My soul pulsed again. He had darkened them so I would pay attention to him.

“I want to see their last moments,” I said as I tried to turn the images back on.

“Glory, calm down. Why do you think they are dying? That we are?”

“That word is poison.”

“Who told you that?” he asked, pulling my chin back so he could see my eyes.

“X—Xavier.”

His perfect image turned to stone. “Xavier told you not to love me—and you listened to him?”

“What? No. Well, yeah, but no. He told me of the lore, how we couldn’t feel that, that it would kill me if I did, kill you if you returned the emotion.”