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  Madison felt the same strive for independence that we all felt. For the past few days, she and I had been in the Blakeshire palace, in the dark dimension of Esterious. I stayed out of her way as the future king of this world clearly made a play for her heart.

  I lost myself in the library that was given to her, one that was on this secure wing that we were given to stay in.

  As I searched for the answers Madison needed, I fell deeper into the story of how this dimension came to be. To the tale of how this curse began. When I read Guardian and Aliyanna’s story, I felt an odd sense of déjà vu, like I had heard it before. The clear emotion of being proud of Guardian swelled in me.

  I clearly envied him. I knew he did not feel this pain I felt in my soul, this gaping hole that told me I was missing something.

  Sometimes that pain would ease, and in my dreams I would hear the faintest sound of a violin, smell ivory, sense oneness.

  Madison confessed to me that she had heard the sound around me, that she had for a while and that the energy was growing restless. I told her that the energy was misunderstood; I could feel a timid soul beneath the aggressiveness that others surely felt.

  Today, I nearly died. I felt the cold grip of it. I don’t know how Landen knew where I was, that I needed to be saved, but he appeared in that dark passageway. He used his gift to heal me.

  I woke with a start, feeling his energy volt through me. As it brought me back to life, I had the strangest vision, one of me on a sandy bank pushing energy through him, saving him. I had not spent much time with him; I’d seen more of him through others or the books I’d read than I had in conversation, but right then I felt a bond with him. One that made no sense. I didn’t recognize who I was in that flash of familiarity. I was more stubborn than I am today. I was focused on the task at hand, and nothing more.

  In a dark hall, I could have sworn I saw a lavender angel grieving for me. I felt her tears soaking my shirt; could have been blood, too. But I will swear to you that an angel was crying over me as Landen—once named Guardian—saved my life.

  I should feel no pain now. It should be like it never happened, but I felt agony. I felt a deep grief. I would die a thousand times over if I could just see that angel once more. If I could just look into her eyes once.

  There was a knock at my door. Rat a tat tat.

  I had been twirling my drumsticks, more than likely pounding on the wall above my head where my arms were stretched out. I was sure someone was either checking on me or asking me to be silent. No doubt, everyone was trying to understand what had happened today. I didn’t care to figure it out. For once, I was focusing on me, on what I saw, what I felt, and what that meant. Why at death’s door I seemed to find what I had always thirsted for.

  The door opened, and Zander came in. He was the prince of this palace’s closest friend. We had few words between us. I had no fault with him, none at all. He reminded me of Monroe, a young girl that we had brought here to try and save. I can’t explain how he reminded me of her; I think maybe it was because I felt peace in his essence, and when I looked into his energy I only saw light, a past that held understanding and no regrets.

  Zander had brought me food not long ago, and right about now I was feeling guilty for not even touching it. I was starving, but not for that substance. I had barely dressed from my shower. I only had on jeans that I hadn’t bothered to button all the way. I was too lost in my own thoughts, straining so hard to hear that faint sound of a violin in the air.

  Trailing Zander was Preston, a six-year-old boy that carried the same peace that Zander and Monroe had.

  Preston had his hands full of white flowers, ones I recognized. They were called everminds. They only grew on graves. The text I read said they grew on immortal graves, which all in all made no sense. What immortal would need a grave?

  Oddly, he placed them in a circle around the floor. I leaned up on my elbows, gripping my drum sticks in each hand as if they were some kind of weapon.

  Zander began to light candles that were a mix of white, red, and black.

  “Are you here to tell me that I’m going to die after all?” I quipped. Lord knew, I didn’t feel healed at all.

  Zander let a laugh dare to emerge from his throat. Though he was young, our age, I knew from what I did see of his life, what I was told by the servants in this wing, that he was built for war; what kind of war, I don’t know.

  “Call us curious,” Zander said as he watched Preston whisper something, and to all outward appearances coax air into the vast ring of flowers and candles he had made.

  A second later, that lingering sound of a violin ceased.

  “Stop,” I growled as I sat up.

  A pain ripped through me, one I didn’t recognize at first but somehow knew was grief. I had grown dependent on that sound. I moved through every emotion you could imagine as I heard the echo of it. I tried to tell myself that I was indifferent about being haunted by that rhythm, but angry for the fact that it had not always fully taken over. Now it was gone.

  “Name that emotion,” Zander said evenly to me as if he were reading my mind, my emotions.

  “Listen, man, I’m not in the mood. I have had a really bad day, and it has followed a string of them. I am barely holding on to my sanity, and whatever you are doing is cutting that frail line.”

  “Why do you feel on the edge of sanity?” he questioned as I watched Preston look up at nothing and smile, even close his eyes slightly, as if someone were caressing his youthful face.

  “Um, I don’t know—how about because I know evil is real, that it has struck everyone I care about? How about because I know I have lived before, that I know I am wandering listlessly in this world, striving to remember a forgotten path that is surely more cursed than I already am? Maybe because I fight a constant battle between worry and logic? Maybe because I almost died today, and I’m willing to do it again if I knew that there was a chance that I could grasp the clarity I felt for a fleeting moment?”

  Zander let an ironic smile dangle on his lips. “It is said that a noble life plan is masked in a time of compromise.” I furrowed my brow at that. “You gave me reason, and not an emotion,” Zander said, raising his chin.

  I let out a sigh, too over this to act as if I were stronger than I knew I was.

  “Grief,” I said, feeling a stabbing pain in my soul, an unspeakable agony.

  “And what births this grief?”

  I glared at him. “I’m not whole, and I know it.”

  “Ah, but you are.”

  I leaned forward on my knees, almost hiding my face behind my drum sticks.

  “Only the deepest pain, the most wretched test of devotion will return you to whom your soul is one with.”

  His words caused every part of my body to tense. A flash of an emerald sea came to me. Panic. I felt panic then. I was going after something in that water. Words were said over me—words that took over my mind as if they were my thoughts.

  “Do you feel you have endured this pain, or that you have brushed against it?” Zander asked.

  I moved my head to the side, not caring that my eyes had glassed over with a mix of anger and grief. “I have endured this from my first breath in this whirlwind of lives.” I knew that much to be true. I may have ignored it. I may have hidden that emotion in the fiercest beat I could ever create, but I always felt it.

  “Are you ready for your final battle? Are you ready to conquer trepidation?”

  Again. I knew those words. I felt that call. I felt that will spoken over me.

  I thought my mind was breaking again, that the wall of memories was about to flood me and I would lose who I was, like I nearly did a few days ago. But this sensation was different. Instead of seeing vast lives, I saw one. One life. A life that had no meaning until just days before I left it.

  My breath seized. I smelled ivory. I saw porcelain skin, eyes that gleamed blue with my touch, lavender hair. An angel that I pulled from an emerald sea, an angel that knew our path, a
path I had strived to avoid.

  Camlin. He did this. He forced this. Balance was at risk. One day. I was to be back before dinner. Oh my God! I was supposed to come and save Charlie, save Cashton. I was supposed to save us all. Change. Five crested souls.

  I didn’t care about that fight, not right this second. I cared about that sensation. That basking energy of oneness. I cared about keeping my Skylynn safe. My angel.

  I stared at Zander. “How do you know of this? How did you know exactly what was said to me then? Are you from The Selected? Did they send you for me?”

  His eyes gleamed a smile. “I listened.”

  Preston stepped out of the circle he was in. Zander stood.

  “Where are you going?” I all but yelled as I went to follow him. A thousand questions were racing through my mind. Was I supposed to die today? If I had, would I be on that emerald shore? From that point, could I find her? I had to know. I had to.

  Preston had left, and Zander was at the door. He glanced back at me. “The path behind you was not nearly as troubled as the one before you. You will not survive it, you will not be the solution you were created to be, unless you feel that emotion, unless you have enough emotion to pull her from the shadowed existence that has cradled her for so long.”

  He turned the lock on the door, then pulled the door closed.

  The lights in the room dimmed, grew bright, then turned off all at once. I felt my hair brush across my forehead with an uncalled for breeze.

  I squinted my eyes closed. I could not let this vision slip from my mind. I pushed all the other revelations I had found out of my mind, all the twisted and confused lives, and saw them only as a dream, a path of understanding I had to take, and focused on the beginning.

  I relieved those short days in slow motion. I felt every emotion come alive within me. When it was over, there were only two emotions in my soul: one of unconditional love, and the grief of the loss of that love.

  I turned slowly, not knowing what I was supposed to do but assuming, with only a trace of doubt, that I was going to have to end my life to find it again.

  Even though I thought of my father, Nana, my twin, Charlie, and Madison, how they would feel if I left them, that ache could not compare to the thought of not having her.

  Grief. I owned that emotion.

  I turned slowly and dared to open my eyes.

  I had to be hallucinating. Nothing ever came to me this easily, no desire.

  She was standing in that ring of flowers and candles. The silk gown I so vividly remembered removing from her body was gone. She was wearing skin tight leather pants and a dark purple corset that shaped her every curve. Her lavender hair was just as beautiful as I remembered. The violin I had given her was just barely dangling from her fingertips.

  The glow of her blue eyes was gone; they had turned to gray and tears were streaming down her cheeks. The grief I felt was consuming her breathtaking image.

  She slowly set the violin down and moved from the ring that was created by Preston on the floor.

  “Do you remember me?” Her whisper was full of agony.

  I fell to my knees, staring forward into nothing as I basked in the memories that were mine again. The memories where she was innocent and gave that innocence to me.

  I didn’t answer. Maybe I should have because I saw her body tremble as if it were silently crying.

  I reached for her calf, hating this leather that was separating her skin from my touch. She sighed as my hands moved up her long legs, my stare rose to meet hers. I saw the rivulets of tears falling from her gray eyes. I leaned forward and let my lips touch her navel, breathing in that scent of ivory as my kiss pulled her skin ever so gently to me. The moan she let out was enough to make me want to stand up and throw her on that bed, but I had to prove to her that I remembered, that I knew she was mine.

  I pulled the string that was holding her corset in place, pushing it away from what it was shielding me from. My hands explored every part of her as my lips eased closer and closer to her lips. Her hands balanced on my shoulders as they had before, as if I had robbed her of the strength to stand with this aching, slow dance of seduction.

  When I was standing before her, towering over her small frame, I pulled her lips to mine. My tongue did not wait for an invitation; I had opened her mouth with the flesh of my lips, then groaned when I felt her kissing me back with the same reverent passion.

  I pulled away when I felt her tremble, when I felt her tears spilling on my hands which were framing her face.

  I leaned my forehead to hers, knowing exactly what I wanted to say, feeling as if I had said the words just yesterday. “This is real. Tell me you know that—tell me that you know that even if I passed you on the street without the visions I witnessed that you understand I would still have felt this pull to you. That I would still know that we are made of one.”

  A gaping smile came to her.

  “I love you, Skylynn. I never stopped. I know I didn’t.”

  Her lips found mine. I reached down and grabbed her legs, wrapping them around me as she fisted her fingers through my hair.

  I only vaguely made sure that I dodged those candles that were placed on the floor as I laid her across my bed, finally realizing why it had always felt so empty, so cold. It felt right now. It felt right because she was lying across it.

  My hands reached down to her calves and slowly eased them up her body, never breaking eye contact with her.

  I had eased my body over hers and had her hands laced in mine, just over her head. I smiled into the kiss I was giving her. The mark of a musician was on her tender hands now, and those marks aligned perfectly with mine.

  “I missed you,” she breathed against my lips. I dipped my head and let my lips rest on her chest.

  “I was right here. I always want to be right here.” My lips brushed against her skin. “You’re mine. No test of time could ever come between two that are made of one.”

  She pulled my face to hers, and we lost ourselves in the passion.

  I didn’t understand why she felt so broken, what Zander meant when he said our last battle would begin. I didn’t know how to get her home, or even if I wanted to leave this world. I just knew I loved her, and one way or another we would always be one.

  She was my everything.

  Special note to the reader:

  The Imperial series is part of the “Web of Hearts and Souls,” where all of my series combine into one large story. All series can be read independently or as one. The reading order for the Insight and See series combined is: Insight, Embody, Image, See (See series), Witness (See series), Vital (Insight series), Vindicate (Insight series), Synergy (See series), Enflame (Insight series), Redefined (See series), at this point the first book in the third series comes into play: Rivulet (published on10/7/13), Imperial (1/14/14), Blakeshire, 2/10/14)

  Playlist

  Blue October: Debris, Breathe, It’ Over, Angles in Everything, Things We Don’t Know, Things We Do At Night, Not Broken Anymore.

  Adel: Don’t you Remember

  Chevelle Hats Off to the Bull

  Andrew Belle: In My Veins

  Kings of Leon: Closer

  Plumb: Cut

  Rihanna: Diamonds

  Where To Find Jamie Online:

  http://authorjamiemagee.blogspot.com

  Facebook

  Twitter

  I am still eternally grateful for every soul that encouraged me to write/ publish my debut novel Insight.... thank you once again.

  I also want to thank my husband, Lem, for listening to my random thoughts and ideas as each of these stories came to life, he is not only the love of my life but the man who keeps me sane on this insane adventure. I want thank my children who inspire me to become more than I am today with a simple glance, and the echo of laughter and joy that surrounds me constantly.

  I want to thank all of my wonderful beta readers: Sabrina Wells, Alysia Kurtz, Jamie Love, Jennylynne D’Andrea, Michelle Dain, and Steffini
Walker, and Jan Galloway.

  GWE along with Todd Barselow for editing my daydreams.

  Most of all I want to thank every-single reader for sharing this adventure with me! I love you all and I am eternally grateful for your time and support :)!

  About the Author

  Jamie Magee has always believed that each of us have a defining gift that sets us apart from the rest of the world, she has always envied those who have known from their first breath what their gift was. Not knowing hers, she began a career in the fast paced world of business. Raising a young family, and competing to rise higher in that field would drive some to the point of insanity, but she always found a moment of escape in a passing daydream. Her imagination would take her to places she’d never been, introduce her to people she’s never known. Insight, her debuting novel, is a result of that powerful imagination. Today, she is grateful that not knowing what defined her, led her on a path of discovery that would always be a part of her.

  The fun Bio: I’m an obsessive daydreamer. Lover of loud alternative music. Addicted to Red Bull. I love to laugh until it hurts. Fall is my favorite season. Black is my favorite ‘shade.’ Strong believer in the saying: there is a reason for everything, therefore I search for ‘marked moments’ every moment of everyday...and I find them. Life is beautiful!