Zander grinned broadly, which was rare in and of itself. “So you plan to claim her openly?”
“As openly as I can and not put her in danger.”
His smile faded.
“What?”
Silence.
“Listen, if you have seen anything, past or present, that tells you that I am wrong again—tell me now.”
He stared at me endlessly before sucking in a harsh breath.
“What? Zander!” I yelled as I shot up from the floor and went to shake him out of whatever spell he was under. His visions were dangerous. They had been known to pull him so far away that death was nearly declared. I held his chin, forcing him to look me in the eye. A second later, he focused on me.
“Honest.”
“Honest what?” I asked as my heart thundered.
“If you must stand on a stage, sire, tell her why. Never let a lie leave your lips when your words are aimed at her.”
My thoughts rushed back, questioning how many times I had already done that.
“Too late.”
His stare told me I was wrong. “Be honest now. She is your queen.”
“A queen to a world that you yourself said I would not rule. Am I set to make her a widower? Is that what you are saying?”
Zander was back completely now. He leaned away from me. “What the hell is your problem? Why is death your way out of everything?”
I nearly punched him.
“I don’t want to bring her here, but everything is telling me that I need to.”
“Everything?”
I slammed my fist into my chest.
Zander let a slow smile come to his face. “Honest. If you are honest, she will let the walls down.”
“She’s hurt, Zander.”
“For good reason.”
“Bring her here. Open the wing—you agree with that?”
He raised his brow. “I do. But I would take my time with that notion.”
“You’re a jacked up soothsayer, you know that?” Take my time? What did that mean: an hour, a day, a decade?
“Few days,” he answered as if he’d read my thoughts. He shrugged. “Try being Drake and not a king for a few days. See where that gets you.”
“More than likely with an overrun kingdom by the time I come back.”
“Sire, do you not know how to bend time in your favor?”
“Call me sire one more time, and I’m going to kick your ass from one side of this palace to the other.”
He burst into laughter. He was one of two that knew the non-king Drake. Landen was the other, but that was another story in and of itself. Neither Landen nor I were eager to tell Willow that we had been fast friends in our childhood. Torn apart by fate and thrust back together by the same measure.
“Have you figured out anything about Alamos?” I asked him.
Alamos had always been a close advisor of mine, a self-proclaimed father figure. But lately I had noticed that his aura seemed to shift drastically at times. Never in front of me, but nevertheless each time I saw him his energy was vastly different. I was concerned that either he was manipulating me or he had been possessed. I could not afford for either to happen. He knew of Landen and Willow’s plots, that the palace was full of native Charans in place to protect anyone that lingered near me.
“Nothing. I need something personal of his in order for me to make it clear to you if he is the real deal or not.”
I clenched my jaw. I didn’t have time to go rooting through his things; his chambers were at least a mile away from where I sat right now.
“No rush. If you are not here, he can bring no harm.”
I hesitated as I thought of all the fires I had burning right now. All the false stories I had in the air. This was the worst time in history for me to leave, but I needed to. I had to.
“I want you out of the shadows.”
Zander raised his brow.
“Marc is my doppelganger. Chrispin is the commander of my royal guard. I want you as my second-in-command. Front and center. Starting now.”
No fear came to his eyes. Even if there were a real threat, I doubt I would see any there. Zander was not the small, disheveled boy he was when he watched his mother perish. Even though he was barely seventeen, he was a man, a warrior, and fit the bill to a T. Any king would want him at his side, with or without the brotherhood factor we shared. I knew his weaknesses just as he knew mine.
I was growing closer to my newfound blood brothers Marc and Chrispin, but not close enough to reveal to them that at times I may fall to the floor as ice ran through my veins, as Donalt tried to seize me. Zander and Landen were the only ones that knew of that weakness, and Zander was the only one that knew how to bring me back.
“Honored.”
“As soon as I see Chrispin, I will tell him as much. If anything goes south while I’m gone, you get my mother the hell out of here.”
Zander could see in the string. Not odd, considering his other gifted senses. My father had taught us both the passages long ago. I’d asked him more than once to get out of this hell and run, but he was waiting on something; what, I didn’t know.
Zander glanced up quickly then stood, pulling me up with him. When he started to walk briskly toward the hidden passage in the room, I went to follow him, but he held his hand up. “Mommy’s home,” he said with a smirk. “I will guard your fires while you’re gone, my friend.” And with that, he vanished into the dark passage.
Zander was not a fan of my mother; not in a sinister way, but in the way of respect. He told me once that the energy was too tense around her.
No argument on that matter would come from me. My mother was, at least until I met Madison, the fiercest female I had ever known, though she hid that well from every other soul in this dimension.
I started to pull a few clothes together, noting that I had very little attire that allowed me to present a ‘non kingly’ appearance to Madison.
I had pulled a few outfits and such together right as my mother walked into my chambers.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.
I raised my brow. “Swearing?”
She huffed out a breath as she came to my side. We’d had more than a few arguments since Madison had been found, and no doubt they had placed a cold wall between us. She wanted me to admit fault, not only that I was wrong about Willow but to face the fact that I had killed my own father. I refused to do either in her presence, even in a protected room. She was the first woman that had broken my heart. She had hidden my heritage from me, a family from me, and furthermore, she let Donalt do what he did to me. I don’t care how powerful any king is, if my child were in their grasp I would not dress in royal clothes and turn the other way. I would fight to the death and ensure that my child was safe.
“Drake, you are not running. Not now.”
My shoulders tensed. I was not in the mood for her half-ass attempts to steer me. I knew I wasn’t running, that I was going to claim what was mine, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Why not now, Mother? Would you not be satisfied until I am in the grave?” She had reached my side at that point, so she was in easy striking distance. I didn’t even blink as she slapped my face. That was a first. She’d never even raised her voice at me, much less taken a hand to me. Her eyes welled as she brought her hand up to cover her mouth.
“Mother, if I were the king that you allowed Donalt to morph me into, you would be looking at the gallows before the sun rises.”
“I did not allow him to do anything,” she said with a quake in her voice.
“Why do you want me here? Why am I to play this part any longer? This is not my reign. Not my blood, or my war. If anything, it’s Landen’s.”
“It is my blood that will rule this kingdom.”
I raised my brow. My mother may be fearless, but she had never once been materialistic. “You want the crown? Little Drake princes running around?”
She went to speak, but she held back.
&
nbsp; “I get that you have endured witnessing my pain, that you may have a reward due to you, but I am releasing you. I want you to return home. And stay there.”
“This is my home.”
She was born and raised in Esterious; no doubt there. But my father had found her and taken her to Chara, where she had the first of her two sons. He’d rescued her from hell, and somehow my birth had flung her right back into its claws.
“Not anymore.”
“Fate states it to be true.”
My eyes met hers with those words. She had never admitted having any additional insight to me, but I knew this woman kept her secrets, and she was daring to tell me one now, one that she thought would keep me here. Even though I wasn’t running, I needed her to think I was if I wanted to hear this.
“Whose fate? Not mine. This is over.”
“My blood will rule this dimension. This is the beginning.”
Those words were far too close to what Zander had predicted long ago.
“You do wish me to meet the grave. You want me to leave a widow, children that may give you a second chance to get this motherhood thing right.”
Those words stung her, and she swayed back as if I had hit her.
“I sent your brothers for her. You will proclaim her. You will find vindication.”
Weak or not, my brothers would have a hell of a time getting Madison Marie to listen to them on any day of the week. My mother might as well have sentenced them to death.
“I could take you to a thousand kingdoms, I could build you your own. Why this one? Why now?” I demanded.
“It must be reclaimed by our blood.”
“Our blood? It was never ours.” Esterious had been ruled by Donalt for over four million years; he was the one and only king.
“Blakeshire blood is within each of my sons.”
Now I was the one that looked as if I had been slapped. I could not hide my shock.
“His bloodline was destroyed.” From what I’d gathered, that happened not long after the soul of Donalt was overcome by the evil demon that lives in the remains of that vessel now.
“One escaped. One girl.”
“A girl?”
She nodded as she eased herself down on the edge of my bed and stared into thin air. She was trembling, so much so that it took all I had not to comfort her.
“One girl, who bore girls, and those girls bore girls.”
Her story was only believable because it could not be proven. Without a male heir, the name Blakeshire would have forever been masked. The fear of Donalt in this dimension would have caused its citizens to hide the blood relation even further. No doubt, the kingdom itself would have slaughtered anyone that even posed a threat to be as evil as Donalt living amongst them.
My mother balled her fist. “It is said that once our blood bore males, the kingdom would rise, it would become more than it ever was. It would be redeemed.”
“And you had four,” I stated coldly. For the longest time, I thought I was my father’s first son. That was an honor almost as great as royalty in this world. When all hell broke loose, I discovered that I was not the first, but the third. That news triggered the rage I have fought with since the discovery of my past.
“Your third is bowing out.”
“You can’t. Not yet.”
I held a cold stare on her, trying to read her. I almost thought that she didn’t want me to go because my youngest brother was barely six; maybe she wanted him to rule, for him to be older. I couldn’t allow that. He was too pure. I alone had fought to protect him from everything I had endured.
“I can’t, because you feel that some old wives tale has promised you that if you bear sons, this kingdom is yours. I can’t, because you would not dare place your other babes in harm’s way.”
“Not true.”
“I’m not even king yet.” My voice might as well have been ice. She was one of the factors holding me back on that front. Before I could stand, she would have to swear to the court and this world that she was host for Perodine and Donalt; that I was their child, not hers. She would only do so if I went to speak to my father’s spirit.
She stood, gently running her palms over the creases in her gown. “You are well aware the crown is yours. You are the only one holding back, son.” She walked to the doorway before looking back. “We do not live in an instant world. Fate cannot be seen from moment to moment, but over the path of life. You run now, and you will be throwing away each sacrifice your family has made to bring you here.”
She left before I could say another word. That woman always had to have the last word. Always.
Chapter Two
~Madison~
I’m blind...well, maybe not blind, but I’m definitely seeing the world through new eyes. Up until a few hours ago, I always saw the emotions of others, their auras. Not only did I see them, I felt them as if they were my own. That was, at one time, my normal. I suppose every climax has a fall, and this must be mine.
You may have guessed that I have never been quite ‘normal,’ but then again, who is? What exactly is normal? Anyway, beyond seeing energy constantly, I have a few other odd flaws. I can see the dead. The damned-dead, that is. I also have some odd sense that allows me to see into the souls of the living, too.
So a few weeks ago, if I were to look at any soul I would see a wide range of colors around their body, so many that their image, in most cases, glowed or seemed angelic, soft at least. I would also see a constant stream of life events, usually ones that said person was pondering at the moment. And on top of that, I would hear whispers—whispers of the damned.
That was my normal.
Then all hell broke loose. My best friend Charlie was basically hunted, and her memory was taken. We managed our way through that, but then one of my twin cousins, Draven, fell into some kind of dark world that we later came to call The Realm. In that mayhem, we figured out that his energy was more than likely a little darker than the rest of us—the rest of us meaning his twin brother Aden, along with me and Charlie.
All of us can hear the damned, see them in our own way, so for a while we had been looking for a way out, a way to live a ‘normal’ life. With everything happening to Charlie and Draven, we became fierce in our search for peace.
The more we searched, the more we fought, the worse I became. I mean, I’ve always had a bit of a dry wit, but lately sarcasm is all I seem to speak. I thought at first it was just because I was exhausted. My dreams became so vivid that I thought I was living a double life a time or two. I’ve had weird dreams my whole life. I call them weird because in my dreams I didn’t see the way I did when I was awake. There were no colors or energy; each one was all too real, including the sensual boy with eyes as deep as midnight. The boy that could make my heart skip beats with a glance.
Those dreams of him seemed to amp up right around the time Draven and Charlie started having trouble. I tend to research everything, so I assumed, like every article I could find, that in some way my dreams were just a reflection of what was going on in my life, that they were not real. So, I wasn’t all that worried when the boy in my dreams started making horrid decisions, or worse was hurt because of those actions. I took them as a warning for me and my friends to tread carefully, which we always did anyway when it came to redeeming the damned.
Weeks later, I realized that the dreams were not a reflection. I realized that when I saw an epic battle; when I saw Bianca, a girl that had caused a lot of trouble around all of us, fight not only us, but also another girl that looked just like me.
The dream scared the hell out of me, made me think I was having some kind of mental break. My mother put me in a deep hypnosis and recorded the process for me to watch later; she knows I have to have proof of everything. The words that came out of my mouth struck me at my core. I told my mother that a boy that I loved across time thought I was someone else—that the girl he was chasing was in danger, just like me. When my mother pressed for me to explain, all I said was, “Seven;
seven deadly emotions.” I repeated words like: ‘twisted,’ ‘fated,’ ‘lost,’ ‘misguided,’ ‘new world order’...tell me that’s not terrifying for anyone to hear.
I reflected on that exercise for countless hours, maybe days; I don’t know anymore. I do know that I came to the realization that the boy I dreamed about in some way or form was real, and he was cheating on me. That made me mad. No, furious. I also assumed that my dreams were telling me that random souls around me were being pulled together unnaturally, that when or if we were all close to one another we would be in danger, making it far too easy on our enemies.
Even though I knew my analysis meant that at some point I would have to walk away from my cousins and my best friend Charlie, I held on to that idea and waited for the world to open up and show me the path to my fate, meaning I kept fighting and waiting for the right excuse to walk away.
In my mind, I wanted Draven to be in a safe place because if he was safe, Charlie was safe. I wanted my other cousin, Aden, to face his own haunts, and I wanted to help Charlie figure out how to protect a fifteen-year-old girl, Monroe, who had landed on our doorstep. That was the long and short of my to-do list.
Basically, I figured I was a servant for now and would lead soon. That once I got everyone else taken care of, I could figure out my own fate. Fight my own demons.
It hasn’t quite worked out that way; instead, that girl that looks just like me, Willow, found us and needed us to save none other than the boy that was in my dreams. Our enemy Bianca had pulled him along with Willow’s soul mate, Landen, into The Realm.
I knew as soon as I heard this that we were headed down the wrong path, that we needed to be dividing and conquering, not migrating into one easy bull’s-eye, but at that point I had no choice. Willow needed us to get those boys out, and the universe needed us to bring them back to the forefront of the war with evil that we have all been slated to fight.
I planned to split right after that point, but Charlie talked me into staying by calling out my weakness, by saying that I wanted to run from Drake, the boy in my dreams, and I did, but that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to run. I just couldn’t tell Charlie that we had to part, that we had come that far only to say goodbye for a little while. She was scared in her own her way, meaning that Charlie was like me in the sense that as long as she had someone to take care of, she could ignore her own demons. Not a good trait for either of us in the long run.