Imperial ((Imperial) Web of Hearts and Souls) (6 page)

Gently, she reached for my arm. “He would never do anything to bring you misery. For that I know I am safe.”

A sly smile edged to the corner of my lips. I reached to squeeze her hand before I casually brushed it away. I was beginning to tremble, and I didn’t want her to sense that weakness. “He already has. He left us. He did not avenge us.”

“How do you know that his actions have not led to what was below?” she asked as we rose further into The Realm, to levels where Escorts were more freely seen, not that I could see any now.

I was sure Rasp was cloaking us at this point. He was deliberately hiding our return. Something Vade could not have done. If anyone had seen Vade enter the Veil and return cloaked, they would have no choice but to believe I was with him. That he had finally woken up and claimed the rush that once was his.

That didn’t make me any happier. I never gave a damn what anyone thought of my actions. An argument Vade and I often had. He’d tried to teach me to rule with absolution, something that could only be done if you took your time and weighed every action, every outcome, and always saw your line as an extension of yourself. I understood my line was me. But with the emotion of wrath as my power, taking the time to think was not my style—at all.

I stared forward into the now purple sky. “Vade is anger. The one emotion that resides within every emotion. If he had acted out, there would be nothing left.”

“Is that what you would wish?” she asked humbly.

I really didn’t have an answer for her. I would not wish for destruction, but I wished to be vindicated. I wished that Vade had at least sent word that I was still in his thoughts.

Instead, he was calling me home breaths before everything our Creator had envisioned was sure to vanish.

“We are eternal, my dear First, and we will always be.” My words eased some of the tension in her body, but not all. “Did you sense Colton below, or now?” She would be able to sense him even if he were cloaked.

“I do not. And I did not sense him within the lilies below. I sensed her king.”

“Fielder?” That was the name of the sovereign of grief, though it did not do you much good to memorize it. He often changed his name and lurked within the human race. His emotions were habitually found in the fields the dead lie within; hence the name we call him by.

I’ve never spent much time with him. I really couldn’t see eye-to-eye with him either. He felt his emotion, grief, was the most powerful, the one the human race needed to be relieved of first and foremost. It was one emotion that my soul had never truly endured, so that reasoning was lost on me. Not to mention that, in my opinion, if you were saturated with grief you did not move forward, but lived in the past.

All the other emotions moved you to a new point. Anger tore everything apart, forcing you to rebuild the way it should be. Shock gave you a reality check and pushed you forward. Fear forced you to find new paths. Obsession pulled you toward your goals, whether they were material or ethereal. Trepidation plotted a new course, preventive actions. Exaltation pushed you to find that ecstasy once again. But grief, grief pushed you to live in a past that will never occur in the exact same way again. Pointless.

I was told often by those that had felt it that grief was the worst, and in most cases Fielder was considered a saint by those he relieved.

I’m sure the fact that he was built like a God had nothing to do with that. He was a charmer. Often gave gifts of paintings and such to those he adored. The paintings would capture a moment that had a deep meaning to whomever he adored—cute, huh? Yet what did that do but trap them in a past memory?

I knew there was grief on the first level of The Realm, but I didn’t sense the power of a sovereign in the energy, which meant Fielder was masked. Not really an odd thing for him in the human world, but it was in The Realm.

Then again, I would hide myself, too, if I’d partnered with Xavier against Vade. If that were even the case.

With each second, more and more questions arose. I was assured by Rasp that Vade had not crossed with anyone, but this revelation that Mazing had displayed now said that the kings of grief, shock, and fear were working together. Against Vade. That enraged me.

We had passed more levels now, the sky was brighter, and in that light I could see how Mazing was near translucent. One glance told me I was, too.

We had not been nourished properly in eons, and it clearly showed. Before our death, I was already teaching my line—or trying to—that they did not have to create the emotion of wrath to pull from it. I knew from my human life that there was enough anger in the world without someone fanning the flames.

My only issue was that once you taste power, you crave it. To heed that, I was teaching them to find energy that was given freely. Energy from masses of souls, or even nature—water was the most powerful source we’d found. That was in part what my and Vade’s last fight was about. He thought I was starving them. Moving the race backward. We were the first line to ever show signs of hunger: being translucent.

I was honestly amused by the argument when he brought it to me. I thought he feared that I’d vanish from his arms. Apparently, that was not the issue. It was politics. Power. Boys club. Creator forbid that a female shake things up a bit.

That was why Mazing and I only took what we needed from the Escorts we stopped from reaching The Fall. If we took it all, I’m sure we would have found our own way out with the power we would have gained over time. But we are both stubborn. And we had a point to prove.

“When we get to the mansion, I want you to go to the springs. Feed. Learn what you can from the others,” I ordered.

“I should not leave you until we know why we are here.”

“I need you to be strong, you have to be nourished. And you will learn more if I am not at your side.”

Truth be told, I didn’t want anyone to be near me when I saw Vade. I didn’t trust myself to stay strong.

The highest level of The Realm was near. Storm clouds gathered above us, lightning spider-webbed across them. It was our own little electric gate.

The wind did not sway us as we passed through the next level, but I felt my insides quivering, my breath becoming short.

The mansion was in view now. It reached the width of the finest cities of the Earth below. Its height could barely be seen through the clouds that the rooftops reached to.

White, black, and red were Vade’s colors. Mine, too, I suppose. The mansion was as white as the moon itself.

The stone drifted to the massive front entryway.

I stepped forward on the white marble. Doves, the symbol of peace, were lingering around the massive oval room. That was odd. But what was insane was that I sensed not only my scent, warm honey, but caramel, Xavier’s scent.

Rasp had
lied
to me. Someone from Xavier’s line was here, not long ago. Maybe within this moonrise. And someone with my scent was here as well.

What the hell? Is that why? Is that why that low-lying—I couldn’t even think of curse words fast enough—hadn’t come for me? He had replaced me—with someone from my
own
line? A line that I had perished for!

Mazing gripped my arm, pulling me closer as every muscle in my body tensed. “I smell no roses.”

That was the only reason that Vade was still breathing at this point. Roses were the scent that passion had, a scent that clearly stated that a fever had occurred.

“Go to the springs. Feed,” I ordered.

Rasp stepped up behind us, judging my every emotion with his icy eyes.

“Mazing is feeding now. Take her there,” I said to him.

“I will take you both. Then I will take you to the throne,” he replied respectfully.

I reached for his dark shirt and balled as much of the soft cloth as I could into my fist. “I do not need a guide in my home. You do as I say.”

“Sovereign,” he replied with a quiet whisper whilst glancing at my arm, which was not only trembling but also nearly transparent.

“Do as I say. That is, unless you believe the actions of your king warrant protection from me.”

He let his eyes fill with sorrow, then bowed slightly. I let him go, and he offered a simple nod for Mazing to go with him. Both of them glanced warily back at me. Smart ones, they were. This was going to be the fight of a lifetime. It was possible there wouldn’t be a mansion standing by the time I was through with the likes of Vade.

Chapter Five

Normally I would manifest my way through this massive mansion and appear at his, well, at one time
our
chamber doors, if not within the walls of them, but I was trembling.

I decided to push forward with a slow, calculated stride. Once you passed the grand entry hall that was made of white marble, you entered the great hall. The most elaborate part of this was the red stairway which was two hundred feet wide with a dark mahogany railing that brought out the clash of red and white the elegant room was laced with.

Balancing each side of the stairway were columns that were close to fifty feet in width and had water flowing upward around the marble of which they were made of. Those columns were a part of the springs where I’d sent Mazing.

Within the springs, you could not only pull energy that petals had brought to The Realm, but you could also see every dimension, each city within them from there. It was a tremendous source of power that sovereigns kept in their establishments. Vade’s was the most elaborate of them all, obviously, as two lines at one time shared that power.

With each step, my soul quaked. Part of me wanted to rip Vade apart with everything I had left in the way of supremacy; the other part was panicky about looking him in the eyes once again.
What kind of being could give you fever with just the thought of them?

I kept remembering the first time I saw him—from my deathbed, at the end of a tormented life. I remembered how much care the almighty favored king had given a broken human girl. I remembered the feel of his humming skin against mine. How each powerful movement of his lips felt. The sound of his voice, that powerful, sensual way he pronounced every sound that left his perfectly shaped mouth. I remembered how the room would fill with electricity when he felt any emotion. I remembered how his rush felt. His fever.

Cursing myself, I let the last fight soar through my thoughts. The one where he told me I could not change who we were. That it was called progression. That I had to learn to give a damn about someone besides myself before I even began to try to experiment with our power. The one where he told me I was selfishly killing my line by not feeding them or ruling them properly. I remembered telling him that I didn’t need him or anyone to tell me how to care for my own—I told him he was threatened by me and that I would give him every reason to rationalize those fears.

We both had solid points within that raging argument, ones that we were too stubborn to let go; that was nothing new. We were both passionate souls. The thing was, if he had chosen any other time to talk to me about how I was leading my line to feed, our lives would not have ended up this way. After that fight, I was determined to show him that I could lead without his advice or power. Sometimes stubbornness gets you in more trouble than anger, or any other emotion for that matter.

Time would have allowed us to see past that fight, find a compromise, much like we did with all the ones before that point. But time was something that was not afforded to the pair of us.

Instead, my First was betrayed. My line was disbursed. I died. And he did not come for me. And now, now I have no idea what the hell has happened. All I know is that sacred rules were broken, that our Creator was most likely hanging His head in shame. That our demises were on the horizon.

I knew that within this moon there were two females in this mansion. That his scent, one that was a rich mint, was within the same room with those girls.

Horrid visions filled my thoughts of him with others. The idea of him with another was far more wicked than the notion that crossing lines was now openly accepted when it came to fevers. He was mine, and the thought of another near him enraged my soul and allowed me to push those girlish thoughts down into the cage of my soul.

With a firm grip on my raging emotions, I began to manifest through the mansion, passing priceless paintings, sculptures, and all things regal that Vade had collected over his interminable existence.

After one more deep breath, I gathered all my rage and appeared before the double red doors that led to his private world inside of this mansion.

My emotions were so powerful that a wind picked up as I gazed at the closed doors, blowing my long auburn hair off my bare shoulders. The mansion rumbled with the power I was pushing through my soul.

That instant, the doors flew open and thunder erupted, the bright lights of the mansion dimmed and flashed on and off, trying to find balance with the ethereal electrical current that was now saturating the air.

He was standing there with his classic stoic pose. Just a few feet back from the doorway. His hair was just as dark as I remembered; silk strands of jet-black locks were gently rustled out of his eyes. Those eyes. Gun metal gray if he was near rest, but otherwise shards of light pierced through them, making them seem like ice in one glance, diamonds in another.