They both nodded.
“I propose that the two of you go to the council. State your case. If that fails, then we will partner with The Selected to find the safest course for Guardian to do as he feels pulled to do.”
“Father,” Sebastian stated.
“It’s the only course of reason now,” the older voice said, pointing at Guardian. “He respects you enough to let you exhaust every option, for you to do whatever you feel is necessary to keep him safe, but if it truly is his fate to be there, circumstance will demand that he return no matter what we may or may not do.” The older man paused. “The council is stating that the oracles have relayed that The Fall must close, that only the chosen can pass through. You have to convince them that you are the chosen, that your soul has stated as much. Then we will have no fear for Guardian and Aliyanna—for if they fail, they will send an army to carry them home.”
“You expect me to leave Genevieve here alone, to care for this home and all those who have sought refuge here? Without protection?”
I was so sick that I leaned forward on my knees. I kept shaking my head from side to side, knowing I did not want this to happen, that I feared this decision for reasons I could not understand.
“We’ll protect her. We’ll never leave her side,” the younger voice said.
Sebastian stared forward at the floating sphere before him. “And what are we to do if they do not listen?”
“The two of you are gifted speakers. Our name has long been respected. I have no doubt that you will prevail. If you do not, then we drop our alliances and aid The Selected. Work with them to find peace. I would believe their seers far easier than the council’s.”
“Why must we do this now?” Sebastian said with a clenched jaw.
Guardian looked away. “It feels wrong to stand here, brother. Aliyanna and I both feel that way. We started something over there, and I need to get back to it. Every minute I stand here equates to years over there. If we wait any longer, everything I began to repair will be in ruins. You don’t have to speak to anyone. I’m prepared to tell you goodbye. That alone should tell you how serious I am when I state I have to go back, with or without permission from this family, that council, The Selected, or God Himself.”
Sebastian stared in the direction of the images I could not see. “You don’t leave her side. Ever.”
Silence engulfed the room.
Sebastian said, “Dawn,” then turned to leave.
This is the end I had been dreading. I knew. I just knew. They would never return.
This must be what my night terror was forecasting: not the death of the life I did have, but the death of the life I wanted to live again.
The images vanished around me, and I stood there in cold silence, trying to understand even the smallest part of what I’d overheard. Even though it was the first time I’d overheard something like that here, it all sounded so familiar somehow.
I turned to leave the study, and at a slow stroll I made my way down the hall to the bedroom.
I heard Sebastian and Genevieve’s voices on the other side of the door, her comforting him, telling him that she would be fine. He must have heard the doubt in her voice because right then I heard him say, “Apart or together, I am always going to be right here, Love.”
As I listened to those words through the closed door, I felt a burning flame in my chest.
I opened the door, fearing I would never see his image again. I saw him with his hand on my image’s chest. “I’ve got you, Love. I’m never going to let you go,” he whispered as he pulled her lips to his.
I held my breath and closed my eyes, grieving for this moment. When I opened them again, I saw him holding my image in a passionate embrace, the pearl bracelet on her wrist as she wove her fingers through his dark auburn hair.
The grief was too much. I knew—I just knew I could not stay here and watch the next scene, the one where he would walk away from me.
All at once, the memory before me vanished and I heard a deep howl of wind coming from the direction of the dome room. Everything started to vibrate, then purple flames encased the walls.
This was too real.
I ran from that wing. I ran as fast as I could, wanting to forget everything I had heard and seen that day. The second I was off that wing, silence reigned. With my chest heaving, I turned to look over my shoulder, not seeing anything beyond a wing that no longer had life within it, past or future.
A heavy weight consumed me. I felt dreadfully alone for no reason at all. It was worse than the way I felt when I lost my family, and that says a lot. It also says that I only felt this bad because I was holding on to the past instead of living the life I was in. I needed to change that. I really did. I had to learn to dare to feel the way those memories told me I was capable of feeling. I had to figure out how to help others get past my icy shield.
I found myself racing toward Gran’s room. That was the name I’d always called my grandmother, simply because when I was little the formal word was too hard. It stuck, and now all seventy-seven of us call her that.
Since her stroke, she had been bedridden. Speech and feeding herself were acts she could no longer accomplish on her own. Of course, no expense was spared when it came to healthcare and doctors. I knew she was miserable—locked in a prison that she desperately wanted to escape. Lately, she had been slipping away, sleeping longer than usual, not eating nearly enough. Rasure had me blocked from the room for the last three days. My brother Ben came over yesterday and forced her legally to let me see Gran. By the time he told me the good news, it was late at night and I knew she was asleep.
I knew just seeing her would calm me down. A little voice in my mind told me to tell her what I’d always seen in the North Wing, how I was sure it was over. I knew she would not be able to respond, but I just needed someone to listen to me right now.
I thought it was odd that the medical desk full of all her needs was missing from outside her room. Even odder that the around-the-clock nurses were nowhere to be seen.
I knocked gently on the door before opening it. I gasped. Her bed was made, and she wasn’t in it.
Rage coursed through me. My hand that was on the door instantly froze it, then the ice spread across the walls. What the hell had she done with her? Just as I was about to storm out of the room, I heard, “Genevieve, sweetheart, come in.”
I pushed the door open wider and reached for the light to turn it on. Gran was in the center of her massive room, dressed, standing, looking years, if not decades younger.
“What—wh—you’re better,” I said with a broken gasp as the room froze even more. I was terrified she would slip on the ice and hurt herself.
I wasn’t used to being this out of control, having my curse this visible. What was even more terrifying was that Gran didn’t seem the least bit surprised by how out of control I’d become.
She smiled tenderly and nodded once as a gasp and a tear escaped me.
I walked slowly to her side, trying to push my emotions down so I could touch her. “How?”
Her wise eyes held my gaze as she reached for my arm. I flinched, still terrified for her, but either she didn’t notice or she didn’t care how cold I was. Her hand squeezed my shoulder with more strength than I’d ever known her to have. “I woke up, Genevieve.”
“Just like that? After almost four years?”
“Just like that,” she repeated in the sweetest voice I’d ever heard.
“I need to get your doctor, call everyone. They are going to be so excited. You have no idea how afraid I was that I…that I would have to say goodbye.”
“Sit, I don’t need a doctor,” she said, edging me to the bench at the end of her bed.
“I need to call everyone,” I protested, refusing to sit down like this was just another ordinary day, like this was not the most insane turn of events that I’d ever witnessed.
“They know.”
“And no one bothered to tell me?” I said as my instant anger seem
ed to intensify the ice that was forming. With a deep breath, I managed to make it go away.
“You need your rest, though. I understand you’ve had a troubled night.”
“She really is spying on me, isn’t she?” I muttered, knowing that Cadence or the guys hadn’t told Gran about my night terror. I would have been the first person they would have told that Gran was awake if they’d seen her.
“What is that look in your eyes, Genevieve? Why are you so distressed?”
I tried to swallow the emotions. I really did. But tears spilled down my face as I looked away. “I can’t let you wake up, only to figure out that I long ago lost my mind.”
“Why on Earth would you think such things?”
I shook my head as I harshly wiped away the tears on my cheek. “I’m in love with a past that I can’t understand how I’m linked to, and that love affair has caused me to keep everyone at arm’s length. I’m stressed, to the point that the night terrors are back, to the point where my own mind is shutting down the images I’ve come to rely on.”
“The North Wing,” she said tenderly.
I looked up at her waiting eyes to see her smiling slightly.
“Why did you tell me that wing was mine?”
“Was I wrong?” she asked, raising her brow as a half-smile emerged on her aged lips.
“It’s not of this world. I mean, most of it is, but sometimes I hear things there that make no sense, that turn reality into fantasy.”
“Nothing in that wing is fantasy. That is the beginning, Genevieve. Your beginning.”
I knew she meant that I had been adopted by the Falcons, that I was now and forevermore a Falcon, but she just didn’t understand what I was talking about.
“I’ve seen myself. I’ve…I’ve watched a life there for years now.”
“And why are you troubled by that?”
I shook my head. “Because I think it’s over now.”
She reached her arm around me. “Child, it’s not over, for your soul still thrives. It’s time to move forward now. Make a new beginning.”
“I wish I could,” I said under my breath as Wilder’s image slid through my mind. I still couldn’t do it. I still couldn’t imagine giving us another chance. “I’ve tried letting people in, but I freeze. Literally.”
“Then you have not found your fire. It will come.”
I blushed as Sebastian saturated my thoughts, as he often did each day after I left that wing.
“I wish I had your faith.” I glanced over at her. “Your will to fight.”
She laughed as if I had said something ironic. “You are fighting right now. And you need to keep fighting. Never doubt your emotions, your gut instinct. Follow your soul, and you will never go wrong.”
I nodded as I looked away. “I’ve been trying to see you for days. Rasure wouldn’t let me. Ben had to take legal action. Can you believe that?”
“You need to get that woman out of our home,” Gran said boldly to me, which was shocking; she had always had her opinions but thought it rude to display them openly.
“Working on it,” I said so quietly that I barely heard myself. I just couldn’t believe this, that she was okay, that she looked so good, the way I always remembered her to be.
“Your uncle is trapped by her, and if you are not careful you will be, too.”
“What do you mean ‘trapped’? He’s sick with grief, not trapped but that will be over now that he knows you’re okay.”
Gran moved her head from side to side slowly. “He was trapped long ago. Genevieve, I need you to fight her, get her out of our home, set my son free so I can have peace, set them all free.”
‘All?’ What did she mean by that? “Let me go get him. I’ll call Ben, too, see what we can do to speed things up.”
“I believe you have won your battle with the law, but she is not going to leave so easily,” Gran said, gripping my arm, telling me to listen to her.
“Ben told you I won? Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He didn’t have the chance.”
“OK, well, then I’ll order her out, get a court order or something.”
Gran smiled, but it was a painful smile. “Genevieve, dear, what lesson did your parents strive to teach all of you?”
The agony in my heart caused my eyes to glass over and the ice around us to thicken. “To face our demons.”
“Why have you not done that?”
I looked away, not wanting to answer the real question she was asking me. “I’ve been trying to face her. Ben has been handling the case because he knows what he’s doing.”
“Rasure is not your demon; she is the one you see, the one you focus all your energy on, and you do that so you will not have to discover who you are.”
She wanted to talk about the ice, why I was the way I was, but I wasn’t ready to go down that road just yet. I fought to forget or overcome this curse every minute of every day, the last thing I wanted to do was understand what I did to deserve this.
“Which demon shall I face first, then? The ice, the lack of normal dreams, the visions, my addiction to the memories in the North Wing—which one? What order?” I asked desperately. I wasn’t asking her to tell me what to do, I was trying to tell her that by facing Rasure I was facing the one thing I could change, the one thing I had the power to make go away.
“Your past does not emphatically state who you are, but it is a part of you, it is something you can choose to embrace or break away from. This old lady has a feeling that you will not want to so easily discard the past that is woven into your soul.”
“If the past I saw in the North Wing is truly mine, then I know life cannot get better. That is a fantasy, and in real life I’m battling Rasure, this odd curse, and my fear of commitment.”
She laughed. “You fear no such thing.”
God, you’d have thought this conversation was happening ten years ago, when she was vibrant, full of life—not today, not right after she left death’s door.
My night terror raced through my mind as I stared into her eyes. “The camera,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “In my dream, I went back for that camera. I nearly died trying to reach it. Are you telling me to develop that film, understand that past?”
She didn’t bother to tell me yes or no. She had figured me out years ago. If you wanted me to do something, really wanted me to, then you had to make it seem like it was my idea.
“I think I could have ruined that film years ago. The first time I touched it, I froze it. Over the years, I’ve bound to have washed it out. I would rather think there are images there than know that there aren’t.” That wasn’t completely a lie.
“I see,” was all she said.
“Why do I feel like you know something that you are not saying? Why does this feel like a dream or something? I was watching you die days ago.”
Gran gave me one more painful smile. “I took you to that North Wing long ago so you would understand your foundation, so it would give you the courage to face what this life would put before you. You are a Falcon, Genevieve. You always have been, and you always will be.”
She was confusing me. Everyone was made to feel like they were of lineage, but she was stating it as if it were fact. She was answering the questions I never dared to ask her: who I was named after, if I looked like the original Genevieve, if she thought it were possible that I was her, then and now. And she answered yes to each of them.
“I have no doubt I was born on these grounds or that I have seen my image in the memories this manor has, but I have never understood where I came from. How I got here. What fate is leading me to.”
“Fate brought you home,” she said as her eyes raced across mine. “You couldn’t know this, and I hated that I could not tell you for so many years, but your birth mother did say something before she died, just before your adopted mother brought you back to life.”
“Back to life? I know I would have died if Mom didn’t show up when she did, that I may have even been meant to d
ie. What do you mean ‘back to life’?”
“You weren’t breathing,” Gran said as her eyes glistened with tears. “Your mother had to cut the cord, clear your passageway and rub warmth into you. Precious seconds, maybe even minutes passed, but you finally cried.”
“What did my birth mom say?” I asked, trying not to cry, knowing it would cause her tears to flow. She never really got over losing my parents in that boating accident. I think a part of her died that day, too.
“She said that you were one of seven, that you’re hidden by a veil.” She smiled widely. “I knew then that you were home. You had found your way home.”
I furrowed my brow at her, wondering how healed she actually was. She wasn’t making sense and I had to wonder if maybe the stroke had damaged her beyond the grasp of any overnight miracle.
“I have real, live brothers or sisters? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No,” Gran said as she caught a tear that was trying to escape her eyes.
“Then what am I one of seven of?”
Her wise eyes rapidly moved across my fearful expression. “When your birth mother said that, she was gazing at the constellation of Taurus, to the Pleiades.”
“Stars. I’m…I’m lost here, Gran.”
“I know you are, but you will find your way. I believe you are one of seven very special people that will move this universe, that will bring more change than your parents could have by adopting lost souls.”
“Gran, maybe you need to lay down. Maybe you shouldn’t be moving around this much, this soon.”
She looked down and smiled tenderly. “I’m well. I’m at peace. I finally told you what that stroke would not allow me to. Genevieve, this is your home. Defend it, hold on to the fire in your chest, and trust that it will save you from this grief, trust that you are a part of an army that will rise to bring balance in this dark world.”
My eyes grew wide as she said ‘dark world.’ It was a casual statement, but it reminded me of the conversation I’d so recently heard in the North Wing.