Insight (Web of Hearts and Souls #1)(54)

“I sent travelers out last night to find my grandfather, August, who will help us. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. If we charge in there, it would be dangerous not only for your friends, but for us as well.”

“What if they call me? What then?”

“Then we go together. I don’t think we can survive long without one another.”

I leaned back and looked at him intently, understanding completely what he meant. I had thought I was acting foolish, like a lovesick little girl.

“Did it hurt your body, too?” I asked.

“It was almost more than I could bear. I felt pain everywhere. That’s why I listened to Livingston and my dad. I didn’t think that I could make a clear decision in the state I was in.”

I knew what he meant. I’d never felt the way that I did yesterday. The pain was real and could be felt in every single muscle of my body.

My head was spinning. I let go of Landen and walked back to the bench on the porch. He came to my side and wrapped his arm around me. I laid my head on his shoulder and let yesterday play through my mind.

Landen’s emotions were shifting from moment to moment. I felt them finally settle on jealousy. I knew what he was about to ask me, and I braced myself for the emotion that he would feel.

“Are you going to tell me what he meant about the nights together?” His voice was low and calm.

I stayed very still and quietly answered him. “He meant the nightmares.”

Landen shifted his shoulder to face me with anxious eyes. “He was in more than that one?” he asked, knowing the answer. I let my eyes tell him yes. “Is he the reason you’d be so upset all those nights?”

He knew the answer to that question, too. He stood quickly and paced the porch. The anger inside him reached the point of wrath. All at once, he stopped and knelt before me. “Tell me what happens, when they happen,” Landen said in a desperate tone.

“There’s a heavy, painful weight on my chest. My gift of emotion is taken from me. I can only feel one person, a person who’s afraid. In my nightmares, I can change emotion, and I help that person feel at peace. Then they disappear, and Drake shows up and reaches for me. I just never saw his face before last week.”

Landen placed his hand in the center of my chest, as if he wanted to take away all the times that I’d suffered under the overpowering weight. I placed my hand on his, and his eyes met mine.

“I’ve had a nightmare every new moon of my life until last November, and the last two nightmares don’t fit any pattern. I don’t understand why they’re different.”

Landen lowered his hand and looked down. “Do they see you, or are they like the images?” he asked quietly. I could feel his fear laced with rage. He was aiming to destroy Drake.

“Like the images,” I said under my breath as my soul told me there was more to this. That maybe just maybe, Drake had the wrong girl, that all of this was a misunderstanding. I guess that thought was there because the dreams with Landen seemed so natural, and with Drake they seemed forced, like someone else was causing them to happen. Men in black cloaks maybe? Like the ones I saw carry Perodine away in that dream.

He turned from me and leaned up against my legs.

“Does that mean something? Is that why you’re scared?” I asked, a bit timidly.

“If we met in the same place every night, I’d think that you met Drake in Esterious in your nightmares. The thought of you there alone takes my breath away.”

“Did we always meet in Chara?” I asked.

Landen turned and looked into my eyes again, and shook his head no. “I have no idea where we’re meeting. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said with a degree of respect. He then pulled himself up on the bench beside me and held me tight.

“Landen, was Drake ever in your nightmares?” I asked.

“I’ve only dreamed of you,” he answered.

“Who’s Perodine?” I blurted out faster than I intended.

Landen quickly turned sideways and looked down at me, astonished that I’d said that name.

“Who told you about her?”

“No one. I dreamed of her, and she told me her name.”

“You dreamed of Perodine?” He was angry and alarmed all at once.

“Is that bad?”

“It can’t be good. She’s older than time itself, and they say that she’s the true ruler of Esterious. She’s portrayed as Donalt’s wife, and if you were to look at paintings from hundreds of years ago, you’d see her portrait. They say she lives on and on, never dying, and that she’s the source of all the good and bad magic that the dimension uses.”

I closed my eyes, exhausted from the constant twists that life kept throwing at me.

“What did she say to you, besides her name?”

“Nothing that made any sense,” I said, frustrated with the added conflict of Perodine.

Landen nodded, not wanting to push me. “Okay, listen: I want us to keep this to ourselves. When August gets here, we’ll tell him. He’ll be honest with us.”

“Are the others not being honest?”

“I’m just tired of them hiding whatever they’re hiding.”

I nodded, agreeing with Landen. I hoped that August would come home soon. Landen squeezed me tight, then stood, reached for my hand, and said, “Your Dad is walking this way.”