Emanate: Insight Series ((Insight) Web of Hearts and Souls) (12 page)

I rolled my eyes. “If I’m not allowed in the dimension
, then I have no reason to fear anything.” I glanced away. “Like you could stop me anyway.”

Right then
, a pain that I could never describe fractured through my body. I fell to the ground screaming. A second later, it stopped.

“That is only a fraction of what you will feel if you cross the passages to that dimension.”

“I have to help those people.”

“No. No more distractions. Master your emotion
, then rise to take your reign.”

I made it to my feet. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Those eyes of hers moved over me once. “And you are not angry with me, either.”

She was right. I wanted to hate this girl. I wanted to rip her into shreds
, and then rip those shreds into pieces, but I couldn’t find the energy to do so. 

“Your
sovereign wants you to know that this had to be done. That in order to rule the emotion you are set to rule, you must do so without the crutch of anger. She wants you to know she will continue to protect you, but she can no longer allow you to shield yourself behind wrath, for it will weaken you when you must be strong.”

I may not have anger
, but I still had the ability to smirk, and I did so. “Was I supposed to learn something here today? I think you and your sovereign are way off course. I have dealt with emotions my entire life. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that you cannot control how other people feel. They feel what they want, when they want. You can take whatever you want from me. You can give me every reason to be terrified, but somehow, some way, you will release me and I will be right back to where I want to be.”

Yep
, she wanted to beat the hell out of me. That was the message that cold expression of hers clearly sent. “Where you want to be? Would that be standing at the end of a life plan alone? Did you intend to hurt all those in your path? Did you intend to break the soul of your light? Did you intend to let the Creator himself down?”

I wasn’t going to both
er answering any of that. I wasn’t alone. I didn’t hurt anyone, and I empowered Landen. I did
not
break him. And if the Creator himself had a problem with me, then
He
needed to float on down here and have a little chat with me.

Mazing’s eyes moved upward
, and when they did a sly smile came to her lips. “Tsk, tsk. You should not think such thoughts. Here is a glimpse of what you will feel if you do not let your soul rise.”

At that moment
, I felt a bitter cold. That was the best way to describe it. Not only did my body feel cold, but also everything around me did. I was divided. Not connected to anyone or anything; I was nothing more than a void. No family, no Landen, no world to call my own.

That emptiness erupted fear deep in my soul. I felt an
internal struggle, a ripping sensation. A pleading for one more chance. It was as if I had just been told that my days were over. To get my affairs in order. As soon as that emotion left, grief set in. In the worst way possible. It was worse than losing Monica, worse than when I lost Landen and Drake in The Realm. It was worse because not only did I lose all of them once again, I lost everything. I lost myself.

“You will not remember this conversation
, but you will feel these emotions. You will feel this warning.”

“You
’re kinda hard to forget,” I mumbled, not meaning to sound sarcastic; that hadn’t fared well for me so far in the grand scheme of things.

“It
’s time to wake up, Willow.” She glanced over me once. “In more ways than one.” Her stare grew sincere for the first time as she said, “I truly do wish you a safe passage. It would be an honor to serve with you.”

She nodded her head
, and a sickening, dizzy feeling brought me to my knees, then to the floor. Everything was spinning out of control. Then darkness came.

Chapter
Seven

~ Landen ~

Nearly two days. How could anyone sleep that long? I knew she was tired. Overwhelmed. But she was to the point of terrifying me now. I’d tried to find her in her dreams over and over, to no avail. I even had her father come and look over her just to make sure her soul was not trapped somewhere or lost like before. Perodine even ventured into the gates of Chara to look over her. Nothing. She was simply sleeping.

I regretted not waking her up before I left a few days ago
. Obviously, after I left she got up and showered, ate something, and fell right back asleep where I left her.

Every time she stirred
, I would come to attention, hoping that time she would wake up. I’ve called her name gently, shook her shoulders, even picked her up and held her. She would slightly open her eyes, smile, then slip back into a peaceful sleep. I mean
peaceful
. She was lacking the one emotion that she had hidden behind since the day she discovered her friend Monica had been killed:
anger
.

I have to admit that at times I could pull her away from that emotion,
distract her, at least I did for a month. The last time I remembered her feeling anything close to this was just before Mercury reared its ugly head, which was more than likely why this slumber of hers has me so bothered. She looked as if she were peacefully sleeping then, but she wasn’t. She was in Drake’s arms. That wasn’t the case now. I was sure of it.

I had my suspicions about Justus
, the dead man that had a scent that matched hers. I found him leaning in the bedroom doorway watching her sleep when I came home a few days ago. That didn’t sit too well with me at all.

What really didn’t sit well with me was that both Justus
’ and Willow’s scent had been altered, the warm honey smell was absent. Now, it was only lavender.

I had read more lore on that scent and this upcoming ceremony of Chara in the last few days than I had in my lifetime. I fo
und nothing concrete beyond the basic claim that the scent belonged to dreams, dreams I could not reach her in.

I was furious at this whole deal. As soon as I decided to man up, tell Willow what I had been hiding from her, explain what terrifie
d me, let her see beyond what I’d shown her, she wasn’t there anymore—which meant even if I played out this little myth of Chara, we would not survive it…at least I didn’t understand how we would.

I needed a shower
, a way to wake up.

The steaming water didn’t do anything but make me feel even
weaker. It was almost as if I hadn’t eaten in days, but that wasn’t the case. I was weak because I didn’t have her, because she was slipping further away, because the thin thread that I’d been holding on to was shredding.

I’d pulled
on my jeans and was leaning forward, staring into the mirror. I reached for the steamed mirror and let my finger trace lines across the glass, knowing the man in the mirror was far less confident than he seemed to the rest of the world.

All at once
, I felt a bolt of energy vibrate through me. It was gone as fast as it came, but in its wake I felt terror. Within a beat of my heart, I’d flung the bathroom door open and was at Willow’s bedside.

She was silent, sleeping just as I’d left her moments ago. But something was wrong. Gently
, I let my hands rest on hers, which lay across her stomach. I could always feel emotions more clearly with a touch. Over the past few days, that was the only way I could feel an emotion from Willow. And that petrified me.

Under my skin
, I felt her energy. I felt how weak it was. Instead of the anger, the wrath and determination I’d felt near constantly from her, I felt horror, and powerful grief.

Knowing that someone, maybe even her own mind, was hurting her enraged me. Just
as I went to say her name and squeeze her hands, she jolted forward.

If it w
eren’t for my Phoenix reflexes, we surely would have knocked each other out with that unexpected move.

Her emerald green eyes were cagy as the
y grew wide and she took in a gasping breath, one that would lead you to believe she had been submerged deep in the water for countless minutes. She was violently trembling.

Before I could say a word
, her arms clasped around my shoulders and her head was buried in my neck.

Without the anger to hide
behind, in my arms she felt so frail, so small and tender.

Even though I could feel her shaking
, a small part of me was rejoicing. I could almost swear I felt a vibration beneath her skin. I breathed in deeply, taking in her scent. Lavender saturated the room.

“Just a dream
,” I whispered into her neck before I let my lips rest there. Wanting to take in this new scent, this new vibration that my mind was telling me was all too real, I inhaled that scent, felt the power behind it. The originality of it.

My hands slid
across her back as I swayed us from side to side. She never lost the strength in her grasp.

“I’ve got you…
safe and sound,” I swore as I caressed her dark hair away from her face.

Guardedly
, she leaned back slightly, allowing me to look into her eyes. When I saw them, my entire body tensed. I’m not exactly sure why I felt a wave of fear. Maybe it was because for an instant I thought I was back in The Realm, trapped in an illusion. That my mind was giving me everything I wanted and at any moment, it was going to painfully rip it away.

Her eyes, though they were emerald green, nearly glowing,
had waves washing over them—waves of blue. It was so faint, I doubt if I had not been awakened to my Phoenix senses that I would have ever seen this.

Which led
me to question if that shade had always been there. If this scent had always been there. If it was me holding back, and not her. The waves of blue diminished, the vibration I thought I felt coming from her skin subsided. It was so odd…I wasn’t giving up hope. That was a sign. A good sign. One that was long overdue.

I couldn’t help myself
; I reached my hand to cradle her face. I wanted to look deeper into those eyes. In this quiet, surreal moment, I wanted to use every Creator given sense I had to understand this woman that I could not live without.

It was
as if the last few months had never happened. We were innocent, we were deeply in love, and our fate was unknown and unclaimed by us.

I pulled her to my lips as carefully as I could
, wanting to know if everything had changed—if my mind was firmly in reality and this was real.

The sweet
, warm taste of honey was gone. The taste of her kiss was indescribable. It was like tasting every fruit known to man, but at the same time it tasted as if I were breathing in the blissful aroma of lavender.

She was
filling me with peace and calm with one taste of the flesh of her lips. The brush of her tongue against mine was so electric that I felt my hands grasping her, wanting her closer to me. My heart thundered in my chest with anticipation that I wasn’t sure was appropriate at this moment.

I felt her tremble and pull
away. Beneath the pad of my thumb, as it traced her cheekbone, I could have sworn I saw the glow I’d been searching for.

She started crying at that moment. A waterfall of tears spilled from her eyes as if they had been held back by a dam. I could not swipe them away fast enough. Gasping sobs came next as she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and buried
her face in my neck once more. I’d never once seen her cry like this—so hard that she could not breathe.

Rage was consuming me. Someone had hurt her. My Willow was not
one to crumble, not over a dream at least.

“
Tell me what happened
,” I thought, knowing that the only way she would be able to hear me over her cries was for me to yell, and I would be damned if I gave her another reason to cry.

“Another dimension,” she gasped
, which caused every part of me to tense. If she had been in another world this entire time that I thought she was sleeping, I would never forgive myself. “Monica, she died,” she said through another gasp. “Livingston, he was murdered,” she breathed in again.

I was
speechless as my hands stopped their sway across her back. Was she even awake? Why was she crying—trembling over something she only vaguely showed fear for when they happened?

“That girl, she held you.” A
nother gasp. “Donalt, that horrible cold. Those wings.” Her hand clutched against my skin. I could feel every one of her nails sinking into my back. “They took Olivia. They took those children.” She trembled. “They took you. You were lifeless. I had to fight like hell. The storms. The wicked storms. The pain.”

I’d never seen
any
girl cry this hard, this long. It didn’t matter how much peace I pushed through her—that pulsing fear kept pouring off her, so much so that her skin was fevered. Even though she trembled, her body was on fire. I moved my hands over every inch I could reach, wanting to find something, to heal something I could touch to end this.

“Those ghost
s. So much dead, so many lost, that war…the fire—Dane.”

I was sure this breakdown was al
most over. Her mind had carried her to present day. Finally taking it all in. Instead of feeling fear as these events took place, she was feeling them in one rush—a rush that I would give my life to stop.

“Then
Dad. He didn’t want me. He knew I was bad. Adonia was bad. Justus thinks I’m a queen. And Donalt stole our future.” She stammered over every word of that phrase, at least I think she did. I was too furious to ensure that I heard her the right way.

“Willow. Look at me
,” I said as I tried to unclench her arms. I knew I could break them free, but the force she was using to hold them there clearly said that she didn’t want to be anywhere else. She backed up that point by crawling into my lap and wrapping her legs just as fiercely around my waist.

The sobs didn’t stop. There was no
t one break that would allow me to even ask where those last words of hers came from.

“
Willow
,” I thought. She held her breath for a second, as if she had heard me for the first time in her life, but then the cries kept on.

“They ar
e going to blow up Drake, they’re going to seize our borders. Time is over.”

Yep. Rage. I was pretty sure that before this day was out
, I was going to be putting Justus back in his grave. He was the only one that could have told her about the borders—or the end of time, for that matter—and I swear to the Creator himself, if there was an inch of truth to the other things she said, I was going to come unglued.

I couldn’t figure out how any of this could have happened
. She never left this house.

I assumed the crying would stop
, but it didn’t. No matter what I said or thought, she cried on. The fire in her body kept raging.

I stood up with her body still wrapped
like a vise around mine, still fully dressed, and carried her into the bathroom. I turned the water in the shower to cold and stepped in with her.

She squealed
and leapt out of my arms, doing her best to escape the water, but I pulled her to me.

“You’re on fire. I can heal your body, baby
, but not your soul. You have to calm down. You have to tell me how to help you.”

She furrowed her brow. I loved that look
, that little crease on her forehead that told me she was trying to understand something. Her eyes were locked on mine, staring deep within.

“
Landen,”
she thought.

I lo
wered my head so we were somewhat eye level. It was a struggle to keep my eyes on hers. She was soaking wet, and the white gown she was in was clinging to her. The water was glistening on her golden skin, her lips parting slightly as she took a bated breath. The embracing sent of lavender was reaching out for me.

There was no doubt in the world that this woman was the most beautiful, sensual creature that had ever dared to take a breath. What made her irresistible was the simple fact that she didn’t have the slightest idea
that she was.

Holding my gaze, with a tremble
she reached her hands for my chest. I sighed, feeling her warm hands on me. I could feel waves of energy swimming through me. Whatever supernatural starvation I’d been weathering was hindered with that
one
touch. I was the one holding my breath now. I was the one that had to fight off a tremble of pure bliss.

“
You’re in pain
,” she thought.

“
Tell me about the dream,”
I thought as I pulled her waist against mine. I still refused to think that any of the last things she had cried out had really happened, but that didn’t mean that in some way she had not found another power, a precognitive one. It was not odd or unusual for someone to suppress one insight, only to unlock and empower another.