Chapter 28
Cara
“Atlas! Atlas!”
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Ri howled, nearly throwing me out of the way as he slid to a stop at my side. Kelu was now gone. Atlas was gone. And I was still here. Still trapped with the monster I was sure was going to kill me with light. It’d been too much. I had murdered that girl, but not intentionally. Once I started, Ri couldn’t get me to stop. He tried, but what he didn’t take, my own darkness hoarded. I was lost. Dying inside in ways I couldn’t begin to grasp.
“Fuck. Fuck!”
Ri slammed his fist into the stone, pacing as he seethed. He didn’t see or hear me. My throat burned as Atlas’s name quieted on my lips. I reached up to wipe the tears, pausing on what I saw. It was a tint. Nothing more. A stain I had to have picked up from something I touched. My eyes? My mind raced through the events of the last few hours, skipping every memory of Abbie Jane. Perhaps the charcoal or oil? I had been crying. A lot.
“I should kill you right now and end this. She’ll never come back, and it’s all Atlas’s fault. What does it matter if you live?”
My eyes didn’t leave my hands as Ri stepped in closer. I didn’t care. I couldn’t as I took in the black discoloration on my fingertips.
“Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
My lips pressed together as I rubbed the pad of my thumb over my middle finger. The pressure was there, yet when I brought it down, the color remained. It had to be the oil.
“Ina.”
“Could I become Ri?”
I lifted my gaze in time to see his mouth twitch.
“What do you mean, could you become Ri? Are you asking me to take you in as one of us?”
“Absolutely not. I mean, is it possible for me to become your race?”
“You’re the biologist. You know science. What do you think?”
By the tone, he meant to make me feel stupid. But standard rules didn’t apply to alien species. This was out of my expertise. So many things already went against what I had learned.
“I need soap.”
Ri read my mind, snatching my hands. When he flipped them over and brought my fingers closer, his lips parted.
“Impossible.”
“I need soap.”
“You already said that. You’re going to need more than that,” he said, rotating my hand. “This is layers deep. I don’t think soap is going to do much good. It won’t come off.”
“It has to. You had Abbie read me light language. Light. I should be glowing like a fucking spotlight right now. Why is my skin changing?”
Ri didn’t answer as he began rubbing against the gray. His thumb circled around the tip of my middle finger, drawing the color to my knuckle. I gasped, jerking my hand back.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Talking to it,” he bit out, pulling my hand back. “It’s me, after all.”
“Well, tell it to leave.”
“It’s in you. A part of you now. I can’t just make it disappear.”
“Yes you can. Do the right thing. Break our tie and take it back.”
Ri shook his head. He was stoic, yet I could feel him weighing some sort of decision.
“Breaking our tie will not make the color go away. It’s there.”
“But I don’t want it! I didn’t ask for this!”
“Yes you did.”
My fingers found their way to my hair, burying deep through the panic starting to take place.
“I didn’t. Not once.”
“You did, and if you think back to the gift I gave you, perhaps you’ll remember. Your soul chose this path, Cara. It knew everything this life was going to hold for you, and you said yes. You asked for it. Why don’t you see for yourself? You can do that now that you’re unlocked.”
Pins slid free, falling to the floor as I dug deeper into my twisted curls. Piece by piece, sections revealed streaks of white amongst the dark color. White, like Beth’s. Reptilian white.
I scrambled back, screaming as I spun for some sort of mirror. This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t losing myself to a species meant for their evil deeds. Yet, I clearly was. I could feel the Ri inside, bubbling and enhancing the underlining darkness that breathed it to life.
“Unlocking you must have triggered the transformation. You were fine before. Ties have never had this reaction. Not in millions of years.”
“Reaction in what?” I exploded. “In who? Humans? Have you ever tied to a human before?”
“No.”
“No,” I repeated. “Leave it to me to be the first.” At my deep breath, Ri shifted. Something was bothering him, and I was almost able to pick it up. Almost. There was power building in my core. A slow burn, as he’d put it. This was only the beginning of what was going to happen. Although that terrified me, my strengthening shadow self was quickly extinguishing the brunt of my fear. Like a cat rubbing against my insides, it assured me everything would be fine. We’d be fine. No longer one person, but two. And Ri was catching on. He circled around, trying to pick up the difference.
“You were thinking something.”
“Was I? You can read my thoughts.”
“It was an acceptance of transmission. A separate channel. A secret one. It thought, and you acknowledged what it said.”
“I remember no such thing.”
He lunged, and pressure squeezed into my jawline.
“You forget who you’re speaking to. I am the master of lies. I can detect one before it’s even thought. Who did you hear? Atlas? Kelu?”
“You’d know if I did. We both know that.”
“Then who was it?”
“No one.”
“Then it was you thinking something?”
I jerked against the hold, swallowing back fear. “I really don’t recall thinking anything. I’m tired. I feel sick.”
Hesitation was followed by him releasing my chin. “You are tired. You need rest.”
My hand went to his bicep before I could think to stop it. The shadow in me knew the shadow in him. Perhaps that was why we had our moments of not minding each other’s presence.
“Please, not the cell. It’s not like I can leave this world. I won’t even try. Lock me in a room. Any room, just not the hot dungeon.”
“I should,” he whispered, his eyes growing lighter. “But Kelu…she called you her sister. I guess you are. She wouldn’t allow you back in the dungeon. I…lose myself sometimes.” Ri shifted his weight, looking confused—angry. Then, sad. “There’s a room she would have approved of by mine. There’s an adjoining door. It was my mother’s room before she married my father. As is custom at Ri. You can stay there until Kelu returns. If she returns. If not,” the anger returned, “Atlas forfeits his sister and you will take her place. He has my queen and child. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have his.
“You don’t want me.”
“Not particularly. I want your child.”
“My what?”
Ri headed for the door, leaving the room spinning under my feet. I could barely make sense of his words. There was no way for him to know that. There was no way for me to even tell. It was too soon.
“You seriously underestimate me. You will have a child. My intuition is rarely wrong. I believe we’ll be finding out in the next week or two whether I’m right. After all, I’ll be able to hear the heartbeat the moment it starts.”
“I have to leave. I have to go.”
“To bed. Yes. Stand and walk, Ina. Don’t let my people see you weak. They’ll eat you alive every chance they get.”
Ri stopped at the doors, raising an eyebrow while he waited. Walking was nearly impossible, but I managed to make it to my feet and over to his side as he opened the barrier and led me through a large room. When we headed up the stairs, the dizziness got worse. I couldn’t have a baby. Not here, not like this. Not with the darkness beginning to make itself known on my skin. What would that mean for the child? Would it
come out evil? Would it appear Ri, and not be like me or Atlas at all? It could kill. Hurt people.
The king paused near the top of the steps, turning to glare down. My shoulders immediately drew in as his pale-yellow eyes held my own.
“Your worries have the power to do more damage than they’re worth. Truthfully, I hadn’t thought the entire situation in-depth until you did. It made me realize why I’d even think to take you as my queen. The child. I knew…but I didn’t exactly know why. Now, I realize the potential, and that’s a dangerous path for us both. If Kelu weren’t my mate, I’d risk her love and approval to keep this child as my own. You did hit on something very important. I may not be its biological father, but it will carry me within its DNA. It is Ri, Ina. Not much, but even a trace gives me entitlement. And the Ri never neglects our own. Our very essence is what keeps us together. We connect here,” he said, pressing against my temple. “So even if Atlas pulls through or convinces Kelu to return, you and I will always be tied. As will your child. I couldn’t break the connection now if I wanted to. All the light in the universe wouldn’t allow me to walk away from what is part of me. That is the Ri way. That is forever.
Chapter 29
Atlas
The hours felt like days. The days like weeks. My body ached for reasons I didn’t understand, and all I could think about was Cara as I faced my people and their worried expressions.
“It’s complicated, but let me try to explain what I’ve learned.” My eyes flickered to the Dron. Daveed was standing in the back of the large cavernous room, his solid, pale frame so still, he could have been a statue. The back of my calves pressed into my throne, and I tried to push away my surprise at seeing him standing at the foot of my bed not an hour before. He wasn’t weak or translucent underground. Not even close.
“Third dimension is the earth dimension. It’s where ego rules. Where time exists. It is a place of lessons. Of growth. Most are blind to the truth, but a small percentage are beginning to awaken. My mate, your new queen, for one. The fourth dimension holds ghosts, angels, beings, dark and light, and ascended masters. So, good and bad. We know this already. This is where the Ri lives. It’s why it’s so difficult to travel to his castle. Imagine the entire universe placed exactly over ours, we just can’t see it. We can’t willingly access it.” I swallowed hard. “Fifth dimension is a unity consciousness where there’s no right or wrong. Ego is gone. That’s where earth and the humans are headed now. That’s where we all must aim to go inside ourselves. Some of us are already there. Daveed,” I said, gesturing to his waiting form, “has assured me so long as we do the internal work, we can match the five-D frequency and enter this fifth dimension. As we do, nothing changes from where we are, except what happens to us as a whole.”
“So…” Lu frowned, slightly raising his hand, “Why, if five-D is higher than the fourth dimension, do we stay here? Why do things have to be the same? Yet, Ri is unobtainable, and his existence is separate from ours. I don’t get it.”
I tried to ignore the unfamiliar weight of the crown on my head as I gave a shake. “It’s frequency, Lu. They’re different.”
“But why can’t fourth be the fifth since the higher one is the same as the third?”
My lips tightened as I took in Daveed’s emotionless face.
“I didn’t make this up. I’m only telling you what I’ve been told.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Someone told it wrong.”
Kelu rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s the way it is. Ri is fourth dimension, sixth density. We are third dimension, fourth density. Well, except Atlas and his queen. They are fifth density.”
“I may be fifth too,” Lu said, under his breath.
“You are not,” Kelu bit out. “You are fourth.”
“Fifth.”
“Third,” I snapped. “You are third if you continue to argue. Two, like a weed, if you do that damn half-grin you always do behind my back when I look away. As I was saying…” My people tried to hide their smiles. It was enough to bring out my own. Familiarity. This bickering with me, Kelu, and my best friend was what I knew. It was home, even if we weren’t on our planet and were missing hundreds of Paltenians.
“Density and dimension are obviously not the same. Dimension is a location, where density is our state of being. Many things come into play with how we ascend, and not all of it is explainable. Even now, I feel as though I may be missing pieces to these answers. Just know, earth is ascending, as are the humans who reside on it. Times are changing. Soon, very soon, this world will be too.”
“What does that say to us being here?” A younger woman made her way around one of the warriors in the front. “If earth and the humans are ascending, they won’t be the only ones. We live here too. Lots of races do.”
The Dron’s footsteps were solid as he made his way through the parting crowd. They didn’t have to hear his approach to feel it. Daveed’s frequency was so high, those close would automatically be repelled if theirs didn’t match. Not that it was a bad sensation. It was good. Maybe too good.
“You’re king here. Speak for me, Atlas.”
The order had me nodding as Daveed made his way to my side.
“Mada-Lee. What you say is correct. Everyone on this planet will be ascending.” I glanced at the Dron, letting his telepathic words and meaning settle in. “We can’t help but ascend,” I continued. “We have no choice. As Gaia transforms to five-D, so will everyone here. She will be a new earth. It has already begun in the form of energy waves. So far, they’ve been light, but we’re about to get hit by a very big one. The earth will shake. Volcanos will erupt. Her growing pains will be felt by all at one point or another. It can take years for these waves to bring us to where we need to be. Months. The transformation is not in one pair of hands. It is in all of ours. The more energetic help she receives, the faster the change. Already, mass meditations take place on more than one continent. Some don’t believe this makes a difference. I assure you, it does. We manifest our reality. I don’t believe it’ll take very long for her to ascend.”
“She?” Mada-Lee swallowed hard. “The planet lives? With thoughts?”
“She is alive, is she not?”
I said Dron’s words, but even I was stumbling over them. It made sense, although I had never given it thought.
“Yes, Sire,” Mada-Lee whispered. “And…she hurts?”
“Like you couldn’t imagine. But this will pass. It is a rebirth for everyone. So, we too, will feel waves of discomfort beginning to come in. It will range depending on each person.”
The crowd was beginning to buzz as they tried to make sense of it. It was true, even Paltenia ascended at one point, but it was millions of years before our time. Stories were more myth than record at that point. With the countless wars with Ri, we never got to settle for more than one generation. We were always on guard. Always on the defensive instead of actively living and focusing on our people. I was hoping coming to earth would change that. I didn’t get a chance to find out.
“What sort of symptoms can we expect? Will it pain us greatly? Will my children suffer?”
The three questions came from all over the open room. Calming energy settled throughout, and the Dron’s words had the answers leaving my mouth.
“The energy will come through the walls in the form of a pink or purple mist. Some of you may see it, others may not. If you do, you can’t outrun it. You can’t hide. It’ll go through you, and you’ll feel it immediately. But it’s nothing to fear. Your bodies will not accept energy you cannot hold. Rest assured, it will feel intense at times. It can range from headaches, to liquid in your ears, to nausea, congestion, and even upset stomach. Some of you may get rashes along your skin, while others will fight to stay awake. No two people will feel the same things. Just recognize the difference and take care of your body. If you’re tired, sleep. If you’re sick, stay hydrated and be patient with the process. This is a sacred time. Take great care of yourself. I will
leave instructions with your king.” My mouth opened, only to shut. “Yes. I’m always here to help with whatever you need. I’m afraid that’s all for the moment, though. I must speak with our guest in private, so please excuse us.”
I didn’t wait for a response as I gestured for Daveed to follow me to my private sitting room. Kelu and Lu followed behind and were already bickering to each other by the time they entered the enclosed stone room.
“Ascension? Daveed, what does this mean for my mate? Will Cara be experiencing the shift at Ri? Will she be getting sick as well?”
Specks of light glistened in his black eyes. The Dron stopped short of the stone chair, glancing at my sister who suddenly looked worried.
“No. But I’m afraid that’s because your link to her is obstructed. That could be a double-edged sword should you use Lu again to bridge the block.”
“What will happen?”
Daveed hesitated, and I could feel him searching out the ties. “Once you connect, she’ll be assaulted with both of your symptoms. The human body, no matter the density, is made to withstand only so much. The both of you will be able to hold more energy because of your genetic makeup. Your threshold is twice hers. If you reach out to her once the waves begin coming in stronger, that could be dangerous. Deadly. If you want my advice, refrain from contact and spare her the illness.”
“Refrain? And know nothing of her wellbeing? How do I know if Cara’s okay?”
“Trust.”
“Trust?” I repeated sarcastically. “Trust Ri, a murderous, sadistic killer? One bad second is all it’s going to take for him to snap and kill my mate.”
Daveed slowly shook his head.
“You know that’s not true.”
“Because of Kelu?” I stepped back, throwing my sister a look. “I refuse to believe he’ll hold to his deal. You didn’t see the happiness, the greed, on his face. You didn’t see Cara when we arrived. She’s…” my throat grew tight as I forced the words free. “She’s not the same. Not since she left me on the mountain. He did something. Something that could have stained her very soul. Her eyes…they were all but dead when Lu made our connection. Either the light is taking too much out of her, or he’s not only taking others’ light, but hers is bleeding through with it. And he doesn’t fucking care. He’ll kill her.”
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