Imperial ((Imperial) Web of Hearts and Souls) (8 page)

The golden doors that stretched hundreds of feet in the air opened, and a rush of energy pushed my long hair off my bare shoulders. Warm chills eased across my skin, but before I could clearly feel them Vade held out a light jacket that he’d manifested. I pushed my arms through the soft material. Slowly, he adjusted the collar before he buttoned each of the large round buttons. With one swift move, he tied the belt around my waist then clenched his hands around my hips. “You’re cold because you’re famished. Because you have not immersed your soul in all that is divine.”

“What is this place?” I asked gently, knowing that I was not cold, not with him this close to me. Yet I welcomed the care he always provided for my every need.

A ghostly smile echoed on the corners of his lips. “A temporal realm…when souls engage with their gifts, they ascend to this place, they give all that they are freely, they take all that they need freely. It is a balanced meeting ground.”

I glanced forward into the vast dark room before me. “Is this the new Realm? Is this the place where we help them now?”

His pain took over his grin. “No, this is where they help us, where they help everyone.”

Vade reached for my hand and gently urged me forward. With my next step, I heard a violin. It was not alone; others fell gently into place, as did a piano, then horns. A full symphony began to serenade the air.

The doors behind us closed slowly and before me darkness still reigned, yet I could sense the souls of others. Their essence, as always, was beautiful.

“You can see them if you wish,” Vade said as he squeezed my hand tenderly. “Their energy will shape their corporeal beings.”

As soon as he said that, it was if someone were slowly turning the lights up in the massive hall.

I could see them, a vast orchestra, instruments and their beings as far as the eye could see. The space around was most varied. I could see Earthly chapels and theaters just as clearly as I could see their homes, fields, anywhere they chose to craft this gift their Creator had given them.

I refused to breath in, to accept something this divine. My purpose was to take what they could not bear, not take what was precious to their souls.

A few steps further, a massive choir began to sing; the men first, the women following delicately. As they embraced each word that left their lips, I felt the male voices vibrate deep within my soul and heard the angelic sounds of the women whisper to my thoughts. As with the orchestra, the space around their images varied, displaying for us exactly where they were at this moment in the corporeal world.

I wondered if they knew, if they felt this where they stood. If they were aware that their souls were reaching up and they were meeting in this sacred place, that together they were displaying a power that any sovereign could only dream of harnessing.

Among the voices of the souls and the majestic instruments, there were others; dancers, artists, every creative experience was laid out before me.

“Breathe in, Glory,” Vade said to me as he pulled me in front and allowed me to lean against him and gaze up at the wondrous sights surrounding us. They seemed to go on for an eternity in each direction.

“This belongs to them?” I replied humbly.

His arms tightened around me. “You give them power when you accept the gifts within them. They know when they are heard, felt, and seen…they will feel your grace, your divine approval, and they will create more energy, and that energy will be even more pure than what is in the air at this very moment.”

That was impossible. I was sure of it. Nothing could be more divine than witnessing this many souls across so many dimensions embracing their righteous gifts.

When the choir of children began to sing, I knew that thought was wrong. The air was laced with their innocence. The harmony, the beautiful sound that escaped their souls was so stunning that it was painful.

I felt Vade’s lips against my neck. “Breathe, my adored. Breathe in this power.”

It was not his words but his warm breath that forced a gasp I never would have volunteered. With that sharp inhale of air, my soul was charged, the beauty of each instrument; each voice swam through my being.

Unlike the Escorts’ energy I’d taken for eons, this energy was instant. Like a raging flood, it swarmed through my being, washing away the dullness that vacant time could manifest. It was a warm rush that I felt electrify my soul. I’d never consumed something so precious. I’d never felt this satisfied.

Numb, humming from within, I began to sway, but he held me tightly against him.

“That’s it, my adored, once more.”

At this point, I wasn’t sure if it was hearing him call me his adored or the energy in the room that was searing my soul with utter bliss, but I knew I felt a heavenly power beaming from within. I knew that the auburn laced with green had left my eyes and that right now I was glowing from my core, that the glow was now seen in my honey eyes.

As if the souls in this room knew they had been heard, they pushed more energy into their gifts. The symphony harmonized perfectly with the voices of the choir, the dancers shaped the sound beautifully with every angelic movement of their vessels, the artists manifested images that were of pure bliss; they were all ushering their gifts into a perfect harmony to nourish me.

I closed my eyes, focusing on the angelic voices of the children, souls that my kind are rarely called to relieve; they live in peace, and knowing that I was standing this close to those precious souls was almost more than I could handle.

Vade let his voice fall into place with the others. Though it was just a whisper against my skin, it was so powerful that my focus shifted; his voice, the hum of his skin, and the regal authority that he always had, pulled me closer, dared me to see the side of him that no other soul had, the giving, compassionate, soul that he was.

He leaned his shoulder back, allowing my head to shift just enough for his lips to find mine once more. His kiss was deep and powerful, laced with the commanding flavor of mint. He released my lips just as quickly as he claimed them. He was a brilliant spirit. I knew he was purposely causing me to gasp, causing me to pull in more energy than I would have if I were given the opportunity to abstain.

The power swarmed within my core. I felt an awakening. For an instant, I would swear to you that I had no idea what the emotion of wrath or anger felt like, that I had no idea what any of the other sovereigns’ emotions felt like. I would swear to you that all of existence was euphoric. At this moment, I felt more powerful than when my Creator retrieved me from death, more powerful than when my reign was established, my First was created… almost more powerful than the first time I felt Vade’s rush.

The room didn’t weaken as I took all I needed and more; it intensified, the souls gave more, as if their gifts were endless, as if noticing and appreciating them were vital for them to rise to the next level of their existence.

How could that even be possible?

“There is more to see, my adored,” Vade murmured as he urged me to walk forward.

Chapter Six

I began to gain my senses as I stepped forward away from the energy source that had provided for me so abundantly. I felt like the sovereign I once was, powerful and deadly. I remembered that I was furious that I had been hidden in death and now war was engulfing the world I’d left behind.

Carefully, I began to arrange my arguments in my mind. I knew Vade had had eons to shape his point of view, and I would only have an instant to rebut them.

If that power I was just immersed in existed, why was there a war? In fact, was there even a need for my kind in the first place? Maybe that is what this was all about: our Creator had no need for the role our souls were meant to play. Maybe that is why lines were crossing. But that didn’t explain the wars in The Realm, the dead I saw trapped, or why I’d had to be cloaked to escape my sentence of death.

The voices grew silent, as did the music, and in the darkness we moved forward. I knew that Vade had progressed us from one place to another. Manifesting with Vade into new rooms was always gracefully done, sometimes so gracefully that it took you a moment to realize you’d gone from one place to the next. The only reason I was aware that he had moved us was that I sensed my First, along with his line…and of course the ghostly essence of mine. We were at the mansion but in a room that I had never seen.

Out of the vast darkness, a small candle came to life in Vade’s hand.

Curiously, I glanced to my side at him. A candle was a rather weak display of any essence of his power.

He turned to face me as he raised the candle so the glow of this simple light revealed each of our faces.

“Each day I came here,” he began in that sensual voice of his, “I let your memory move through my being.” His eyes moved across my confused expression. “I remembered every word you ever spoke to me…every touch of your skin…of your soul. I held that memory and drew power from it. I dreamed of this day…one candle.” He glanced down to the innocent white candle in his hand. “I lit one candle for each day we were apart.”

And with those words, light came. For as far as the eye could see in every direction, there were candles lying across the floor. And within the thin line of smoke they produced, I saw my image, I saw his memories of us.

A sharp pull of air was the only response I could fathom.

The first time I looked into Vade’s eyes from my deathbed, I felt a rush. A young, girlish rush. When I became clearly aware of who he was, the power he had, I pushed my girlish ways deep down and forced myself not to reveal what he was to me. I thought if I did, he would find me unworthy, a lowly human girl his Creator had taken mercy upon. I wanted him to see me as fierce, respect me as much as, if not more than, his fellow kings.

In the images around me, in my eyes I recognized that girl I tried to hide. She was there when my eyes followed every move of his godly body, when I shyly tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear, when my ivory skin would blush for an instant when he spoke the simplest words.

The images revealed something new to me, though. They allowed me to see Vade in a new light. As I watched the smoke images in utter astonishment, the ones with the two of us did not show a king holding me; they showed a boy, a boy whose eyes could never find a reason to stray from my body, a boy who would blush when I whispered sweet nothings into his ear as he held me. A boy that was just as addicted to me as I was to him.

“You were never forgotten. I worshiped your memory. As did my entire line.” His velvet voice caressed every word.

His hand carefully sent the candle on its way, and it floated across the room and settled next to billions and billions that were just like it. Only this line of smoke, the memory it revealed, showed him holding me through my last storm, showed his lips framing mine. The forced control that he reigned in as my storm poured out of my soul. They showed the ache in his eyes when my energy questioned his loyalty.

Vade’s hand was cradling my face in the next pulse of my soul. As the hum of his flesh swarmed through me, he leaned his forehead against mine. His fingertips traced my bottom lip. Painfully, slowly, he spoke the words I yearned to hear. “You are my rush.” The scent of roses reached out for me.

My knees gave way, only for him to catch me. A fever flashed across my skin before coring itself within my soul.

“If you have forgotten, my adored, I will wait for you to remember. I will never forsake a gift as precious as your soul,” he said as his eyes tenderly rained down on me.

Those stubborn tears encased my eyes once more.

I had infinite power within my soul, but at this moment it was barely enough for me to shape the words of my next confession. “Every thought, every breath, you were within. I never forgot you. I waited, from moon to moon. I waited for you to have your vengeance and bring me home.” The girl I was deep inside had been revealed. She openly told him that, though she could have found her way home, she waited. She waited for him to prove his devotion, and time had soured who that girl once was.

Apparently, those words were just as painful to hear as they were to say. Agony echoed in that diamond stare of his.

The girl deep inside was finding her stride, her voice. She was coming to life just in time for me to find the will to take away that pain I could see in his eyes. “Rush, fever. You are more than both.”

He smiled. Oh, that smile; it could light the world if he would let it—if he would let anyone beyond me see it.

An old fear, the one I had gone to war with over and over, surfaced. In my mind, moments like this are always fleeting. So fleeting that it was painful to enjoy them simply because I knew they were numbered.

I glanced away to catch a glimpse of the masses of candles; to the images the smoke was creating. “I will have to return to the Reaper. He told me my stay was measured by my words.” My eyes found his once more. “We both know that my words and deeds will be laced with wrath. That my time here is not unlimited…it is near nonexistent. A dream we will look upon for eons to come.”

When his lips feverishly claimed mine, it was hard for me to tell if he agreed or not. I was sick of holding back, fighting the rush his soul gave mine. I reached my arms around his shoulders just after the coat I was wearing found its way off my body.