“May I ask you as to why you left my mother in the garden knowing Heidan was awaiting to kill her outside?” Eveline asked quietly, her heart shaken and conflicted.
“It was not my wish, but as you saw she was indeed bound to your father who was a great man,” Heiden sighed as he rubbed his brows. “His intentions were honourable and when you are so powerful and are indeed an heir, those who ask for your hand in marriage are rarely honourable and often come baring agendas,” Heiden looked into Eveline’s face and felt a streak of pain run up his arms, hitting him directly in the heart as the image of his only daughter emerged before his eyes. Turning abruptly from her, he lifted a hand and placed it over his face. “Unyae’s suffering became acute and I could no longer watch on as she wilted away so I let her leave, knowing the risk she would find herself in. But for the first time in a long time my mind and heart were in sync. I knew that Heidan would come back to the garden seeking her and so agreed with your father that she would be safer within the walls of Caci than the walls of Calhuni.”
“I see,” Eveline mused, agreeing with him. “Why did you not reach out to Heidan? Why did you not try to make him see sense?”
“Being a God comes with its burdens,” Heiden said turning away from Eveline and striding to the high alter. “I watched the child grow up within the garden, showered with love and understanding. Still it did not alter the path I feared he would take. I knew that if he choose to walk in darkness, taking into account the loving life he had been given then he would always walk in darkness. If the love of a mother cannot sway you against the darkness then nothing can. It is as simple as that.”
“Maybe persuasion?” Eveline said with raised hands.
“Heidan fled to Islaer who had at that time recently invaded the Kingdom of Ruarr and executed the King, taking the throne for himself,” Heiden explained loudly. “Instead of fleeing from such a man, Heidan relished in the oppression that plagued the Kingdom, even took part in the pillaging and executions. He has no love towards all that grows and flourishes.”
“I am no equal against him,” Eveline said with a heavy heart as she came to the steps of the altar and sat down, tired and withdrawn, her head sore and her stomach hungry. “My powers, what little of them I do have are nothing in comparison to his own. And even when I think about it I shudder at the realisation that if I simply do nothing, the universe will fall to him and Lagar. I have no choice in the matter.”
“Did you not hear me when I said that I offer all those who pledge allegiance to me free will?” Heidan asked, turning from the altar and looking down at the scrunched up form of Eveline.
“Would you accept my refusal?” Eveline turned her eyes to him and held them for a moment. Heiden looked at her with concern before letting out a breath and coming to sit beside her.
“Before anything you are my blood, I want to give you what you think is best,” Heiden exclaimed quietly, taking her hands into his own. “If you do not wish to rule the three Kingdoms of Calnuthe or Heaven then I will respect your decision.”
“And what then? How will you protect Heaven?” Eveline asked.
“You really wish to know?” Heiden enquired with quipped brows.
“Yes, I think we should be honest with one another don’t you?”
“Indeed,” Heiden nodded regally. “I will have to re marry and produce an heir.”
“Why haven’t you?” Eveline asked with wide eyes.
“I loved your grandmother,” Heiden said with a flush. “I’ve never loved another and the thought of binding myself to another who is not Uneos has never struck me as an option.” For the first time, Eveline saw the true age of her grandfather, deep in his golden eyes lay time itself. When one first encountered the great God they would think him young but if they were to peer deep into his eyes they would see what Eveline now saw.
“What am I to do? I have no experience of ruling? I don’t know my people and they don’t know me,” Eveline said weakly, her thirst intensifying with every moment that passed. “I am no politician nor am I a warrior.” She let go of her grandfather’s hand and stood up, turning away and walking around the great room. “How can I take back my throne when I have never sat upon it nor even gazed upon my own lands? If you were to ask any man if I were worthy of ruling them they would laugh in your face and deem you mad. My brother is stronger, older and has a greater knowledge of you and my world. Tell me,” she turned to face Heiden who now stood at the altar, his body poured over a cup. “Do you have the gift of foresight? Can you see what lies before me?”
Heiden turned and in his hands held a golden cup.
“Come, drink,” he ordered kindly. “You are thirsty and tired.”
“I am all matters of things right now,” Eveline said darkly. “Do you know what I have done on earth? I and I alone have taken the lives of my mother and your angels. I have fallen in love with two men who are bound together by a prophecy. I am already tainted before I have even begun upon this journey you now wish me to take.” Eveline stood before Heiden and took the heavy cup from him, sipping deeply. “Tell me am I not unalike my brother.”
“Would you have killed those you loved if in your right senses?” Heiden asked Eveline seriously, taking the empty cup from her and placing it back on the alter table. “In answer to your first question, no I do not have the gift of foresight, my father did and his father before. You however do, you know that you have the ability to reach into the future and seize a certain moment before its conception. You must however never depend entirely on what you see, time is ever folding and vulnerable to alterations.”
“It is a gift I do not bear with ease,” Eveline replied with an eerie expression. “In reply to your previous statement, Never,” Eveline said firmly. “But that does not retract what I have already done. If I am as powerful as you deem me, why did I fall so willingly to Lagar’s witchcraft?”
“If you had known who you were before meeting him, you would have been able to fight his power of seduction,” Heiden said with compassion. “And if truth be told, you should have instantly fallen under his spell, but you did not and that proves to me the true strength that lies within you. Tell me, where you truly blinded as to what was going on within your mind?”
“No, I felt like a caged bird trying to get out,” Eveline said as she wiped her mouth. “But I couldn’t, not until my mother injected me with the antivenin.”
“It was not the antivenin that gave you the power to overcome Nathaniel, your possessor,” Heiden said. “It was the love within you that struck him from your mind and heart. No shadow can bare to feel love or any emotion that is linked to such a feeling.”
“But I succumbed to Lagar in the cemetery,” Eveline said with desperation, her hands tightly knotted in front of her.
“You had been rendered unconscious and were bitten again, you had no time in which to summon the strength to overcome the snakes poison,” Heiden replied as the sun’s rays began to fade from the temple, casting a shadow across the floor. “You are safe now, Lagar can no longer harm you, not now that you have been awakened.”
“Awakened at such a heavy cost to those around me,” Eveline said darkly. “Why did you leave it so long?”
“You were a child, a child who should not have born the weight of the universe until such a time as was appropriate, which is now,” Heiden answered flatly. “I placed you under the protection of Cael so that you would be safe.”
“Are you angered that I married him?” Eveline asked with a lowered gaze, shame and embarrassment covering her like a warm blanket.
“Are you willing to listen to me truthfully?” Heidan asked Eveline with raised brows.
“Yes, for it troubles me greatly,” Eveline whispered rather weakly. “Does this prophecy speak truth?”
“It does,” Heiden said with a nod. “For it was your mother that spoke of the prophecy when she was but a child.”
“She had the gift of foresight too?”
“Yes,” Heiden said quie
tly. “At times it was a gift and I was able to use that gift in order to help others. But sometimes the prophecy would come to nothing and so I learned that not all prophecies can be depended on.”
“So this prophecy about my husband may not be true?” Eveline asked hopefully, her hands tracing the golden walls of the temple. “There is still hope?”
“Answer me this,” Heiden said with a serious expression. “When you first met Galean, what did you feel? And answer me honestly.” The temple became quiet as Eveline stopped walking and gulped loudly. Her cheeks flamed with heat as her memory cast itself back to that moment, in which she reached up and laid her hand upon his heart, knowing in that moment that he was irrevocably linked to her and her to him.
“I felt as though fate had linked us together, whether it my will or not,” Eveline said lightly, keeping her eyes away from Heiden who watched on with curiosity. “Had he entered my life at an earlier time then maybe my own path would have been different.”
“You felt a love greater than the love you bore for you husband?”
“I say this with shame,” Eveline said weakly. “Yes.”
“Then there is truth in this prophecy,” Heiden concluded loudly, forcing Eveline to turn to him with desperate eyes.
“But Theodore is a good man,” Eveline pleaded, an image of her husband appearing before her. “He would wish nobody harm.”
“Cael falls into shadow,” Heiden said calmly wanting to ease her pain but unable to lie. “He gave his promise of love to another and broke an oath sworn to protect you but never to touch you in any way that insinuated he had stronger feelings. Your mother specifically stated that you were bound to Galean.”
“But Galean married long before meeting me,” Eveline said with confused eyes. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Your mother foresaw the death of Galean’s wife and daughter, had I known how they would have died then we would be travelling down a different path, however,” he waved one hand in the air. “Fate is not always our friend, even if that includes taking those we hold most dear from us.”
“Why does my husband fall into shadow? Can he not be saved?”
“He was one of the better guardians when young and impressionable, but as he got older his need for power and position grew,” Heiden replied, his hands now upon his hips. “So much so that the love he had yearned for and worked to gain for years meant little to him when propositioned with a place under my angel Gabriel. His first mission was to go to Calhuni garden and retrieve you.”
“But there is still time?”
“Do you suppose he will want a wife who is more powerful than himself?” Heiden asked with a shake of his head. “He will promise to love you but in time his promises will fade and mould into envy and even hatred. The prophecy foretells that the man who takes your heart will fall into darkness and shadow, he will submit himself to Lagar and with his submission, hand you over to Lagar in return for his own wants and needs.”
“You speak of a man I do not know, Theodore is kind and gentle,” Eveline smiled nervously. “We ran under the trees and learned to swim together among other things. This man you speak of is no husband of mine.”
“And yet you have felt his growing anger towards you, have you not?” Heiden argued.
“Anger that was justified, he was jealous of Galean and so he should have been considering the prophecy and closeness between us,” Eveline returned hotly. “I am hardly in the right, I should have refrained myself from Galean’s friendship knowing what I knew.”
“And yet as you pandered to his orders and felt shame, his heart was yearning for another,” Heiden said, watching the hope in Eveline’s eyes fade. “His love for Jophiel was akin to the love you now bare for Galean, but she is dead having sacrificed herself for Belle. Do you think that your husband will so readily forget or forgive?”
“Your words are hateful and sharp,” Eveline shouted rather ungently. “You mean to strike a divide between myself and my husband? Galean has gone, he has left to return home.”
“And yet Theodore does not wish for you to return to Unas, he wishes you both to continue with your life in Keswick.”
“And if I wish that too?”
“Do you? Can you walk back into your life as though nothing has altered? Do you wish to be ignorant of all that you are?”
“You said I had free will?”
“You do, but ignorance does not become you,” Heiden said with emotion. “You are too precious and too important. Do you wish to allow your Kingdom to fall into the hands of your brother? Do you wish for your people to suffer and become slaves to oppression?”
“I had no say in who my parents where, how would my return aid any of those people you claim to be so dependent on me? They think me dead!”
“And imagine the hope you would inspire if they knew you lived?” Heiden returned with a frown. “If you reach the garden of Calhuni and are crowned Queen, you will have powers greater than any man within your kingdom, even those who are gifted with magic. You will become the equal of Heidan, if not more powerful. Gain your throne and crown and you will give those, lost and oppressed a reason to stand by your side and serve you as loyal subjects. Do you doubt my words?”
“Each with their own agenda, every man follows that which he can gain, not lose,” Eveline smiled weakly. “I daresay Hitler would follow me knowing I held such power but only so that he could exploit it for his own purpose, are those the people I wish to ensnare into my cause?”
“Yes, a wise man keeps his enemies close, for if you wish to keep your Kingdom then you must know everything about it and in order to do that you need to keep those who would exploit you within sight, so that you can exploit them when needs be,” Heiden said with a daring gaze.
“And your enemies? How do you keep them close?”
“By infiltrating their ranks with my own spies and keeping Lagar alive,” Heiden said, his response surprising Eveline.
“Why?”
“If I killed Lagar then someone equally as evil if not more so would take his place. Keeping him alive and keeping an eye on him, I know his behaviour, know his ways more so than anyone else,” Heiden explained. “If I am to rid the universe of him I must rid it of his ideology first, when that falls so do the shadows and in the end so does Lagar.”
“And if that happened, how would you keep peace?”
“Unfortunately the universe will never entirely be rid of those who wish to oppose me, but there are ways in which we can control our enemies thus bringing about a form of peace and contentment. Men will never stop fighting one another for what they deem a justifiable cause, that is the way of man,” Heiden said with a sigh. “But for every bad angel or human there is double the amount of good people and angels and so really in the end we are victorious. If there is anyone we should be worried about it is my grandson and your brother. He is unpredictable because he has been showered with great power and position, and worst of all unbeknown to him, his thirst for power is indulged by his father not out of love but out of greed and gain. Do you think that Lagar will let Heidan live, knowing he is more powerful than he himself?”
“No, but why does he keep him alive then?”
“He cannot lay claim to my throne no matter if he killed me, he knows this and that is why he impregnated my daughter, thus giving birth to a son who would lay claim to the throne.”
“But even if Heidan was to take your throne, Lagar still wouldn’t be a legitimate heir?”
“As to that, I do not know,” Heiden mused seriously. Of course he had had thoughts as to how Lagar could claim the throne, Eveline being one of them. As of late an idea, repugnant and perverse had entered his mind, an idea so dark it made him, God of all things shake with nausea. He looked down at Eveline who was looking up at him with a strange look in her eye. No, it would be better to keep such a thought to himself. If she found her way to Galean and soon, then such a thing would never occur, Galean was bound to her, he was the only man who could and wo
uld protect her against such dark plans. But, if such a plan occurred and succeeded, the universe and all within it would alter in such a way not even he could fathom it.
“What is it?” Eveline asked with worried eyes.
“It is nothing,” Heiden lied, a weak smile forming on his lips.
“Something has caused you to become quiet, is it to do with Lagar’s plan?”
“Yes but it is of no significance,” Heiden said. They held each other’s gaze for a moment before both of them lowered their eyes.
“May I ask who it is that sits in my place? Who rules Calnuthe now? I know that Ruarr has been invaded by Islaer and that Taer has been taken by a man named Ravan?”
“Ravans kingship grows weak, but your own kingdom of Calnuthe…,” Heiden turned away from her, lifting his eyes to the high altar. “Are you willing to enter another door? I wish to show you the man who now sits upon your throne in Caci and what he is capable of.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Always,” Heiden said, raising a hand out for her to take. After a moment he felt her slight hand fill his own, large and strong hand. Before them another door sprouted out of nowhere and opened wide for both of them. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Eveline said as she took in a deep breath and followed her grandfather through the doorway. Together they fell into a void of darkness that sucked them downwards until they fell through another door onto a marbled surface. She felt no pain as she rolled onto her side, opening her eyes, finding Heiden already on his feet, looking down at her with a smile.
“Here take my hand,” he said, offering her one of his strong hands. Taking it, Eveline rose up onto her feet.
“I’m afraid that when I return to my physical body, I will be severely sick,” she said as she patted down her white gown and looked about.
“I promise you won’t be sick,” Heiden replied kindly as he watched her take in their surroundings.
One Crown & Two Thrones: The Prophecy Page 44