Waking Eden (The Eden Series Book 3) (30 page)

The Black King lowered his hand and the White Queen nodded.

Pain jolted through Ramsay, unforgiving, torturous pain, woven with a fire’s burn. A tormented scream echoed all around him.

No, not one. Two screams. His and Trinity’s.

And then, nothing but black.

S
erena steadied
her breath and focused on keeping her mind calm as Uther levitated them through the castle front door in the path of a hurried warrior.
“So that’s how you do it.”

Uther grunted a mental agreement and tightened his arm around her waist in warning.
“Now where?”

Histus if she knew. Off to one side of the foyer, the formal receiving room doors stood open. Easy enough to navigate in the quieter portion of the castle.
“Try the receiving room. Up and on the left.”

Uther hesitated, then drifted forward.

Damn but this was going to be a pain in the ass situation. With Uther glued to her back, she’d never be able to swipe the key even if she did manage to find it. There had to be some way to get him to let her go on her own.

He combed the room in slow, cautious movements.
“Anything?”

“No. Nothing here. We need books. A library maybe.”

As they floated toward the doors, a feminine voice sounded on the staircase. “You did the right thing, Brenna,” Lexi said. “Ramsay needed to know. There’s not a thing for you to worry about.”

Uther and Serena crested the threshold just as Lexi and a petite, young brunette with light skin reached the first floor.

Lexi clasped the girl’s hand. “Remember. We’re in this together.” She smiled, wrapped the girl in a side hug, and dangled a black pendant in front of them. “Come on. We’ll get Trinity’s stuff locked up and then track down Galena and Orla. Something tells me we’ll need all the female backup we can stand when the guys get back.”

Trinity. Not a name Serena recognized. Brenna though, she looked familiar.
“Follow them.”

Uther dropped in behind the women, far enough back their murmured words were indistinguishable, but close enough to hide their presence in the women’s energy wake.

Two arched panels Serena had always thought to be ornate walls opened beneath the staircase. Beyond them stretched a long room with books lining either side, casual sitting areas clustered in homey sections throughout, and a two-story window at the end.

Brenna paced to the window and hugged herself as though chilled.

Lexi hustled to an elegant antique desk angled in one corner. The malress’ desk. The same one Eryx’s mother had sat behind and countless malresses before her.

Heat blasted Serena from the inside out. Lexi’s voice registered in some dim corner of her mind, but the content didn’t stick. That should be her desk. Would be hers.

Her gaze slid to the matching, albeit larger desk in the opposite corner. Eryx’s.

Scratch that. She’d take the malran’s desk and use Lexi’s to fuel the hearth.

With the soft scrape of wood on wood, Lexi pulled a dark box from her desk drawer and carefully placed the pendant inside. She studied whatever lay inside a moment, thoughtful, then closed up the box and tucked it back in the drawer.

“Does it bother you?” Lexi looked up at Brenna, still staring out the window and the ocean beyond. “The powers and knowing how different your life can be now?”

“This is the only life I’ve known. What I’d really like is a chance to know the life I didn’t get to live.” Brenna turned at Lexi’s approach. “Do you think he’ll ever let me visit? Maybe spend a little time in Evad and get to know my mom?”

The human. Maxis’ little slave. Though she sure looked a lot better now than she had under Maxis’ control. More color to her skin and a mass of wavy dark hair well past her shoulders. Her figure wasn’t too shabby either. No wonder Maxis had kept her in those sack-like slave robes. Better to keep his little toy hidden from envious male guests.

Lexi steered Brenna away from the window and through the library doors. “Maybe once all the hubbub dies down and we get a better handle on the prophecy. We’re already close, with or without whatever answers Trinity brings home.”

Uther’s arm tightened at her waist.

“Relax,”
she told him.
“If we get the translation tables, we’ll slow them down. Check Eryx’s desk. I’ll check Lexi’s.”

“Hold your mask in place,”
he said as he drifted away.

Serena hurried to the drawer Lexi had opened. The Shantos mark was etched in black atop the box, deep and carefully detailed by someone with substantial skill. She opened it where it sat. A smallish journal in worn chocolate leather, the pendant, and the picture of a woman with long, nearly platinum hair. It was a profile shot, the woman laughing up at some unseen presence.

“What am I looking for?”
Uther’s irritation bristled down her spine to match his words.

She fingered the black filigree pendant. A sword twined in ivy. An exact match to Lexi’s mark. Funny. It didn’t look like a pendant. Not really. It was too clunky for anyone to consider it pretty. She certainly wouldn’t wear it.

“Serena, what am I looking for?”
Uther barked.

“Something big. Similar to the one I got from Angus. Maybe older,”
she said.

The mark of your family will be the key.

Of whose family? Lexi’s?

She glanced at Eryx’s desk. Nothing there save a drawer sliding outward seemingly on its own. Thank The Great One Uther couldn’t see her any more than she could see him. She tucked the journal and the pendant into her pocket and moved to the next drawer.

“Something like this?”

Serena checked the foyer beyond for any signs of movement and levitated toward Uther. Nestled in the lowest compartment of Eryx’s desk was a wide tome wrapped in black felt, an edition almost identical to the one locked up in Angus’ safe.

She fingered the pendant in her pocket. A mark. Drab and sturdy. Was the pendant what she needed? Or should she keep looking?

“Grab it,”
she said.
“If they’re getting close, then losing it will slow them down.”
And if she was lucky, by the time they figured out what they needed, she’d be long gone with the key.

* * *

V
oices
. Lots of them rattling around in Ramsay’s head. So many none of what they said made sense.

He tried to shift, looking for a visual. Something to ground him and help him pick apart the conversations, but his body wouldn’t move. Black surrounded him on all sides, snippets of color flashing in random bursts in all directions.

Backward. The voices were running backward.

Cool air streamed around his bare neck, pushing hair around his face.

The horizon lightened. Deepest gray at first, then lighter. The color of storm clouds one minute then a murky fog the next, color swishing around him in a kind of time tunnel as the voices rewound.

A flash of white blasted and everything stopped. No sound. No wind. No color. Just white. Everywhere.

A ragged cry echoed and a vision came into focus. A woman in a loose black shift, torn on one side and bunched nearly to her hips. Her body lay at an awkward angle. Bruises marked her fair skin.

And she looked just like Brenna.

He blinked and tried to shift for a better look.

A man dropped to his knees beside her, blocking Ramsay’s view. He had blond hair. Nearly white, like Trinity’s. He tossed a blood-streaked blade to the grass and pulled the woman carefully onto his lap, stroking her cheek. A crimson smudge marked its path, blood from his hands.

Raped. How Ramsay knew the woman had been so vilely abused he wasn’t sure, but he felt the man’s pain and knowledge as though it was his own. The man had avenged her. Slain the six responsible. Myrens who’d used their powers against his helpless human mate.

Another man came up beside him and gripped his shoulder, a cuff bearing the Shantos mark on the man’s wrist. “It wasn’t your fault, Hagan.”

Hagan. Hagan Xenese. And the man beside him was Kentar Shantos. The first malran. Hagan’s dearest friend.

This was their history. The first generation of Myrens playing out like a dream, though Ramsay’s emotions and thoughts were connected with theirs. Their knowledge, their experiences, implanting themselves on top of his own.

“She was defenseless. Innocent.” Hagan gripped his mate tight to his chest and rocked back and forth. “All my powers and I still failed her.”

“But you had your vengeance.” The booming voice came from all corners. Peaceful and powerful in one breath. All encompassing.

Hagan and Kentar looked into the heavens, silver and gold sparkling against the rainbow Eden skies.

Kentar dropped to one knee.

The Great One, their creator, was talking to them. Communicating with them one-on-one. “In grief, you’ve wrought the same damage as those who injured the one you loved. They have atoned for their actions with their lives. Are you prepared for your own reparation?”

Hagan bowed his head. His soul was dead. Cold as the ceremonial stones in the standing circle. Nothing that happened to him now mattered.

Kentar held the same powers as Hagan. He could lead their people on his own and protect his own family. But he could not protect the humans. They’d be as vulnerable as Mitia had been. Unless someone looked out for them.

Hagan stared into the sky. “It will happen again. Those who believe their powers superior to humans will cause her family and those like her to suffer. I accept whatever fate, but ask you watch over them. Protect her family. Her people.”

The silver and gold sparks wavered in the sky, and nature stilled around them. “They will not always be so powerless,” The Great One said. “Are you willing to act as their protector? To sacrifice the gifts I have given you to do so? Even if, in doing so, your sentence proves a greater torture?”

There could be no greater torture. His heart beat as only an afterthought, an instinct he would quash on his own if he could find the strength. “I would sacrifice whatever you ask. Anything to right the failure I wrought this day.”

Wind whistled through the green valley where the men stood, and loose blades of grass and leaves whipped in a mini tempest. “Then you have my decree. My vow. I will return your woman to you, whole and unharmed without memory of the pain visited upon her. She and her race will be given a new land to call their own, a safe haven with a barrier formed between the two realms.”

Kentar tightened his hand on Hagan’s shoulder and bowed his head.

Hagan cupped Mitia’s head and kissed her forehead.

“The Spiritu will watch over both races,” The Great One said. “The space of time where all three walked together will be stricken from human and Myren memories. Only when one who bears the blood of all three races returns to Eden will the knowledge of your history be returned. A reckoning will come, marked by the joining of one who leads and one who bears the mark of a sword twined in ivy. A human will stand as judge, one versed in both races and injured in similar kind to the one wronged this day. The mark of your family will be the key, the tool that will feed its bearer the powers you give freely this day, or that will keep the wall in place forever more.”

Hagan looked up. “And my sentence?”

“Your powers and six millennium among those you protect, one for each life you’ve taken this day. Your powers and grief will fuel the wall that separates the realms. You will journey through the years, loving and losing those dearest to you while propagating your Myren line among those you protect.”

Stillness settled in the valley.

“Kentar Shantos,” The Great One said. “Mark these words and use your powers to ensure your race abides. Your people will be held by two tenets. Never shall your existence be revealed to those your brother protects, and never shall they interfere in human destiny as they have today.” The gold and silver sparks dimmed, still glimmering, but calmer. “Such is my command and so shall be your destinies.”

“Ramsay.” Trinity’s voice, distant and thick with weariness, pierced through Ramsay’s altered consciousness and shattered the image.

His spirit catapulted forward, hurtling back through the tunnel in a twisted, spiraling mess.

“Ramsay, please wake up.” So desperate, but getting closer. “I can’t lose you too. Please. I need you.”

T
rinity clutched
Ramsay’s slack hand at his side and hung her head.
“Please, God. Let him be okay. Whatever it takes…anything…”

“Trinity?” Brenna said from her chair on the opposite side of Ramsay’s bed.

No more. Dear God, no more platitudes on how everything would be okay. How nothing happened without a purpose. It was all she’d heard from Eryx, Lexi, and Galena for the last twelve hours, each of them taking turns watching over Ramsay with her and trying to get her to take a break.

“Trinity, look,” Brenna said as the bed dipped. “His eyes. I think he’s waking up.”

His eyelids were still closed, but behind them, his eyes darted back and forth and he shifted slightly as though he dodged an attacker in his sleep.

“Ramsay.” She leaned in and smoothed a damp strand of hair off his brow. “Ramsay, it’s okay. Relax. I’m here. Just wake up.”

His head jerked once, twice. His eyes snapped open and he sucked in a sharp breath, shooting nearly upright in bed. He propped himself up and blinked over and over, glazed eyes locked on the far wall of his room.

She stroked his shoulder, his chest. His skin was cool but slick with sweat. “Ramsay?”

He shook his head and scanned the room. His chest rose and fell in a labored rhythm. His arms shook as he pushed himself backward on the bed and reclined against the cushioned black headboard. “We’re home.”

Thank God. He was okay. Alert, despite whatever her father had put him through. “Yeah. We’re home. The Black King…” Words lodged in her throat, mangled with emotions she couldn’t bear to process. Not yet. “He sent us back. He…” The tears she’d tried to hold back slipped free and her chest burned.

“Hey.” He pulled her across him and cradled her in his lap. His arm at the small of her back shook with obvious exhaustion, but he held her anyway, tucking her cheek to his chest as everything she’d bottled up broke free. He caressed her face. “I’m fine. Feel like I’ve been to histus and back, but I’m fine.”

“You should tell her.” Brenna’s raspy voice barely penetrated Trinity’s sobs. Probably wouldn’t have if Ramsay’s hand had not frozen in place as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Tell her what?” he said.

“What you saw. Where you’ve been,” she said.

Trinity twisted in Ramsay’s lap.

A look passed between Ramsay and Brenna. The age-old stare of disbelief, two people trying to gauge without words if the unbelievable could be believed.

“You saw it too, didn’t you?” Ramsay said. “With the echo.”

Brenna’s lips tightened and her chin quivered. “She was me. The woman. That was me, wasn’t it?”

Ramsay’s hand tightened on Trinity’s forearm. He opened his mouth to speak.

“What the voice said…” Brenna swallowed and fisted her hands in her lap. “I don’t want…I can’t do that.” She started to stand.

Ramsay shot forward, shifting Trinity beside him and halting Brenna with a grip on her arm. “It’s all right.” He urged Brenna to sit, voice modulated in an easy cadence. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. We’ll figure it out. Better two of us saw it than just one, right?”

“Saw what?” Trinity said.

Ramsay kept eye contact with Brenna for two long agonizing breaths, then slowly let go of Brenna’s hand and covered Trinity’s fisted hand on the bed. “The prophecy. How it all came about. How it’s all supposed to end.”

The prophecy. What she’d gone to learn about. “Dad,” she whispered.

“That’s my guess,” Ramsay said. “He gripped my shoulder and about a nanosecond later I was somewhere else. Or more like some
when
else. With our first generation.”

His thumb shuttled in a comforting back and forth atop the back of her hand. So warm. Strong. In that moment it was all she could bear to look at. All she could face or hold on to. “He gave himself up. For me.”

“He gave information, Trin. Nothing else.”

Trinity shook her head, replaying those last seconds in her mind. “Not just the information. His existence. That’s the penance.”

His thumb stopped and his fingers tightened.

She lifted her gaze to his. “After you passed out, he kneeled in front of the White Queen. She laid her hand on his head and a snowy kind of fog built around him. Before I could see any more, the Black King stepped between us and then we were here.” Words queued up on her tongue, bitter. Ugly. “My dad’s gone.”

Brenna stood so abruptly her chair nearly toppled. “You should be alone. I’ll let Eryx and Galena know you’re awake.”

Ramsay’s eyes narrowed as he watched Brenna go. Whatever he was worried about, he quickly shut it off and refocused on Trinity. “You don’t know he’s gone. Could’ve been—”

“What did he say?” Trinity said. “What were the words he used before he touched you?”

Ramsay scrunched his brow for a second, thoughtful. A second later the furrow disappeared and his gaze lifted to hers, heavy with remorse.

A fresh tear slipped free. “Tell me,” she said. “What did he say?”

He gripped the back of her head, like the contact might brace her for impact. “He said, ‘What I give is freely given and my life forfeit.’”

Forfeit. The word wrecking-balled into her sternum and yanked a ragged sob past her burning throat. Weight pressed her shoulders and rounded her spine until she all but fell into Ramsay beside her. “It’s my fault. I pushed him into this.”

Ramsay pulled her close and rocked her back and forth. “I’m so sorry.” Over and over he said it, pressing tender kisses to her temple and soothing her in calming, patient strokes.

“I was stupid.” She lifted her head, eyes burning and cheeks as hot as embers. “I was trying to do what was right. To help you. I killed my own father.”

“You didn’t. You did what you thought was right and he did the same. He chose, Trinity. He wanted life for you. Joy. It’s his gift. Don’t darken it by blaming yourself.”

“But if I’d waited…he told me to wait. Said to let you figure things out on your own. If I’d listened, he’d still be here. I forced him.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Your mate is wise, child.” The White Queen’s soft airy voice sounded behind her.

Trinity shot to her feet.

Ramsay stood as well and stepped cautiously between them.

The White Queen noted his protective stance with a pointed look and a wry grin. “You have nothing to fear for your mate, warrior. I come only to support the guidance you share and to offer comfort of my own.”

Ramsay held his place.

Trinity squeezed his arm and stepped from behind him. “Tell me he’s still alive.”

“A soul never dies, child.” She floated forward, the fabric of her white gown flowing in a nonexistent breeze. “You are right. He no longer lives on our own plane, but exists with The Great One. What you should know is that his sacrifice comes with great peace.”

She held out her hand and a huge Opal shaped like an Easter egg filled her palm. She handed the gem to Trinity.

The surface was so cold it sent a sharp pain up Trinity’s arm to the base of her neck.

The queen swept her hand above the gem. “Open your heart and ease your fears.”

Warmth, slow at first, then growing to the comfortable glow of a well-tended fire. The gem’s surface wavered, the veins of green, blue, and pink flattened to a murky white.

Her father’s image formed, another coming into focus beside it. A woman. The same one shown in the picture from her box, long platinum hair that matched her own nearly to her waist and beautiful blue gray eyes like Lexi’s. They were talking. A tree stood behind them with dark chocolate limbs and perfect bell shaped white blossoms.

“He looks different.” Gone was the strain and tension he always seemed to carry, and his smile was easy. Light. Even his eyes were brighter, bits of amber brightening eyes that had always been close to black.

“He’s with your mother. He never told you the details behind her death, mostly because he didn’t want to burden you with it. She took her life only months after your birth. He blamed himself for her actions. For not being there when she needed him most. He mourned her loss deeply.”

Trinity felt more than saw the White Queen drift away. “You are no longer alone. Your father knew that and sought to give you a life free of pain. What he gave, he did so willingly. What you see is his reward. A life in true paradise with The Great One and the woman he loved.”

No sound issued from the image, but her father threw his head back in what looked like a rumbling laugh. He was happy. Genuinely happy.

Her heart warmed to match the stone in her hand and the guilt and tension she’d held knotted in her core slowly unwound.

“He’s at peace,” The White Queen said. “He knows you’re safe. That you have many years with the man you love, and that your race has what they need to fight. Heed your fireann’s advice and accept your father’s gift for what it is, the love of a father for his wonderful child.”

Trinity shifted and lifted the gem up for Ramsay. The motion knocked a tear free from her cheek. “Can you see him?”

“No. Tell me.”

“His cheeks have color. Not just his normal skin tone, but like he’s been running in the sun. His shoulders are back and proud, but they look relaxed too. And his smile. God, Ramsay. He used to look dead before. Emotionless. But now his arm is curled around my mom’s shoulders and he looks like he has everything. Like he’s whole.” She looked up, a thank you on her lips.

The White Queen was gone.

She looked to Ramsay instead. “He’s alive.”

“That happens to a man when he’s able to be with the woman he loves.” Ramsay turned her, carefully took the gem, and set it on the nightstand. He cupped her nape and walked her backward until the bed hit the back of her knees. “Your dad and I, we have something in common.”

“You? And my dad? He’s all grumpy and serious.” She glanced at the gem. Its soft pastels glimmered in the midday sun. Happy. Just like her father’s smile. “You’re a fun and games playboy who likes to get into trouble.”

“I
was
a playboy.” He tugged her tunic over her head in one quick swoosh and tossed it in a yellow heap on the floor. His gaze locked on her bare chest and he licked his lips. “And those fun and games…all bullshit.” He pulled her leggings past her hips and nudged her just enough to knock her off center and onto his big bed.

“Ramsay, now’s not a good time for this.” She checked the door. “Your brother was really worked up about something. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but he’s been in and out ever since we got back and seemed really worried.”

Iron clinked on iron.

“There. Now it’s locked,” he said, dragging the soft cotton past her feet. “So long as the castle’s not on fire and no one’s bleeding out, I don’t care what my brother wants.” He unfastened his leather pants and shoved them to the floor. “My baineann is safe. Her father’s happy. You’re naked in my bed and no one’s banging on the door, so right now all I want is to be next to you and see if I can’t teach you something new.”

“Now? You’ve got all the answers to the prophecy, your brother’s in a tizzy, and you want to pause for Sex Ed?”

He crawled over her, his sheer size and power radiating over every inch of her. A sizzling match to her own growing burn. “That’s what you need to get, Sunshine. The prophecy brought me to you, but you’re what I want first. What I need. Not answers. Not power. I can live without the rest of my race. Histus, I could even live without the rest of my family.”

He pressed himself against her, elbows planted at either side of her head, hips cradled deliciously between her thighs. “What I can’t live without is you. I was as dead and emotionless as your father was when you met me. I was living, but I wasn’t alive. Asleep at the wheel.”

His thumb skimmed her cheekbone and his breath fluttered against her face, his lips close enough that hers tingled in anticipation. “You woke me up, Trinity. Brought me to life. You’re my sunshine. The reason I’m awake and alive in a way I never thought possible.” His mouth touched hers. Reverent and full of so much emotion. “And you’re mine.”

* * *