Lies in Blood (58 page)

“
You can’t go, Ara. I need to take you back.”

I looked up from his hands at the blue light surrounding my body shining across his face. “One of us has to die.”

“
And it’s not going to be you,” he said. “You have a responsibility to your people.”

“
They’re your people now.” I turned back to the Stone, readying myself for the last breath.

“
Right. Now, we do this my way,” David growled, and the skin peeled suddenly from hands, detaching at the elbows as he tore me away, my own cries of agony drowning out the horror in those around me.

“
Let me go!”

“
No.” He cradled my body to his, carrying me from the circle of light to the darkest patch of forest by the trees. I screamed for the searing in my arms and soul—feeling it snap back into my body like a sharp elastic band. I couldn’t breathe, couldn't get a grasp on this realm—slipping between death and life intermittently.

David dumped me on the ground and stood back.

“
What have you done?” Arthur cried out, falling to his knees, his hands hovering over my body.

“
She was too far gone.” David stood above me, a shadow in the now red light of the Stone’s protest. “I had to
rip
her from that world.”

“
You’ve left half the girl’s goddamn flesh behind,” Arthur yelled.

“
She’ll survive,” David said calmly.

I shuddered, feeling my soul connect completely with my body again, making the agony real—fiery, like Hell had risen through the crack in the gateway David left open, and now ran fury among my limbs. “Make it stop,” I cried, folding in on myself. “Make it stop.”

“
Move.” David pushed Arthur and Emily aside, and bent down to pick up a rock; my eyes followed his hand to the rise above his shoulder, closing as the stone came down bluntly across my head.

Long, dark hair wavered along a breeze I couldn’t feel, the pale pink dress, like torn threads of ancient fabric, weaving and waving with a life of its own from her delicate, feminine form. Her warmth spoke her name to a place inside me where faces were not identifiers of those we know, but rather the ‘knowing’ that showed us who we were by seeing those we were familiar with.

“
Where are we?” I asked.

“
In the world beyond thought,” the mother said, showing me all that surrounded us—just a foggy white world with no ground or sky to show up from down.

“
Am I dead?”

“
No. You will wake soon to a room of people who love you—people who refused to let you walk with me.”

“
I’m sorry.”

She tilted my chin upward. “You must not be sorry, child, for anything. You are a great and wise queen, and you have done those before you proud.”

I smiled softly. “Really?”

“
I know it comes as a shock to you to get something right, for once, but everything you have done up until now—all the good and the bad—has been written in the stars, Amara. Your spirit had much to learn.”

“
So it was all a lesson? Everything? The suffering, the—”

“
As it is for all God’s creatures.”

I shook my head for a second or two, remembering suddenly what she told me before I crossed over. “You mentioned a child.”

“
I did.” Her lips closed, her eyes shrinking into a pleasant smile. “She will bring an end to everything that began centuries ago, and we have gone to great lengths to preserve that future for you, Auress—called on the mightiest power of nature to ensure its survival.”

“
Survival?” I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Her hand moved slowly across the space between us and landed on my belly. “You will see soon enough.”

“
When?”

“
Once you open your eyes, your world will change, and you will walk a new path now, child—one you are finally ready for.”

“
How do you know I’m ready?”

“
You faced many truths in coming to the decision you made this morning. Each one of those showed us how much you have truly grown into the woman we hoped you’d become. And, one of those truths, as fate would have it, has set you free from a bind you tied yourself in.”

“
What bind?”

She removed her hand from my belly. “Your greatest gift in this realm is the heart, Auress. You betrayed yourself, your birth right, and your crown by denying it.”

“
Denying it?” I thought for a second, then rolled my eyes, keeping them closed after. “Jason.”

“
It is a sin against God to lie to those you love, but an even greater sin to lie to yourself.”

“
And what is the lie, Mother? What did—”

“
You
want
to love him.” She shook her head, a smile warming her whole face. “You do love him, and you cannot deny this any longer.”

“
I don’t deny it. But I don’t have to accept it.”

“
No, you do not. You, like all God’s creatures, were born with the gift free will. But, Jason’s love is a gift also, and you can do with it what you wish, however, you must not hide the way you feel.”

“
So, I need to admit it to him?”

“
You already did, and you admitted it to yourself. Now—” She presented my waist, “you are free.”

I looked down and slowly lifted my top, but she stopped me.

“
You are blessed in that your soul is not bound to one eternal love. You can bind yourself to any soul you see fit. You will not spend your life seeking that significant other in order to find peace. But do not waste this blessing on lies. Live for those you truly love—the ones who truly deserve your love in return.”

“
And what about David? Is he blessed with a free soul—one that has no significant other?”

She shook her head slowly.

“
Am I. . .” I touched my chest. “Am I his significant other, his soul mate?”

“
Yes.”

I turned and went to cry into my hand, stopping with the warm touch of the mother on my shoulder.

“
You must not cry for him. For, if you do, you must shed the same tears for the other who is tied to you.”

“
Who?”

“
The brother.”

“
Wait . . . I’m
his
soul mate too?”

She nodded.

“
How?”

“
Those boys are one soul, divided in two. What one loves, the other will die for, too.”

“
And that’s . . . me?”

“
Yes.”

I dropped my hand back down to my side. “Oh God. Those poor boys.”

Even the mother of all life had to laugh at that. “My dear little goddess. This will not be an easy decision for you, but you must know that, when the time comes to choose, you will lose the one you push away.”

“
Then I’ll be losing Jason,” I said. “Because, even if the day comes where I decide I love him more than David—” I shook my head, “—I can’t be with him, Mother. I could never hurt David like that.”

She touched my shoulder. “Then be prepared to suffer for a very long time.”

***

“
We should’ve let her go,” Emily sobbed.

I looked up—looked past the shimmering pink light of life before me.

“
It’s not her time,” Arthur said.

“
But how can she live now—in this world. How can she open her eyes and possibly ever smile again after what he just did to her?”

“
He had to do that, Emily,” Mike said dully. “She was in agony.”

“
Then it shouldn’t have been him to do it.” Emily sobbed again. “He enjoyed it too much. Didn’t you see his face?”

“
Don’t be so stupid,” Falcon said. “He acted out of duty. That’s all—or I’d have been the first to step in.”

“
No, I know him, Falcon. He enjoyed it. If he really cared about stopping her pain, he should’ve asked Jason to get in her head and knock her out.”

“
He couldn’t. No one but the king could touch her. She was still connected to the other realm,” Morgaine said.

Emily’s lips were cold on the back of my hand with the tear-soaked kiss she placed there. “It just breaks my heart that she thought that was the only way to end her suffering.”

“
That’s not why she did it, Emily. She was trying to save David.”

“
He doesn’t deserve to be saved,” she said, and my eyes flew open.

I drew my hand away, scowling at her. “You don’t get to decide that, Emily.”

She sat back, sniffling, her eyes small with confusion. “And you do?”

“
Yes. Because I am Queen.”

Emily went to speak, but she stopped when she saw what I felt radiating from my eyes, my skin, and my soul: I was right. I was the powerful being deemed godly by Mother Nature, and I was not to be trifled with. The decisions I made were in the best interests of my people, and that was the only reason even the mother of all life Herself allowed me the passage to the other side. Emily could argue with the old, human me all she wanted, but she could not argue with Mother Nature.

“
All right.” Arthur stood and touched Emily’s shoulder. “Everyone out. I need to talk with Amara.”

Em hesitated, but Arthur’s eyes had this strong, kind of no nonsense edge to them then that offered a polite warning not to question him. He meant business, and everyone in the room knew it. They filed out one by one; Morg behind Emily, Quaid behind Blade, and Falcon last, offering me a sad kind of smile as he closed the door. I looked away, watching Arthur instead as he took the seat beside me where Emily had been.

“
Are you mad at me, Arthur?”

His eyes warmed, crinkling slightly on the edges. “No, Amara. I’m proud of you.”

“
Proud?” I looked up at the glass dome, confused. I hadn’t expected that.

“You’ve grown up so much since I first met you.” His warm, so David-like hand took mine. “I am . . . my gratitude toward you for doing everything in your power to save my nephew is beyond words. You’ve not given up on him, Amara, ever, and I don’t know even one person who’d have had the strength or the heart to give their own life in exchange for a man that no longer loves them.”

I pouted mockingly. “I’ll never give up on him, Arthur. And I’m not done trying to save him. There has to be a way. I—”

“
I read your letter.”

I stiffened a little. Goodbye letters were never supposed to be discussed
after
death. “That’s . . . kind of awkward.”

We both laughed.

“
Amara, what you told Jason in that letter—”

“
I told him the truth.”

He nodded. “I hope so. Because he loves you, and those words have given him reason to want to live again.”

“
Well, I’ll believe that when he starts drinking Lilithian Pure blood at dinner.”

Arthur scratched just beside his eye. “He put his name on the list for dinner tonight.”

I drew my hand away from his and sat all the way up. “Really?”

“It was a mistake giving that letter to Quaid if you intended it to be read
after
you were gone.”

“
He took it straight to Jase, didn’t he?”

“
He wasn’t born yesterday, Amara. How do you think he ended up on the Core in the first place?”

“
Damn having all these smart buggers around.” I slapped the mattress, my still raw hand searing after. “Did anyone else read it?”