by Kristie Cook
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Alexis…you do need to remember something, though,” Mom said. “You need to understand this won’t go away. They will eventually increase the pressure. You are royalty, honey. You have responsibilities.”
Her words burned my ears, their meaning slowly washing over me, hot lava scorching my soul. I would have to choose. Stay true to my love, to my soul-mate, remain Tristan’s faithful wife no matter how long it took, even if doing so meant no daughter. Or assume my responsibilities to a society that depended on me for its future, on the daughter I needed to have, even if it meant breaking my vows…letting go…moving on.
The liquid fire scalded the edges of my wounds, making them throb with pain. Regardless of how much I’d been trying to convince myself that I needed to, I just couldn’t move on. I couldn’t let go of the hope that we would be together again. Just thinking about doing so in such real terms felt like sharp claws ripping at my inner core, tearing at my soul. It would die with that choice…and so would Tristan’s. After all, if our souls were bound as tightly as Rina said they were, the death of one meant the death of the other. I could not do that to him. I owed him so much more.
I turned slowly. Mom and Owen looked at me expectantly.
“We’re all relying on you, Alexis,” Mom murmured.
“Well, then,” I said, “I guess we’re all fucked.”
I slammed my bedroom door shut and threw myself on the bed. I knew that was the wrong thing to say. Once again, I’d snapped because of my emotions. Emotions that were tearing me apart, ripping me in two. Right and wrong no longer mattered anyway. I couldn’t do anything without devastating consequences. To me. To Tristan. To Dorian. To our whole damn society. I had actually stated the truth.
That’s right. You. Are. Fucked.
I startled at the thought. It didn’t sound like my “voice”—the way I heard my own thoughts in my head. Though I’d just said the same thing to Mom and Owen, this was not me. Was it?
Who the hell else would it be?
Again, the voice sounded different, strange. But it was definitely in my head. It could only be my thoughts.
Of course it is. This is the real you. The one you’ve finally been letting out recently. The one who knows the truth and isn’t afraid to say it.
I didn’t understand myself. What the hell did that mean?
Think about it, Alexis. Who are you really? Some miserable wench who can’t get over herself? Too afraid to do anything? Come on, you know what you really want to do. Why hold back?
Again, I didn’t understand. Because I really didn’t know what to do.
Yes, you do. You know you can put an end to all of this. No more suffering. No more choices. No more council or Amadis at all, for that matter. And you won’t have to deal with any of it. You’ll be gone.
What?! I covered my ears with my hands, as if they could shut out the internal voice. The thoughts sounded too much like suicide. I had never been suicidal. I couldn’t do that to Dorian, to my mother, to the Amadis…to Tristan. Even if it were just a thin thread, I really did have hope.
Oh, give it up. There’s no hope. No hope for anything. Like we just agreed, you are fucked. All of you.
I would never kill myself!
Then don’t. You have other options, you know. You do have other family…remember?
I nearly screamed. Holy shit! What the hell was happening to me? This was a bigger mind game than Swirly had ever played.
Hell. That’s what’s happening to you. It could be your home. We hold your desires right here. You can have it all with us. With them…nothing. With us, everything. Your soul-mate. Your son. You don’t have to worry about having a daughter with us. We’ll love you and worship you anyway. You can be our queen. Your king is already here, waiting….
“Stop it!” I gasped aloud.
You know this is what you want.
“No!” I said, louder this time.
But the voice wouldn’t shut up. It kept taunting. The evil blood—that of my sperm donor, Lucas, the Daemoni’s most powerful warrior—coursed like an icy stream through my veins. I could feel it trying to take over. I curled into a ball, my hands still over my ears, my eyes squeezed shut, my body shaking uncontrollably.
“No. No, no, no!”
Yes.
“This is not what I want!” An electric charge filled the air. The hairs on my arms stood on end and I heard a crackling sound around me. Again, the pendant heated against my skin.
You know it is! Let go, Alexis. Let it all go. Find comfort with us.
“No! Please, God, help me!”
The voice fell silent.
I trembled so hard, the bed shook under me. My pulse thudded in my ears, but at least I heard nothing else. I opened my eyes and remained in a ball, staring at nothing and praying for the voice to stay away. The energy in the room settled, as did the pounding in my chest. My blood finally warmed and the shivering stopped.
But fear still wrapped itself around me. Nothing like this had ever happened before. I was half Daemoni, but not evil. Rina assessed me every time she saw me and said the evil was repressed, virtually non-existent. So what the hell just happened?
Was the state of my mind bringing out the worst of me? That was certainly possible, I supposed. I suddenly remembered the lights in Dorian’s window—the two little fires. Had those been my own eyes? I shuddered again.
This afternoon and evening with Dorian had been good. Too good. Almost as if I’d swung into a maniacal state from the chaos earlier in the day. And now I had to pay for it. The conversation with Mom and Owen…the realization of just how bad everything was…an Evil Alexis trying to push her way out…. I would really lose it at this rate, if I hadn’t already. I just hoped the good side would win, that Mom would lock me up before I did anything…bad.
I couldn’t move. I felt drained of all energy. I lay there, with the light still on, and squeezed my eyes shut. I needed to see the beautiful face. I just wanted to go back to the way things were, when I could count on the same dream, seeing him every night. I had my miserable moments then, but I was mostly just foggy and I missed the fog. If I never found Real Alexis again, I preferred Foggy, who was a hundred times better than all these other alter egos.
The memory-dream tried to replay but even my subconscious mind couldn’t focus—couldn’t make his face clear. I woke up at 3:39 sobbing and my body burning. It didn’t ache with soreness from the running. It actually burned as the muscles repaired themselves from the strain I’d put them through. When I finally fell back to sleep, the memory-dream didn’t start again. The slideshow on the mountain played instead…and every time Tristan’s face started to surface, Owen’s pushed it away. And the images of Owen weren’t really memories. They looked more like…possibilities. No, no, no! I’m not only forgetting… Oh, hell no! He can’t be replaced!
Awake at 5:28. I lay in bed, though, the aberration of last night still frightening me. The state of my mind seemed to be deteriorating and the council’s demands had apparently been too much for my fragile psyche. I felt even closer to the edge of that abyss—my toes curling over its lip, my body leaning forward for the fall. Only Dorian and that wispy thread, frayed and in danger of snapping, kept me from the plunge. That tiny bit of hope.
Please, baby, I need you. I need you, not anyone else. What if they…? I couldn’t bear to complete the thought…but then I couldn’t help it. Would they force me to mate with someone else? Could I do that? Could I ever be able to tuck this part of me away and force myself? I didn’t think so. Not without undeniable proof that Tristan was…gone, really gone. But what if proof never came? Time alone seemed to be enough proof for the Amadis. When Rina joined our souls, though, during our wedding ceremony, she said nothing and no one could ever sever our union. Not distance, space or…time.
The more I thought about everything, the less any of it made sense. Rina said we were made for each other. The Angels had specifically created our souls
to unite with each other. How could there ever be anyone else? Such an idea went against everything the Amadis had been banking on since I was born. Were they wrong? Were our souls not really one?
Physical pain shot through my chest, taking my breath away.
The pain answered my questions. Of course we were meant for each other. Of course our souls were united. There could never be anyone else. So…what on earth went wrong? Why was I here, alone with no daughter and a son who supposedly shouldn’t exist? Why did I feel like I was losing our connection, my love’s memory? Why was all of this happening?
Nothing made sense and I would drive myself even more insane trying to figure it all out, so I stopped trying. At least for now. I literally rolled out of bed, nearly falling to the floor. I glanced at the bag containing my new running clothes and shoes, untouched since I bought them. They held no interest for me now. What a waste of money. I knew that urge to run was a fluke. Yesterday’s strange burst of energy had dissipated, but my mind felt wide awake.
So I trudged into my office, turned my laptop on and plopped into my chair to wait for it to boot up. As soon as it did, my email opened. I didn’t want to even look at my inbox. No one emailed me but my agent and my editor at the publishing company and right now, their emails would only be complaints or demands for new chapters. Chapters I still didn’t have. I moved the mouse to click the X and close the email program, when something caught my eye. A new message from Rina.
Very strange. I couldn’t remember ever receiving an email from Rina. She wasn’t exactly the technological type. I knew she used email out of necessity with Mom, but only rarely. So this must be important. I double-clicked the message.
“Alexis, I understand it is difficult for you to try to move on and I truly wish your situation was different. I wish I could make it better for you, but, unfortunately, there is nothing I can do. I do hope I can help you get past this, though, because it is in the best interests of the Amadis and humankind. I believe the attached video may help you let go of your past and accept your future.”
I stared at the message for several minutes, trying to understand it. The words didn’t sound like Rina’s and I just couldn’t believe she would actually deliver such a message in an email. This was all out of character. It must be really bad. A lump grew in my throat with this realization. Whatever the video showed, it was something she couldn’t tell me on the phone or even deliver through Mom. So bad, neither of them could even voice it. I instantly knew I didn’t want to watch the video. Yet, acting on its own accord, my trembling hand moved the mouse to the file and double-clicked.
Ian, the ugly Irish ogre who’d dropped the bomb on me about the Amadis plan for my marriage, appeared on the screen. He stood in a darkened room, a spotlight trained on him, wearing black leather pants, a black trench coat and no shirt. His red hair provided the only real color to the scene. His lips pulled back, exposing his crooked teeth, whether in a grin or a snarl, I couldn’t tell.
“We know ya want to go to the media,” he said in his Irish accent, “to protect your lil lassie’s reputation. But ya might want to think twice ‘bout that. If you do, if you acknowledge Seth’s existence in any way, heads will roll.”
He cackled his disgusting laugh as the recording cut to another scene. This one had all the appearances of a group of terrorists with a hostage, just like those seen in the early years of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Several men dressed in Middle Eastern tunics, sabres hanging from their leather belts, stood in a circle around someone unseen. Those in front of the camera moved to the side. My breath caught.
“Oh, no,” I gasped.
The shirtless hostage knelt on his knees, a burlap sack over his head. One of the terrorists—a Daemoni, I assumed—held his sabre to the hostage’s neck. I had no way of knowing for sure without seeing the face, but the build seemed close to right, too close, from what I could remember. And then I saw it. My hands flew to my mouth. The blood drained from my head, coagulating into a ball in the pit of my stomach.
Just below the curve of the knife, on the hostage’s chest, barely visible over his heart, a darker pigmentation against the rest of his pale skin. When our souls were joined in marriage, it had burned bright red. The Amadis mark. Choking, gasping sounds gnarled in my throat, the scream unable to pass the huge lump.
“You tell the world anything, we show them this,” Ian spoke in a voiceover.
“Alexis!” a voice screamed. A very familiar voice. One I had heard only in my dreams for over seven years. It careened into a wail of tortured agony.
Then the Daemoni with the sabre jerked his arm. The camera’s view dropped, but unlike the news producers who cut away from the gore at this point, it angled in on the burlap sack, now rolling on the floor in a pool of blood.
Chapter 4
I felt completely numb. I sat completely still, only my finger moving on the mouse to click the Play button over and over and over again. My brain refused to register what I saw as I watched it replay, as if I watched some amateur video staged in Hollywood, fake blood and all. But slowly, the reality of it slithered its way into my mind. And all I could think was, It’s not him.
“Mom?” Dorian asked, running into my office sometime later and making me jump.
I slammed the laptop shut. I couldn’t let him see that. He couldn’t know about the video at all. Because it wasn’t real. And that hostage wasn’t his father.
I opened my arms and he climbed into my lap. I held him tightly against my chest, the pressure of his body like a catalyst to keep me breathing.
“Alexis,” Mom called from down the hall. I could tell she rushed toward us with each syllable sounding closer. “Rina’s email account’s been hacked. Don’t open—”
She cut herself off as she charged into my office and saw me. Something on my face must have told her I’d seen the video because her own face crumpled with what should have been my pain. I simply shook my head. She pulled in a deep breath and rearranged her expression.
“Come on, Dorian, honey, Uncle Owen’s making you breakfast,” Mom said. My arms fell numbly to my sides as she pulled Dorian off my lap. He ran off for the kitchen.
“It’s not him,” I whispered.
Mom closed the door, came over to me and swiveled my chair around to face her. She squatted in front of me, her hands on my knees.
“Honey—” she started.
“It’s not him,” I repeated, louder now.
“We don’t know—”
“I said it’s not him!” I threw my hands to my face. My body began trembling again. My head shook back and forth. “It’s not him. I don’t know how I know. I just do. It’s not him, Mom. It can’t be!”
She rubbed her hands against my thighs. “I know, honey. I mean…I don’t know. I just know what you’re feeling. I know it’s hard to believe.”
“I don’t believe. I know!” I cried into my hands. “Don’t you? Can’t you feel the truth?”
She sighed. “You know I haven’t been able to feel anything at all. And we haven’t been able to find anything. We’ve tried to send soldiers in, but, if the Daemoni do still have him, we have no idea where.”
I stopped shaking as I listened. She’d never given me so many details.
“They lie so much, we never know what to believe. And Rina’s heard nothing from her other sources about any of this.” She sighed again. “And this video…we’ve never been able to figure out if it’s him or not. Our people examined every frame and couldn’t determine if it was even real, let alone who the hostage was.”
I dropped my hands from my face. “What do you mean? You’ve seen this before? You’ve known about this?”
She grimaced. “Yes, honey. We’ve had this video for a few years.”
“A few years?” My jaw dropped with disbelief.
“When the media did that whole character bashing about your having Dorian so young and out of wedlock, we were going to make an official statement. But then the Daemoni sent this video,
threatening to send it to the media worldwide if we said anything at all. We decided it best for you and Dorian that we just keep quiet. Ignore the rumors and let them run their course.” She paused, then added quietly, “No one wanted you to see this.”
“Until now.”
“We don’t know who sent it or why.”
“It’s obvious why! The council wants me to move on and they thought this would convince me. Well, they’re wrong. It doesn’t mean a damn thing to me!”
The next thing I knew, I sat at the head of my bed, my arms wrapped around our wedding picture and my knees drawn up in a ball. I didn’t remember if I had walked here purposely or had fled to the refuge of my room. I didn’t even know how long I’d been sitting here, rocking back and forth, whispering, “No, no, no.”
Before this, I’d already worked through the first four steps of the grieving process, getting stuck on the depression part…and sometimes moving backward. I had never reached acceptance, though. The council—at least one person—thought they could rush me into it with this video. But the idea back-fired. It pushed me back. All the way back to denial. Because I absolutely refused to believe my husband was beheaded in the video. In fact, with the way the camera cut away from the hostage and then the angle of the view…I couldn’t be certain there was even a head in the sack rolling on the floor. The scene really could have been staged, just theatrics, as Mom seemed to imply. But someone obviously wanted me to see it…and to believe it.
How stupid could they be? Did they really think I would be so easily convinced? Our connection was too strong. Or is it? I froze at this thought. I’d been losing him in my memory and now even in my dreams. Our connection had actually been quite weak lately. Mom knew that. Owen had probably figured it out. They said they hadn’t told anyone, but now someone on the council knew and tried to take advantage of my weakness. Tried to shred my hope, as if slashing that grotesque sabre right through my thread.
I squeezed my eyes shut and saw the images in the video. It could be convincing, actually. Quite convincing. Especially with the Amadis mark on the hostage’s chest. And his voice…beautiful and horrible at the same time…screaming my name.