Imperial ((Imperial) Web of Hearts and Souls)

by Jamie Magee

  “She understands the sacrifice. Clearly now,” I said with a nervous swallow.

  “I fear she doesn’t. But nevertheless, her actions will get the results that I wish for.”

  He glanced to Silas’ body, then to my eyes. “Our children teach us as much as we teach them.” And with that, the Cowboy that masked the essence of my Creator vanished.

  Our children teach us, I repeated in my thoughts. Mazing had taught me a lot, for sure. Unknowingly, she taught me that in any form we would know one of our own. She taught me that one way or another, if your intentions were not harmful that you would reach them, and when you did that validation would taste so sweet.

  I had to do right by her. If the Creator honored her coupling with Colton, well, Silas, then she would die the instant I struck Silas. Considering the conversation I just had, something told me He condoned their bond. If I let it be, Silas would hurt someone in Vade’s line, in turn hurting Mazing, and they would both perish. There was no way out of this. Mazing had to change, had to become what Silas is in order to survive.

  A sick feeling surrounded me. I didn’t think I had the will. I didn’t think I could harm one hair on my precious First’s head. Even though I knew she would openly volunteer with or without knowing who Silas was.

  Our children teach us, I repeated once more, glancing down at the stick the Cowboy had left at my side. It was sharp now, could be used as a dangerous weapon if needed. It actually looked like an arrow to a bow. The symbol of eternity was carved into the point.

  I breathed in again. How could He possibly ask me to do this? Even in theory, it was sickening.

  In order to kill my line, I would have to rip them apart one by one, tear their essences into pieces as I stared into their souls, souls that had trusted me far too many times with their fate.

  Our children teach us, I heard over and over in my head. One of the first things Silas demanded of me was to say that word. I didn’t then because it would bring my line down, instantly. Surely by the Creator Himself.

  Children teach us, children go into the light, the Cowboy’s words were overlapping in my mind. They regret not telling the ones they left behind that they loved them.

  I smirked. How freaking poetic. He told me exactly how to kill them, assured me that they would be risen to be like Silas. I knew if I succeeded in this mass murder that in time Vade would recover, he would understand. His emotion of anger was in every single one of those other kings, and with the help of my risen Escorts-slash-Witnesses he would smite them all and rebuild our race. Only one sacrifice was needed: my soul.

  I trembled as I leaned forward and rested my head on my lap. With my eyes squinted closed, I saw rapid-fire images of Vade rush through my mind. I felt his skin against mine, his velvet words.

  I cried. I had never once cried. Tears may have snuck out, but I never cried. Not when my mother struck me; not when she starved me to the point of pain or told me I was a wretched devil. I never cried as I died…I cried now. I cried so hard that every part of my soul quivered. The sovereign in me slowly perished, and the timid girl emerged. She felt her first and last heartache so deeply that death would be nothing more than a relief.

  I knew Vade would never understand my reasoning, even try to talk me out of it, that he would be in pain for a while, but as our race was restored he would find bliss again. And at least he would know how I felt about him. He would know that I never said it before or allowed myself to feel it because I could not bear to see him in agony, I could not bear to think that anyone or anything could bring down the stoic King of Anger. He would know that I was never a queen, but a girl, a girl that cherished him and appreciated every single moment I’d shared with him.

  With each gasping sob, I felt this armor of wrath that I hid behind break a part, I felt all the emotions it restricted flood to the surface.

  I tried to hold them back until I was face to face with Vade, but it was a battle that I was losing.

  This one emotion, this one word would slaughter my entire line, everyone that I had openly claimed and had openly accepted me. The army of Witnesses was about to expand to a massive level.

  Chapter Sixteen

  My last word would do more than finally tell Vade what he had made me feel for a thousand eternities. It would also be a command, a desire given to him and my line. The command was to feel that word so deeply that their souls hummed, and the desire was for them to fight for the right to do just that, for them to sacrifice as I did for those that will be our precious tomorrow: those priceless metallic souls.

  My energy and Vade’s were more than connected right now. I knew he could sense my call, that I had to call him now.

  The circle of kings he was in right now, those meetings, could last the length of a moon or longer; they all tended to debate until they had beaten the topic to death.

  I couldn’t wait that long. If I did, I would lose my nerve and sit and wait for my doom.

  My thoughts screamed at him long before I manifested myself to the sacred hall of springs. I knew here that I could not only look into his eyes, but around me, in the water. I would witness the fall of my line, but hopefully the Creator would grant me enough breaths to see their rise as well.

  I was shaking violently. I had never realized how safe my armor of wrath had made me feel.

  I paced the circle of the springs, looking at each of them once more, feeling them, sending my intentions to them so that one day they may understand, that they would know that it was not that I once again could not find the courage to leave one of my own to their own consequences, but that I realized that they all belonged together, that they had a higher calling than I ever could have imagined.

  Vade appeared right about then. He looked exhausted and furious, but the moment our eyes met whatever had caused that was the furthest thing from his mind.

  Tears poured from my eyes as I trembled once more. Anger came to him. He was prepared to smite whomever had dared to cause a foul emotion within me.

  I held my chest with my fist as I slowly began to walk toward him. In my mind, I was reliving all of those firsts, all the moments after them, every instant that he invited me to feel what I dared not. I relived them because I knew he could see them, so that once this was over he would understand why I never told him what I was feeling before.

  His deep gray eyes began to shine with shards of light as the anger released him and his shoulders fell ever so slightly.

  When I reached him, I stretched my trembling arms up and let my hands run through his dark hair once more. I felt his arms go around me as his forehead leaned against mine, but I dared not close my eyes. I leaned my head back and blinked so I could clear the tears from my vision.

  I pulled his lips to mine for one last sweet kiss; he dared not close his eyes either. I was sure I had confused him to the point of no return.

  “Vade.” I swallowed as I caressed his strong profile. He began to speak, but I spoke over him. “I love you.”

  As the words left my lips, my soul exploded from within. Pulses of energy I had never felt before rippled through me; they were so loud and so powerful that it took me a second to hear what he had said beneath my words.

  We had said the exact same words at the exact same time.

  No, no, no, no, no! Why did he do that?! My risen line needed a king! His line needed him. They were the last survivors of our kind. Now what? They would all rise into the care of another. That’s what. Our race was dying as we embraced each other.

  “Say it again,” he said as he lifted me and wrapped my legs around him.

  “I love you. I have from first sight.”

  He fell to his knees, still holding me around him. He reached to caress away my tears. “Once more.”

  “I love you, Vade, my stoic King of Anger. I love you more than that word could ever mean.” I felt that emotion flooding through me. There was no chance that my armor of wrath could ever suppress it again. It was such a beautiful pain.

  His lips
connected with mine. It was a kiss like no other. Both of our souls were pulsing at a level that had never been felt before, causing our vessels to hum viciously. I could swear the universe itself was trembling with the power of our essence.

  He pulled away slowly, smiling with pure bliss. “Glory, you are love. You are my love, you are everything.” He smiled, caressing my cheek. “I have waited so long, so very long to hear that word from you, to feel it pulse from your soul now,” he said as his hands moved across my back. “Just when I was convinced that I was wrong for you, you saved me with that word.”

  “I killed us,” I said with an ache in my voice. My legs and arms tightened around him. I now feared death. I didn’t know where my soul was going to go, but I prayed that the Creator would ensure that it went with Vade’s, that the sacrifice of our race, our lines, was worth that request.

  “What?” he said, doing his best to loosen the grip I had on him so he could look into my eyes.

  But I was staring at the springs, at the images of our lines, hoping for a swift end for them, that it would not bring them agony. I was dying with bliss in my heart and wanted the same for them.

  “Glory, Glory, look at me,” Vade said firmly, shocking me into reality.

  I leaned back so I could see into his eyes that had nothing but bliss within them. How could he invite death so openly?

  “What are you saying?”

  “I killed us. I said it. I felt it. And now we are dying.”

  He furrowed his brow in absolute bewilderment. “Now we are truly living,” he whispered.

  I guess that was one way to look at it. We had lived eternities, but the last moments were the ones where we were afforded the gift of feeling what the souls we protected did.

  I kept moving my stare from him to the springs, waiting for it to come, having a hard time choosing between what I would stare at as I died.

  All at once, they went black. My soul seized.

  “Now look at me,” Vade said. My soul pulsed again. He had darkened them so I would pay attention to him.

  “I want to see their last moments,” I said as I tried to turn the images back on.

  “Glory, calm down. Why do you think they are dying? That we are?”

  “That word is poison.”

  “Who told you that?” he asked, pulling my chin back so he could see my eyes.

  “X—Xavier.”

  His perfect image turned to stone. “Xavier told you not to love me—and you listened to him?”

  “What? No. Well, yeah, but no. He told me of the lore, how we couldn’t feel that, that it would kill me if I did, kill you if you returned the emotion.”

  The springs vibrated with the pure rage of his essence. “When?”

  With wide eyes, I stared at him. “Before our first kiss.”

  Disbelief was shrouding his image. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “I thought you knew,” I said so quietly that I barely heard my own words.

  “You thought I knew? If I knew, why would I ask you constantly to tell me what you were feeling?”

  “I told you that you were my rush—you said the same.”

  “That is not love, Glory. That is devotion between two. You just confessed more than that to me. You just connected our two souls, and so much more.”

  My head was spinning...how was he saying that word so freely now?

  “No one in our race states such a word,” I argued with a weak defense.

  “Right. And I told you the lore regarding why.”

  I started to tremble. He had told me why. He told me that word was not spoken because no sovereigns had ever felt it. But that was eons after I knew why it was never spoken.

  “I already believed the other way.”

  “You believed Xavier?”

  “He was not a foe when he told me.”

  “He was a foe before you were ever risen,” he said with a bite to his tone. The anger was for Xavier, but I still felt the tremble.

  “I didn’t know that. I was a timid girl that thought at any moment something would take you away from me. Still am. Still do.”

  His arms embraced me tightly to silently assure me that he was not going anywhere, and neither was I.

  “Are you telling me that not once, not one single time that you were with me that I didn’t open the door for you to question such a savage lore?”

  I breathed in deeply, exhausted from the onslaught of emotions. From thinking one instant that I was slaughtering my line to the next where I understood that there was never a risk in feeling such an emotion.

  “You opened the door, but my wrath forbade me from saying such a thing. The risk of killing you or even being taken away from you was too much.”

  “He did take you away from me,” he snapped, his thoughts clearly on Xavier.

  “My wrath did. I was furious at you and too stubborn to ask for help. Now I don’t know where we are. I walked into this spring expecting to die in your arms, assuming that I would slaughter my line with that one word.”

  “You thought that was the risk, and you still spoke the word?” he asked with a gasp. I wasn’t sure if he was flattered by that or angry that I would do such a thing.

  “If I was going to die again, you deserved to know how I felt, how I always felt it.”

  He clenched his jaw before he spoke. “What could have caused you to choose death once again?”

  “Metallic energy.”

  His body went rigid and his arms tensed around me. “The Creator spoke to you?”

  “Yeah, and He told me that my line would be risen to be like Silas, and if they were then Silas and Mazing could be together. That my line in their form could help Silas defend all of those souls that carry that energy.”

  “All?” he said as he raised his brow, clearly not believing me.

  “You should hear them,” I said as I swallowed nervously.

  He let his long finger caress the outline of my face. “You did not hear what you thought.”

  I knew I did, and it would be best to show him instead of arguing about it.

  “Why have you chosen to couple Silas with Mazing? To break the attraction he has to that light?”

  I moved my head from side to side and replayed what I saw Silas go through in the field in my mind.

  As Vade saw it, pride consumed his gaze.

  “She marked his soul. That is him. Xavier clearly continued his torture on him.”

  “You have no idea,” Vade said under his breath.

  “I went to smite Silas. I went to stop him from wrecking you. I knew I had to do it right then or the other kings would hurt you, but then I saw that…and I thought of what he was protecting.” Vade went rigid once more. “There was no way out, then the Creator came and told me how I could rise above this.”

  “You saw Him?”

  “He was in the form of another, but in the end I knew who He was.”

  “And somehow you still thought that the word ‘love’ was deadly, that He wanted you to end our race?”

  “Vade, He literally carved a wooden arrow and left it at my side. I took in the signs.”

  Right at that moment, I heard a clanking sound and glanced to my side; the stick was there.

  Vade called it to his hand with a thought. He could clearly see how deadly it was now, how it could be seen as a clear symbol of demise. Vade smirked as he moved his knees from beneath him and adjusted me on his lap. He held it in front of me and slowly turned it. On the other side, there was a carving: GLORYVADE THE FIRST ETERNAL LOVERS. Before I could gasp, he turned it once more: SOULS MADE OF ONE.

  “I—I didn’t see the words.” This was an arrow, with our names pointed at the symbol of eternity.

  “It is hard to see and feel through wrath, Glory,” Vade said tenderly to me.

  His eyes stared into mine. “I told you that before you were risen. I told the Creator I wanted to be His voice of change, His example, that I wanted to carry our race into the next evolution. I knew if kin
gs could not rise, neither could those under our watch…sometime later, He asked me to rest, and I did. When I woke, He was there. We had a very lengthy conversation. He told me that there were seven. Seven lights would prevent my fellow kings from harming those we watch over. He smiled when He saw my relief. As our talk aged, He spoke of energy, how it should be in balance. He spoke of the metallic energy. He placed that dream in my heart.”

  “He fulfilled that dream,” I swore to him.

  A bashful smile came to his lips as his gaze fell deeper into mine.

  “That He did,” he said under his breath. “Once our talk was over, He asked me to follow Him. We descended into a horrid dimension. The air was so toxic that I had no idea how life was still present. We walked the streets, cloaked from the others, seeing their hell all around them. I knew looking into the eyes of those souls that they did not need me to relieve anger from them; they needed something to hope for. Their emotions needed to be elevated, not suppressed.

  “Something caught my heart. I felt a rapid pulse for no reason. I began to lead the Creator to that point. I finally stopped just before this filthy shack. He asked me what was on my mind. I told Him exactly what was on my mind, that somewhere in that rubble was what I wanted each of those souls I’d passed that day to feel: bliss, love.”

  Vade smirked. “He asked me if I would lay down my reign for the likes of any soul in that rubble.” His fingertips outlined my lips. “I didn’t even hesitate. I all but begged Him for that trade. Do you want to know what was in that shack?”

  “Me,” I said as tears glassed over my eyes. “I don’t understand…you are still a king.”

  “And you are a queen. He was not asking for a trade, for me to buy a soul to love me. He was testing my devotion, my sight unseen devotion to you. I passed. Without fail, I passed—and the moment I saw you, I knew that it was the best choice I could have ever made, that if the Creator told me the only way that I could have you would be to lay in than filth at your side than I would gladly do so.”

  “I was made for you,” I whispered, running my fingers through his hair.