Vindicate (Insight #5)(80)

“Aren’t we all?” Drake said, looking at me with wonder. “What did you want to happen? For me to wake up look into her eyes, and fall madly in love. Forget everything. Us . How fair would that be to her? For her to know that I lo ve you. For her to feel that?”

My eyes rushed rapidly over his a ddictive image. “You’re right. So is eve ryone else. I’m dropping this. You know where I stand. Where you stand, and ap parently where she stands. I’ll never say another word about it.”

“Thank you,” he said as he let out a deep breath.

We stood in silence for a moment, taking it all in. Landen had begun to pace; he would glance over Drake, then clench his jaw as he tried to calm himself down.

“Are you alright?” I thought.

“Just getting flashes. Memories, I don’t think they’re all mine, ” he thought in an exhausted tone.

“Are they bad?”

“Depends on how you look at them.” He thought with disdain.

He set the intent to drop the subject, block out what he was seeing, and focus on what was wrong right now. He glanced at Drake. “Why were you so worried about the mourning?”

Drake pulled the drape back a half or inch or so. Enough that I was sure he could see the black cloths around the courtyard. He let out a sigh and closed it tight. “Because now I have to face Donalt’s death.”

“I don’t get that,” I said, crossing my a rms. “I thought this was done. You were ruling.”

Drake glanced at me. “Look, it ’s easy to control two cities. Even if they ar e on opposite ends of the world. Controlling this entire dimension is a completely new game. Donalt rule d for over four million years. When power changes hands, the people change. When power that has been in place for this long changes, you have epic consequences. Do you have any idea how many times Donalt was ‘killed’? How many times someone dared to take his life over the years? How much planning and plotting that is in place for when this moment came ? I didn’t have time for that. Not with these trials that rock our world every few days.”

“They are not mourning him. I f that makes a difference; they are mourning the priest.”

“You don’t get it – I – Marc – whatever, invoked the mourning. The only way Donalt would have no t done that was if he were DEAD. They have to know by now. I can only imagine what is going on underground.”

“Yeah, I heard about them,” I muttered. “I can’t keep up, though it seems like no matter what, they want one of us dead.”

“Right,” Drake breathed as he looked at Alamos. “No matter what, someone will die.”

“Ther e has to be a way around that. Why can’t you just say you’re a king and make up some new rules? Like rules that would not kill people?”

“You don’t understand. A king does not rule his people. The people rule him. These people are too superstitious. Too much change will cause a collapse . I’m already changing more rules than I ever planned to.”

“Wh at do you need to become king? I s that what you even want?” Landen asked Drake.

“The impossible,” Drake said, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

“Which is?” I pushed.

“My mother.”

“What does Beth have to do with this?” Landen questioned .

“Look, I have spent every minute that I am not wit h you trying to figure this out. The groups for and against Don alt’s rule vary in sizes…but under it all, they still fear Do nalt.” Drake glanced at Alamos’ frozen images, then back to us. “Alamos is wise and has been plotting such an event for a while. The only way I can take over the rule of this world is for my mother to swear before God that she was a surrogate . That I am the ch ild of both Donalt and Perodine. I f she commits to that, Alamos has a creed signed by Donalt nineteen years ago stating that he would not be take n to the next life with Donalt , that he would serve me. Alamos only signed it on the condition that Perodine would remain as well -- to serve as a guiding light of wisdom to her son.”

“So not everyone dies?” I asked. As long as the three of them were safe, I didn’t care about the other members of the court.

“I’m trying to remake the laws and av oid using that creed. The creed is spelled. I t is written that as it burns, the words of Donalt will echo. That when the people hear the voice of their former king, they will obey.”

“Who put the spell on it?” Landen asked.

“Alamos – and another priest, Xavier .”

Every part of Landen tensed, and I couldn’t figure out why.

“So they could break it?” I asked. “At least mock a voice?”

Drake grinned. “Love, the only problem with that is that Xavier do esn’t want to break the spell. He wants to rule. If everyone is executed – including me as a fraud -- he stands in line to rule by right of birth.”

“What if he dies?” I asked coldly.

“What have they done to you?” Drake asked, offering a sardonic grin.

“Just done with all of this,” I muttered.

“We can’t kill him until we know how to break the creed. Until we know the words he spoke but let me be clear…finding his words – even forcing him to help us is nothing compared to convincing my mother t o say that I am not her child. That Livingston is not my father.”