We were monsters.
“Come on, let me take you to meet my family,” Ariese says, grabbing Renee’s hand and leading her the way we just came.
“Isn’t your home the other way?” Renee asks, casting a glance in the way that we were going.
“No? That is the way to the castle and other homes. Mine is in the opposite direction.”
Renee casts another hurt look our way, but this time, it’s tinged with suspicion and anger. Good. She needs to be suspicious of us. She’s been way too trusting of us this entire time. It made it much harder to deceive her when she glanced at me with so much trust and hope in her eyes.
And now she’ll think that what we shared together was a lie.
It wasn’t.
It was the truest thing I've ever felt in my entire life.
A bond could never be formed between two people unless the Ancestors deem it worthy. It also can’t be formed unless the two people care about each other genuinely. But she doesn’t know that, because she doesn’t know a damn thing about who she is. It’s almost as if I could hear the time ticking down until we lost her for good… until she finds out that we are here to take her to her own version of hell.
And if I know Zavid, I know that he’s not in the least bit thrown off by this new development. I’ll have a short window to tell Renee what she really means to me. And to warn her if I can.
35
Renee
The guys were leading me in the wrong direction. They were taking me to the castle, even though I told them that I don’t want to be anywhere near it. But, what confuses me the most, is the fact that they were taking me the opposite direction of my Aunt’s house.
“I should definitely just kill them now,” Sheya spits out. “This is more than enough evidence to show that they are up to something and we can’t trust them.”
“We can’t kill them! We haven’t even heard their side of the story.”
“What do you need to hear? They’ve been lying to us from the start. Is there really anything else they can tell you?”
“I just want to talk to them.”
“You’re insufferable.”
We walk silently down the street. I don’t bother erecting a shield over the guys, mainly because I’m pissed as hell at them, but truly because no one is even coming remotely close to our little group.
“That’s odd. Everyone is giving us a wide berth and shooting nasty looks over here,” Aunt Ariese says.
“Yeah, uh. That’s my fault,” I say, sheepishly. “Some Blessed were being disrespectful to my friends, so I challenged one of them in front of everyone. Safe to say, no one has been bothering us since.”
She glances at me with wide eyes and an even wider smile. “That sounds like something my Ren would do.” She reaches out and grabs my hand, leading me towards her home. It was another twenty minutes until we walked into a little village. Now I see what Zavid meant.
There were no buildings on our walk for the last ten or so minutes, and now we’re here. With homes and small shops sprinkled around. People stopped and stared at us. Some gasped out loud. It wasn’t until two people broke out from the crowd with a cry, that I noticed them immediately.
“Dawn! Dan!” I run towards them. We collide in the middle of the street, falling to the ground in a tangle of limbs and tears.
“Ren?! Oh Ren! We thought you were dead!” Dawn cries out. Dan doesn’t say anything. He just holds us tightly as we cry on the ground. My face is squished against Dawn’s, and our heads are firmly pressed against Dan’s chest.
“Dawn,” I manage to get out. “I’m sorry, Dawn. But Ren is dead.”
There’s a moment of strained silence as they both realize that they’re holding a virtual stranger. We scramble off of the ground while staring at each other.
“How?” Dan finally chokes out. “You look exactly like Ren. The only difference is your hair.”
“Yeah, well, it used to be as long. But Sheya cut it all off when they were in charge,” I say.
“Sheya? Is that your Inner Self? Why would they do such a thing like that?” Dawn asks.
“Um, because we kind of hated each other until we got here?”
“Children, let’s take this back to the house. We’re making a scene,” Aunt Ariese interjects.
“Mother, we’re two-hundred and seventeen years old. I would hardly call that ‘children’,” Dawn huffs.
“Wait, did you say two-hundred and seventeen?” I choke out.
“Yes?” Dan answers. “We’re coming up on our day of birth. Mother was out gathering supplies for the celebration.”
“So, that means that Ren died two-hundred years ago?” I ask my aunt.
“Yes, dear.” Her face drops at the mention of Ren. “That was the same day I lost my sister and brother-in-law.”
“When they fought against the King. That’s the night I died, too?”
They all stared at me with utter fear and shock, and I can feel the hard stares from the guys. Aunt Ariese grabs my hand and leads me to one of the largest homes in the mini village. It stood three stories tall and the paint told a story of pride, love, happiness, and loss. I wanted to stand there and stare at every little detail until I had it all memorized. But Aunt Ariese had other plans. She drags me into the house and leads us immediately to a small sitting area. I don’t have any time to look at the modern decorations before she’s grilling me.
“Who are you?” she bluntly asks. The twins sit next to me on the sofa, and the guys spread out around the room, opting out of a seat. Aunt Ariese sits beside me on the sofa perpendicular to my own.
“My name is Renee Imani Harrington. I was born on Earth to Clarence and Jane Harrington, who are human. I turn 18 in a few months, I’m a senior in high school. I love honey buns and reading books. I have an Inner Self recently named Sheya. We never got along until we came here. Before finding out what I was, I thought I was insane and possessed by a demon. Sheya hated me and made sure my life sucked. I was found by these three and they said that you… they said that they knew who you were and that they’d bring me to you. I’m guessing they were lost so it’s a great thing that we ran into you. Oh, and I’m also reincarnated from Ren. So I know who all of you are because I’ve seen you in my dreams.” I don’t know why I protected the guys. I guess I’m just waiting for them to explain themselves to me.
“Dumbass,” Sheya snaps.
“You may be right.”
They sit there in stunned silence. For a second, nothing happened. Then, Aunt Ariese and Dawn burst out in tears and enveloped me in a sopping embrace.
“Oh, Ren. I knew you would come back to us!” Aunt Ariese sobs out.
“I’ve missed you so much, Cousin!” Dawn says.
I look over her head and lock eyes with a silently crying Dan. He smiles at me, and it’s almost the same smile he gave me on the day of the Ceremony. I don’t bother to look at the guys, because this isn’t a moment for them.
I give them a few more moments of crying before I break their hearts. Again.
“I’m sorry, you guys. But I’m not Ren. I’m Renee. My friends and family call me Ren, but that’s just because it’s shorter than calling me Renee all the time. Ren and I may have the same soul, but I’m not her. I’m sorry.”
“Still. This is more than what we’ve ever expected. We will remember that you are different. But if you share her soul, then you share the prophecy,” Aunt Ariese says, leaning back from our embrace. Dawn leans back as well, but she reaches out and threads her fingers with mine.
“Uh, what prophecy?” I ask.
“It is said that the almost priestess will come into power and save the realm. We always believed it to be you, but you perished the same night as your mother. Without you, the realm has been dying and the King has gone mad with power. Now that you’re here, you can save us!”
“Um, pump your brakes for a second, please. I’m meant to do what? Save the realm? How am I supposed to save the realm?”
�
�You have to kill the King. You and your Inner Self.”
You know that feeling when your stomach feels as though it’s about to turn inside out and you can’t do anything about it? My head starts to swim and I feel like the walls are closing in on me.
“Where’s your bathroom? Please,” I stress when they only pause to stare at me like I’m crazy. Dawn points down the hall and I get up and rush towards it. After opening doors into bedrooms, I finally fall into a nice, posh bathroom. Everything about this bathroom screams modern Earth and I’m thankful for that as I regurgitate everything I ate into the toilet.
I rinse my mouth out with the cold faucet water and slide down against the door. This can’t be happening.
“Pretty sure it is. That’s the first thing I’ve heard since this trip started that feels true.”
“So what? You think that we’re here to kill the king that killed my parents and my past self? Save a dying realm? And skip into the sunset?!”
“I think that we should hear your aunt out and figure out what our true purpose is. You heard Ren. We’re here for something great. Come on, Dipshit,” Sheya says, almost lovingly.
I get up from the floor and turn towards the mirror. My eyes are puffy and my hair is a mess, but I’m otherwise presentable. I grab a brush that’s sitting on the counter and run it through my hair before walking out of the bathroom with false confidence.
My family looks up at me as I slink into the sitting room, all of my false confidence easily fleeing me as I’m faced with my future.
“I’m so sorry, Renee. I thought your friends would have told you,” Aunt Ariese says. I cut my eyes towards my “friends” before turning back to her.
“No, they seem to have forgotten to mention such a big thing to me. I… if it’s ok with you all, I’d like to not talk about it for a moment.”
“That’s understandable. But I hope you don’t mind us celebrating your return home! The twins would love to share their day of birth with you.”
Tears spring into my eyes, but I won’t let them fall. “Thank you both. I’d love that.”
“Great!” Dawn says. “Tomorrow is going to be a night to remember!”
She had no idea how right she was.
36
Renee
The next morning, Aunt Ariese and my cousins take me to see the house that Ren was raised in. It’s no surprise to me that the house was squarely built and only colored minimally. But what did surprise me was the tidy state that the house was in.
I would have thought that it would have looked like a haunted house since it sat empty for two centuries. Instead, it’s the closest thing to a mansion that I’ve ever seen here in Relvaria and it looks as if it was recently tended to.
“We keep it clean,” my aunt says to me, as if she could read my mind. “There’s no way that we could let my sister’s house fall to shambles. She would come back from the afterlife and have my head.” She laughs, but it’s tinged with sadness.
“No one has stayed here since Ren and her parents were killed?” I ask incredulously. “How come no one has moved in in all of that time?”
“This house has always belonged to the Priestess and her family. Ren was meant to be the next Priestess in training, but you must know what happened to deter that already.”
“No, I’m sad to say that I don’t. The last memory I have is of you doing Ren’s hair before she were to go to the cave for the ceremony.” Ariese’s face lit up at the memory as she walks us into the house.
The house is beyond beautiful. Whereas the outside lacks color, the inside is bursting with it.
“My sister was always a conservative person, so she only showed very few who she was on the inside. Her house depicts that statement,” Aunt Ariese says.
“Wow,” I say. “This is amazing.” I walk around the large foyer, running my fingers against the wall as I move through the house. I slowly make my way into the expansive living room, and a gasp escapes from me before I was able to hold it back. Hanging on the wall in all of its glory, is a picture of Ren and her parents. She’s wearing her blue robe from the Ceremony and the hugest smile adorns her face.
It’s almost disorienting how much we look like the exact same person. If it weren’t for the fact that I knew that that was Ren, I would have thought that that was me in this photo. I look at her mother, and there’s not as much joy in her smile as is in Ren’s. I guess she couldn’t quite hide her concern about the blue robes. Her father’s brown face was stoic, as if he never smiled in pictures and he wasn’t about to start now. His square jaw was shrouded in a full beard, his wide brows set stubbornly over his green eyes.
Her parents look nothing at all like mine, yet that didn’t stop Ren and I from looking exactly alike.
“Do you know what happened that day?” Dawn asks from her place beside me. I was so engrossed in my own quiet contemplations that I didn’t even hear her sidle up alongside me.
“Yes. It was one of the few dreams that I’ve had. It’s still hard for me to believe that she prayed you guys into having an Inner Self, but I was in her head when she was praying and when her Inner Self explained to her what had happened.”
“So it’s true?” Aunt Ariese asks.
“Yes?”
“See, Mom! You thought we were making it up this entire time!” Dawn says, turning around so that she can give Aunt Ariese a smug look.
“Well, now we can finally end that discussion. I guess after two-hundred years, you’ve finally been proven right.” She sticks her tongue out at Dawn and Dan, including him in their antics since he’s looking as smug as Dawn.
“So,” I say, breaking up their little moment. “What happened that day of the Priestess ceremony?”
The mood immediately sobers up and my aunt and cousins simultaneously walk over and flop down on the sofas. I remain standing in front of the family portrait, probably driving home the point that Ren and them are dead, but she’s still here in a way, isn’t she?
“We were on our way to the cave for your Ceremony when a currier came and called for your mother. The King had a pressing matter that he needed her assistance with. Being the Priestess, she had a closer working relationship with the Royal family than anyone else.” She takes a deep, and I begin to picture everything she’s saying. I don’t know if it’s because she’s a great story teller or if the memories are slowly trickling back into my mind.
“Your mother wanted to be there for your Ceremony, so she sent us back to your home while she rushed to the castle,” she continues. “The walk back was silent, but it wasn’t tense. We had no idea why he called her back, so we had nothing to worry about; until we stepped foot on that very porch outside. We were immediately washed in energy full of malice and pain.” Aunt Ariese smooths out her floor length skirt, as if the retelling of these moments causes her clothes to wrinkle. She reaches up and clutches her turquoise pendant where it hangs against her floral tube top, seemingly needing the grounding support.
“You weren’t able to bond with Shaye, at the time. Only one of you at a time was able to be in charge, so it was them and I that rushed into the house.” She looks around, as if she were back in that moment all over again. I don’t bother telling her that it was Ren and not me, because right now, it feels as if I personally lived everything she’s saying. “Everything was as it was when we left, but the energy in the house was almost suffocating. We followed the trail into the basement, and that’s where we found your father. He was badly beaten and barely conscious. His wounds were far too great for him to heal himself from, and not many Blessed were gifted with healing abilities. Before he died…” she trails off.
“...Before he died, he told me to go and find my mother,” I finish for her.
“Yes,” she whispers as tears stream down her face. “And you took off running. Yelling at me to take care of your father. That was the last time any of us saw you or your mother again.”
“We ran to the castle,” I continue for her. I walk over to sit down in th
e closest chair to her, staring at nothing but seeing everything before me. “After fighting some guards, Shaye and I found my mother fighting the King in his quarters. After that… there’s nothing. I woke up from the dream and it never finished.”
I look over to my cousins, but they’re lost in their own turmoil. The three of them look more like triplets than mother and children, and I can’t stop the pang in my chest as I look up at Ren and her parents. They were robbed of ever having what these three have. And, in a way, so was I. All because of a sadistic king.
“We’ll make him pay,” Sheya vows vehemently.
“Yeah? How?”
“I don’t know, but it’s our destiny. One I’m quite glad to have.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “We’ll make him pay for destroying the lives of so many. Including ours.”
37
Renee
The party that night is spectacular. It seems like the entire little village is out in the streets. Music is pouring through the crowd, and I notice a band playing off to the side. The twins have stayed glued to my hip and Aunt Ariese is re-introducing me to the people who were alive when Ren was.
The guys haven't been too far from me either, but they haven’t said a word to me since I came back from Ren’s old house. Which is fine by me. I don’t want to ruin the night by killing them. Dawn had lent me one of her pretty ankle length dresses, and it even came with a pair of boys shorts built into them. She said it’s in case she ever had to fight while wearing it. Fight what? I don’t want to know.
At one point, Zavid slips away into the crowd and I don’t bother looking for him. If he wants to hide instead of deal with his mess, that’s on him. Dawn and Dan break away from me for a moment to dance with some friends and the guys use that time to come and talk to me.
The Inner Self: The Prophecy Page 27