Pine Needles (Veil Realms Series) (19 page)

Sirius strides his way to me, his full armored form moves with stealth and strength
. He swings his battle axe through the air once and into the mosaic fragmented floor, sliding his gauntlet encased hand along the leather bound hilt. His eyes shift to gold never uttering a word as he stoops down on one steel-clad knee. His blood tarnished helmet inclines downward as he declares, “You are my queen.”

I gape at his words
, not knowing if I was going to live or die from one second to the next. I press myself harder along the broken pillar for support. It’s the last thing I suspect from him, after everything that I have done. I fumble clumsily inside my mind to make sense of what’s happening. I trickle out a few breathless refutations, “I… Sirius, I can’—I don’t understand…”

I gulp
the down the knot lodged in my throat as twelve estranged, galvanized warlords approach the throne room. Each one drops to their knee without a sound, soon, the entire room is massed with warlords, hundreds acknowledging me as their new queen. 

“So… what are you telling me, Nevaeh?”

“What I am telling you, Selene, is you will command and rule the warriors,” she insists
dryly. Different dyed cloths are exchanged from one woman to another until Nevaeh flips through the last assortment. Woven, non-woven, boiled wool, to silk all of which are neutral colors, she tosses aside every single one except a white delicate frock with a heavy gold mantle fastening mid-waist. Her brow rises while she asks, “Do you like, my Queen?” I stand and touch the fabric and nod at Nevaeh.

“I do,” I praise and slip out of my burnished shaded tunic
, shimming it down my hips as I carry on with our pervious conversation. “Nevaeh, I did not ask for any of this.”

Her straight-faced response is a low grunt while she gathers my hair with one hand, a brush in the other she starts combing through my long ringlets of dark
tresses.

“You would rather be a slave?” she remarks without
a slight hesitation to her duty.

“No, and I don’t want slaves,
Nevaeh.” I retort and straighten my shoulders and look forward with firmness I add, “I only wanted to help Sirius, never did I wan—”

Nevaeh
careers around the piles of cured rugs and tables facing me, brush still in hand she lightly taps my chin. “And now you will, symbiotically. You need him just as much as he needs you to stay alive.” She circuits back to her position, braiding two strands of hair together.

“Symbiotically?” I sp
it out and grip the chair before I plummet head first into it.

“Yes, you are his symbio
nt, your dependence and sole survival is each other, you must protect him as he will safe guard you, Selene. His life and your life are intertwined.” She chuckles softly at my speechlessness and pats my shoulder. “You will learn, he will teach you all that you need to know.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and rush out a heavy sigh. “It has something to do with our DNA? He could
truly sense it… from the very beginning?”

“Sirius
, as well as the others, searches for it, Selene, I have spoken of this before. They seek the right genetic composition and you proved to be his match when you underwent the drastic conversion without any harm or repercussions. Do you not see Selene, what is right before your eyes?”

“
Nevaeh? If I had walked through the veil I would have…”

“
Died? Yes.” Her tone is flat and unsympathetic. I observe her kneeling before me. The bangles cling and rattle against each other while she loops them around my ankles.

“Just so you know, so would he, it may have taken hours, days, or weeks no one knows for sure. But eventually his existence would have ended as yours.”

“What was keeping him alive before?”

“
The queen, Vespira, she could only sustain him for so long. The feasting also ministered some of their sustenance for an extended time.” She fastens the last bangle and picks up a fine grained bowl. She dabs her first two fingers in a resin type substance and begins rubbing it all over my open palms and wrists. Healing the marring damage the queen did to me weeks ago. My hands were the deepest but the impression she left along my neck bears a strange branding. Reminiscing the past, my volatile encounter with the queen, I faintly spread my fingertips around the elevated lines that twist and spiral into a pattern. It’s very similar to the ones that mark the warlords.

“No matter how many times you try to
rub it away Selene, the sigil with not go away,” Nevaeh rebukes. I shake my thoughts out of my head and smile at her.

“You know what it means don’t you
, Nevaeh?”

“It is your mark, your mark of protection, a mark of survival,
and your crown of power.” She uses an unsoiled rag to wipe her own hands off and stands. She quickly collects her make-shift receptacle chockfull with golden tassels, bangles, and whatnots. Tucking back the sheer screen to the regal chamber she tisks, “It is time, come.”

I rise at her enthusiasm
and meet her unwavering pace. Quietly we bypass the conceptual designs adorning the upper level vestibule. This passageway is very unalike the other paths I have taken before, a vast light shines within the outer arched doorway. Nevaeh humbly hooks her arm through mine and glances between me and the entrance as she uses her low toned voice. “He will be here soon.” She softly strokes her thumb over the back of my hand and admonishes, “Do not wallow in worry Selene. You will serve our people well. And Sirius… I do not believe he intentionally planned or expected to get so emotionally involved with you.”  Both her hands embrace mine with a strong, quick squeeze and then she releases with a self-satisfied smile and a gleam in her eyes.

“You will be fine, now go, I hear the guards coming and we must prepare…”

She takes a step back and before she is out of sight I shout, “Nevaeh?” 

She halts her next step and throws a curious look over her shoulder. “Yes,
Selene?”

“How long have you been with them,
with Sirius
?”

“Since I was a child,” she confides.

I glimpse away for the briefest moment absorbing her words. Hastily, I bundle and grip the sheer fabric over my feet as I take a step toward the door and inform her, “You are no slave, no more, not to me, not to Sirius, and not to the warlords. Do you understand?”

Her smile
amplifies meeting her mirthful eyes. She nods her appreciation and jaunts down the stairs. I climb on out to the edge of the far western side of the mounds, a cliff side view and I can see the sky is pursued with multiple rays from the sun. Miles and miles of abundant greenery stretch far beyond the horizon. The noises and caterwauls from every creature is heard even from way up here, the change is coming, the shift. What was once a city I lived in is now a land brimming with the unknown, beasts, larger than life plants, trees, and a race of beings I never dreamt possible, thrive here. And now I am one of them. I look around the vastness and search inside myself for the courage and fortitude I will need.

His ample hand caresses my neck, his fingers glide along the golden swirling marks imprinted around my neck. I hear him inhale and exhale slowly and I can just imagine his broad, bare chest expanding as he breathes in and out. His body is flushed perfectly against mine as he scours the land below us.
I break the silence just as a surge of wind picks up and blows several locks of hair in my face. “Sirius?” I whisper his name tugging the wild stray strands from my lips. I peer up to his tall stature making sure he heard me as I grip his hand.

“What if I cannot control the veil… then what?”

His hand tips my chin up meeting his identical eyes as he says, “You do now, Selene.” He drops his hand away and points out to the illuminating skyline. It is rippling and altering and I can feel it. The veil that started nothing but havoc is now our protection and I must learn to maintain it.

“Sirius… I’m afraid.”

“Then your heart is not tainted, and your fear will pass,” he states. The veil vanishes and it feels just like a Band-Aid ripping from my skin, exposing a raw open wound, uncovering what I hold sacred. Sirius places my hands firmly on his chest while gripping his menacing battle axe in one hand and warns, “Prepare Selene… the next realm is coming!”

Chapter Twenty

Rayden's Trip

The pickup truck rolls along the gravel road toward its destination. The mus
ic drifting up from the radio has a blues rhythm but it doesn’t even register.  My mind is running so fast as thoughts and memories flood me to the point that I have to consciously pay attention to where I’m going. The road winds upward slightly and the forest grows thicker by the minute.  It's just around this next bend, and in some small way I hope I can't find the damn place. I’ve been avoiding this trip for almost two months, since I came back through the veil.  It was the last time I saw Selene, well at least physically.  The ghost of her haunts my dreams every night.  She was the love I always hoped existed in this world. “What the fuck?” I mumble to myself,
this world
?
What a sick joke
.

The truck rumbles
to a stop on a patch of grass as I pull off the gravel road, not that anyone will come by, not out here anyway. Hell, I’m pretty sure no one even knows about this secluded place. It was just like Selene to find places of the past that were forgotten by the world. Her expectation of the past to project into the present was something I never quite understood.  I get out of the truck. The door slams loudly interrupting the peace for the moment.

The weather is crisp and windy, a perfect fall day. My feet crunch the dry leaves as I trek toward the half fallen structure. As I step through the roofless doorway I survey portions of the burnt out structure. I find that the fire which took the life of this aband
on library has long been gone. No fire or smoke smell remains only a deep woodsy scent. Grass grows along the old flooring and a small pine tree has taken up home in what used to be a window. The pine tree stops me dead in my tracks and I feel my throat tightening up. “Why! Why the hell did this have to happen?” I know the answer before I even finish speaking my thoughts. The answer is that fate doesn’t owe me a damn thing, much less a fucking explanation.

The veil that separates Selene and I has been quiet for a couple
of months now and this side of the city that the military once occupied is now barren. Nothing grows, not even a blade of grass around the outside of the veil. It is an empty reminder of the hell that resides here in our world.

I carry a slip of paper written in my own hand. Squeezing it tight in my fist, my
eyes roam over the interior. Remnants of a chair and desk stand like gravestones in this Godforsaken yard of knowledge. I reach down under the broken desk and find what I came here for. I brush off the red cloth hardback book and absently open it just as she used to. My mind still funnels memories faster than I can concentrate on. The forgotten author’s name still bears its mark even after all this time.  I let the pages slip through my fingers as I search it for any loose papers. Looking at my hand holding my own folded piece of paper I realize that’s why I came here. A note of closure or a foreboding note of warning. I put more feeling than thought into what I wrote. It is part of my attempt to put her haunting memories out of my head.

Her note that she use to read
to me every chance she got was like a cryptic poem of destiny. Placing my note in the open book and shutting it doesn’t give me that closure I expected. I am trying to close this part of my life involving Selene. It has become something more painful than being tortured and eaten by those slaughtering beasts from the veil. I place the note in the book along with a few pine needles and my thoughts overtake me as I sit the book down on the edge of the broken desk. 

I slide my hands into the front pockets of my jeans and encounter the two rings I can’t seem to go anywhere without
. Our engagement rings that Selene never had the chance to see.  I had it all planned out, a romantic dinner at her place that night, but the veil ripped it all away.  I look hard at the rings and they seem somehow to have lost their meaning now. The magic they once held is now stripped away and I can't decide what to do with them. The insane urge needles me to just fucking throw them as far as I possibly can.

The clouds are building and the sun spends more time being the cover of
a shadowy haze than not and the wind is picking up as it bites and whips around everything, cold and pitiless.  I walk slowly back toward the truck wondering if I will ever have as much life in me as I had with her. A pine tree catches my eye on the way back to the truck, its branches jetting out, calling me over to it. With the rings in my hand I stop and look at the tree. I reach out and slide both rings on the extended branch of the pine. Both rings slip on just as I imagined they would have done on Selene's finger. I shake the cold off and jump back inside the heated truck. The door slams again and the engine roars to life. 

“You okay?” Tiff
any’s small voice offers a tone of comfort as we head back toward the city.