Dangerous Lovers

by Becca Vincenza

  The room in the center of the home, the one I adored, that held every ball or special occasion—even a few private dances—became clear. I loved that room because of the dome shape it was, for the three spiral staircases that hovered tightly against the walls, leading to every floor. I loved the red and the gold, how it seemed not only to fit a lost time, but every time. I loved how magical I felt in that room.

  Phoenix did not bother to create Rasure’s wing-in-fire sculpture, but I knew where it was currently resting, that it all but assaulted the room I loved, how she was able to attach that wing to the core of the home. Only ten feet blocked that wing from connecting to my precious room, ten feet that I had to fight tooth and nail for. I only won because that was the oldest part of the house and an addition to it would rob the room of its unique character.

  In Phoenix’s sculpture, there were children—too many to count—running through the halls, dancing and frolicking in that center room.

  “I was going to make my parents, my family proud, but instead I crashed into a lake. The money I was going to use to free the world ended me, simply because Rasure wanted that same money for God knows what. I even tried to give her most of it. I just wanted the house and enough to maintain it. I knew at the very least I could open the doors to those who needed a home. I trusted that the money for everything else would come someway, somehow.”

  “She fought you for the house?” Phoenix asked as his glance added the trees, the roots that connected beneath the surface.

  “From day one, she wanted me out. She tried to have me locked away, saying I needed help with my grief, but Skylynn protected me from that. Since my parent’s death, I have spent every night under this roof. Even when I wanted to run, give in to her, I couldn’t leave. It was mine.” I squeezed his warm hand. “It was ours.”

  “I still don’t understand how you moved it here,” he said in awe as the fire image spun above us.

  “Is that not in the goddess handbook—moving massive homes for the hell of it?” I teased.

  That made him laugh. “No, Love, I don’t think it is. I can’t imagine the energy it would have taken.”

  “All for naught, apparently.”

  “We have right now…” he said as he sent the fire back to its place.

  “Block the doors with fire and tell the world to let us be…at least for now,” I whispered as I rolled to my side to face him.

  His hand began to move across my back, ushering me into a deep sleep. “Done,” he said in a murmur. “Rest now. Your redemption and new life are mere hours away.”

  “I want my old one,” I said as I closed my eyes and flashes of the life I had with him danced in my thoughts.

  “I should be back before you wake.”

  My eyes flew open wide. “You’re not leaving. I have never once slept without ice surrounding me in some way. You owe me at least one night of warmth.”

  “By the time I leave your side, you will be so warm that no ice will invade your sleep. I don’t have to go yet. I will wait until there is no time to spare, and while you sleep I will fight your demons—only saving the last blow for you.”

  “Promise me you’ll smile, tease, and protect others while you do just that,” I said with a sleepy smile as my eyelids grew heavy.

  I couldn’t understand why I needed to sleep if I was dead, why I felt so tired, so weak. I was terrified that I would be taken to that lake again, relive that death once more. To fight it, I focused on this house as it was lifetimes ago.

  I dreamed, for the first time ever, in Phoenix’s arms. I dreamed the right way.

  I walked every floor, every room, letting the memories of my past fill the air. I never wanted to forget all that I had seen under this roof. As if I were called to it by the room itself, I kept finding my soul in the dome room, standing on the top stair, looking down to the beautiful floor.

  Over and over I tried to move from that spot, but the smooth stones across the floor, the pattern they had, kept calling my attention back to it. It was a wide circle with triangles reaching out. Inside of that, a smaller one within had the triangles going the opposite way. That pattern repeated until the circles were too small to be seen, offering an optical illusion that looked like wheels turning in different directions…like the insides of a clock.

  Before long, the room started to vibrate and I began to see symbols that I thought I knew but could not comprehend. In the dream, I ran down the steps as fast as I could as the pattern on the stones began to spin and a beaming light came from the center of the floor. Before I could reach that light, my eyes flew open.

  I wasn’t nestled against Phoenix before an inviting fire, I was in my darkroom. Mason’s phone was vibrating once again, waking us both but the ringing was an illusion. Gavin was at my desk, writing something at the speed of light.

  I sat up slowly, trying to reason my way through my dream and figure out how I’d gotten here all at once.

  “Where is Wilder?” I mumbled.

  Gavin looked up from his work, seeing both me and Mason wide awake now. “I haven’t seen him. It’s well past the point he should have shown up to meet us here.”

  “How far past that point?” I asked with fear in my tone. I knew that somewhere Phoenix was in fierce battle right at this very moment. I was terrified I would never see him again, that I didn’t say enough, that he didn’t know that…I loved him.

  “I’m starting to think that time is an illusion in death, but I know I woke some time ago, that I have been fighting with these words for what feels like an eternity,” Gavin replied, turning back to my desk.

  Mason and I stood to see what he was working on. It was the creed that both Skylynn and Phoenix had recited. ‘To redeem your soul, you must pass through the line of the moons—the flaming sons of the east and the west—to reach the seventh sister, whose touch will destroy the flames of evil that bind you.’

  Over the words ‘line of the moons,’ he had drawn what looked like horns, with a line…no, it looked like the symbol of the ram. “What is this?” I questioned.

  “Aries. I’d written a short story about symbols that had dual meanings last winter. The Zodiac symbol of Aries means ‘two moons’—at least I think it does,” Gavin said as he drew a triangle. “An Aries is to stand in front of you, with sons of the east and west to your side—you’re in the center. Mason was born in the east, I was born in the west.”

  “Was Wilder tested by Skylynn? Does he have fire wings?”

  “Never found him,” Mason answered.

  “He’s an Aries, though,” I said as I vaguely remembered that.

  “Barely,” Gavin said. “He was born on the cusp. What I don’t get is why we died. We were all there. We should have survived.”

  “No one knew to protect us. We were meant to protect them,” I said quietly as I thought over my and Phoenix’s conversation last night. All at once, I grew anxious. I wanted to know he was OK, that everyone fighting with him was.

  “But you were in the center,” Gavin argued as he drew a circle around the triangle. “Half of a star; no matter where Wilder stood—whether it was to the north or south—you would have been in a pentagram. That should have kept you safe inside or outside of this house, which rests on the same mark. All of us were together. If we weren’t, it would almost make sense.”

  As he traced the triangle, the symbols from my dream rushed through my mind. The floor of the dome room was moving in my thoughts. Fire was all around the staircases, the dome was open, and the stars above were spinning wildly.

  I turned briskly and climbed on the couch so I could reach the large stone that hid my journals.

  Mason came to my side and helped me slide it back. I reached my hand in the dark hole and felt around until I felt the one journal that I did see flashes of memories with when I found them. They were vague, though, like the journal had sat on something of mine several times but didn’t belong to me. That was half the reason I kept the others in the first place. I wanted to know wh
y they had no memories attached to them.

  I squinted my eyes closed, trying to make images appear so I could see the memories attached, but they were too weak. I barely saw any flashes in my mind, and the ones I did see were of candlelight, an inkwell, and a strong hand racing across the pages. I left the others where they were and pulled that one out just before Mason secured my hiding spot once more.

  I hopped down from the couch as I started to turn the pages. Most of this book contained some kind of blueprints to the manor, but words in newer ink were added around the drawings, along with more symbols. I turned to the page that had the dome room on it as I laid it down on the desk next to Gavin and Mason came to my other side.

  In this image, the marble floor was different. It almost looked more like the working parts of a clock because half of the circles were facing the other way. In the center was what looked like a girl with her legs pulled to her chest and her head down. Just before her legs were seven stars. I could not help but feel some kind of despair coming from that image, like she was trapped by some unseen force…maybe even the seven stars before her.

  Just above this image, there were more, in an order that looked like transformation. When seen as one, the images showed the girl rising slowly, the seven stars moving out. Just before where the girl was standing, three birds came to her, one before her and one on each side. The ones to her side had daggers clenched in their claws. The one before her seemed fiercer than the others, without a weapon in its talons.

  By the time the image showed the woman standing, the seven stars were outlining the image, the two birds had their swords crossed above the girl, and the third was so bold that it was the background. The girl now looked comfortable, confident, bold, and in control.

  “I’ve seen this,” Gavin said as he reached for the words around the images, the tiny symbols.

  “Where?” I asked with a gasp.

  “Dream,” Gavin breathed.

  “I think I have, too, brother,” Mason said. “This is ice,” he said, pointing to the faint triangle symbol around the girl in despair. “I remember the cold…” He pointed to what could only be flames, faint lines around the point where the seven stars seemed to escape into the heavens. “This is fire. This is warmth.”

  “And this is both in balance,” Gavin said as he let his long fingertips trace where the girl was standing, just before a flaming bird. Fire and ice.

  Gavin squinted his eyes closed like he was trying to remember something—or trying not to. Either way, his mind was clearly racing. “Son of a bitch! We were supposed to die,” he said with a gasp.

  “That or we did before,” Mason said as he turned the page.

  There, I saw my dream sketched out in a very primitive way. Flames were all around the staircases, and the ceiling looked open with rushes of stars flying by. The floor had more detail, almost like it was falling, and the roots under the house were there, but they looked more like detailed symbols, rings inside of each other, spheres inside of those rings, and one focal point in the center that was made to look like it was shining.

  “Sirius,” Gavin said under his breath.

  “We moved the house,” Mason said as he locked eyes with Gavin.

  I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t like how something was clicking for them, but I was blind as a bat. All I wanted was for someone to tell me that I was that girl, that my seven devils would be set free, that I, the girl made of ice, could stand with fire.

  “Explain,” I demanded as I felt my stomach tighten. Where was Phoenix? Why was he not back yet? He needed to see this.

  “Does it not look like this goes down?” Mason asked, pointing to the floor that had the most detail. “Like a stairway?”

  “It does go down,” Gavin agreed. “That is where they are, either the clocks or the souls—something is down there.”

  “New plan, boys…we are not moving on tonight.” I wasn’t going anywhere until both Phoenix and Skylynn saw this and explained to me how what I was going through now was written forever ago. “Call me crazy, but if someone drew this they were probably drawing something they witnessed,” I tapped my finger on the book, “meaning this already happened, and obviously something didn’t pan out right. I’m not dying only to face my seven devils again.”

  I gazed down at the drawing, trying to call back memories, hoping some would lead me back to what could have happened in that room. But I couldn’t manage to see the last moments, which told me they had to be agonizing, that my mind was blocking me on purpose.

  “I got nothing. I have no memories of anything like this.”

  “I think we do,” Mason said, still gazing down at the book.

  I went to question him, but Gavin spoke up first. “Skylynn was trying to make it easier for us to remember who we are next go around,” Gavin said. “Last night, she put us in a ring of fire, covered us with some kind of water and herbs, and spoke words over us. She said it was because when we are reborn we may not have time to grow up before we are needed, that we might have to fight as children—she wanted to make that as easy on us as she could. She said whatever she did to us was meant to awaken the soul, to ensure that this life lesson was carried on to the next. All it did was make the dreams we’d had since we stepped foot in this house more real. I’m having a hard time seeing this point, though. When I try, I just see light, spinning stars.”

  “It’s having a reverse effect on me, man,” Mason said as he pointed to the dome. “We moved the freaking house.” He locked eyes with me. “We had to. We had to come to help our own. We had to die—seven sacrifices. Seven that bind us until our immortality was born with our death.”

  “Seven sacrifices, or seven sisters?” I questioned, gaining hope with each word they spoke.

  “To get here, sacrifices. Once you were here, you would rise as one of the seven. The spell was symbolic. It was designed to get you to reach the point we knew you were meant to be at.”

  “Is that why the number seven is haunting me?” It truly was. I lost seven souls I loved. I was told that because I was one of the seven sisters, I could not hold the one boy I could not stop thinking about. I could swear he was in my veins at this moment, and now I was looking at an image that had seven stars around a girl.

  “No doubt,” Mason nearly fumed. He thought, like I did, that I had been destined to lose my family, that somehow it was planned for me to live through the grief I had endured. And just like me, he could not grasp a reason for anyone to live through that much pain. Something went really wrong long ago.

  “There is no way I would have asked seven people to die to get me here.”

  “You didn’t. It’s not the same on that side,” Gavin offered. “Time is not the same. You could move through that fall, live a full lives here, died and return, and only a few days would have passed.”

  I had every reason to believe what they were saying now. Not only were they using the same words I heard in the North Wing, but they also had the same outlook on how time was perceived in this reality. I heard Guardian say that every minute he stood there, years passed on this side.

  Those seven sacrifices could have helped us move here, died, and been back before dinner. Knowing that it didn’t happen that way sent a chill of foreboding down my spine.

  “Right,” I breathed, letting them know my memories were catching up to them.

  “We did this,” Gavin said. “Our spell,” he said as he pulled the book closer. “I wrote this on the other side.”

  “The bright universe, or rather reality,” I acknowledged.

  He moved the page and pointed to the roots made to look like four rings, his finger landing on the center. “This divides two realities. This is a wall now, and it should not be. Darkness wants its own rule, as does light…but there must be both, so chosen crested souls were sent to bring balance. We followed to ensure that if they had fallen that they could return home, that our home would know to send more warriors when we did send someone home.”

&nb
sp; “You realize this is real, right?” I questioned. “This is not some book,” I glanced at Mason, “some song.” I looked down. “This is our life. Two realities. Phoenix’s. Shadowed souls. Escorts. Light. Dark. Death.” I stood up straighter. “I could never dream up anything this wicked. We need to figure out what went wrong, then. What else do you remember?”

  “It’s all about that freaking number: seven,” Mason said. “Seven souls carried us here. They shielded us so the darkness would not know we had come. They were supposed to be set free to go home with our death. Our power was to be dormant until it reached its peak, then our death came, their freedom came. That should have happened forever ago.”

  “But it didn’t. Something had to have gone wrong,” Gavin said as his eyes rapidly moved across the page on the journal.

  “What if our shield was taken before we gained power? What do you do when you lose seven souls without warning?” I said with a tremble.

  They both glanced at me. They knew my wild emotions had moved to the loss of my five sisters and parents. The ice around us was so thick that the journal had been buried. I didn’t reach to squeeze my wrist like I had a million times before. Instead, I thought of Phoenix, my Sebastian, the fire he was, the power he was. The ice vanished at that instant.

  Out of habit, Mason looked to my wrist. He lifted the one that had my three watches on it.

  “Count down,” he said in a ghost of a whisper.

  I looked down to see two of my watches now working. According to them, it was eleven PM.

  “How long have they been working?” Gavin asked in a hollow tone.

  “They weren’t working just before I knew I was dead. Honestly, I haven’t looked since then.” I mean, why would I look at a watch that had never worked? Checking the time was not even in my vocabulary.

  “Midnight. One hour to find the clocks, our daggers, set your seven devils free, and defeat Rasure. One hour to become who we are meant to be,” Mason declared.

  “Are you telling me we never needed Phoenix or Skylynn? Is that what you’re saying? If we set my family free—which basically comes with ending Rasure—we are risen?”