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  Landen felt their emotion and placed his hand on my father’s shoulder. “I will,” Landen answered in a low tone.

  My father slowly let me go and passed by us, taking my mother with him. Aubrey shielded herself behind Ashten and followed my parents. Nyla put her hand on Aubrey’s back and walked with them; she was becoming a source of strength that August had served as before.

  Rose stared at me, then moved her eyes to Landen. “I wish I had wise words to give the two of you,” she said, looking back at me. “Just know that there’s no sacrifice worth the two of you being apart – for any amount of time.” She kissed my cheek, then hugged Landen. With Karsten at her side, she followed our parents.

  Landen looked at Dane, who was holding tightly to Clarissa, then at Marc, who was holding Stella. “You can stay; we’ll be fine,” Landen said in the most confident tone he could manage.

  They both shook their heads no, then pulled Stella and Clarissa away to say their private goodbyes. We could feel the intent of Brady and Chrispin; they were trying to think of a way to convince us to allow them to come.

  “I need the two of you to protect them. Don’t allow anyone in the string until we return,” Landen said, looking from Brady to Chrispin. They nodded, clearly not in agreement with Landen.

  Olivia was standing to my left. Feeling her sorrow intensify, I slowly turned to see her. All around her, I could see the shade of light pink, a shade that meant high dream activity. Her dreams had forecasted Delen’s redemption in the trail of Mercury, and I knew then that she’d already seen my future in her mind’s eye. I let out a jagged breath and asked, “Are the dreams bad or good?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, stepping closer to me. She grasped my arm and pulled me away from the others. “Willow, you have to let me go with you,” she whispered with pleading eyes.

  “No way. I don’t even want Dane and Marc to go,” I answered, bewildered by her request.

  “Why Dane?” she asked, looking in his direction.

  “Perodine said to return with the Cancers that we’ve always known,” I answered.

  Olivia patted her hands quietly on her chest. “I’m a Cancer, and you’ve known me your whole life – longer than you’ve known Dane,” she said, pushing us father away from the crowd.

  I hesitated, recalling Perodine’s emotion and intent when she told us to return with the Cancers; she was thinking of someone strong. Olivia was brave, but I wouldn’t call her strong. “Olivia, I’m sure she meant Dane. You’ve been through so much; stay here, where you’re safe.”

  “Willow, you don’t understand. Every part of me is telling me that I need to be with you. If you don’t take me, no one else will.”

  “Tell me what the dream is,” I said, knowing she was horrified.

  “A wall” she said, crossing her arms.

  “What do you mean ‘wall?’ The one they’re building in Delen?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve seen a stone wall. I’ve seen a massive gray cloud that screams. I’ve seen what look like rain clouds gliding feet above the ground. I don’t understand it - which is all the more reason I need to be near you.”

  “If you stay here, Pelhan will help you unlock your dreams. If you find an answer, tell Chrispin to bring you to me.”

  “He won’t,” she argued. “He’ll go and leave me behind.”

  “You’ll still be helping me,” I argued, agreeing that Chrispin would choose to keep her safe there.

  “Willow, please,” she said, hugging me.

  She was grieving for me, and I couldn’t understand why. I heard truth in everything she said. She believed she should be with me; it broke my heart to tell her no. I slowly let go of her. “I’ll see you in a few days – K?” I said, looking away and catching a stray tear that had escaped my eye.

  Olivia let her head fall, and I walked away before my guilt would allow me to change my mind.

  Felicity was waiting for me to say goodbye to her. Allie was in her arms, and Libby and Preston were at her side. “Is Olivia OK?” she whispered.

  “She wanted to go, but I told her no.”

  “Really?” Felicity said, bewildered. “I wonder why?”

  Preston and Libby looked at each other, then up at me. I could feel their confusion.

  “What?” I asked, looking back and forth between them.

  They hesitated. Preston’s eyes found Landen, and he looked him over carefully, then back to me. “It doesn’t matter,” Preston said.

  Before I could question him, he and Libby ran to Olivia’s side. It didn’t take Chrispin long to realize Olivia was upset. He said his goodbye to Landen, then went to meet her and the children.

  “Don’t worry, Willow,” Felicity said to get my attention. “It’s just a few days.” She hugged me, then walked past me to catch up with Olivia.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Brady and Landen whispering to one another. I then stepped closer to the passage. Stella and Clarissa blew a kiss in my direction and followed the others. Dane then came to my side, carrying the books with which we were to return. Marc had joined Landen and Brady’s private conversation. I looked up at Dane and shook my head; his calm was too out of place.

  “Do you know something I don’t?” I asked under my breath.

  “I just know how I feel, and that’s relieved to be able to protect you,” he answered with a crooked smile on his face.

  “You’re insane. Anyone else would have run away - like you almost did when we were kids,” I said, finding a little humor in the memory of Dane’s young face so many years ago.

  “Um, yeah...you zapped us to another place – freezing, if I remember correctly – then expected us to resume our game of hide-and-seek like nothing happened. I thought I was crazy,” he said, laughing.

  “You thought you were crazy? OK, and what did you think I thought?” I said, laughing quietly.

  “You didn’t look crazy; you looked like you were doing what you were born to do, like you do now,” he said, looking proudly down at me.

  “Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean you should be dragged into it...stay,” I said, knowing his answer would be no.

  “It’s just three days – well, two now,” he said, looking at Landen and Marc as they approached us.

  “Promise,” I said in a whisper.

  Landen picked up our bags, which were by the passage, then took my hand and led us inside the string. I could feel him struggling to suppress his anxieties. “What were you and Brady talking about?” I asked.

  He looked down at me, then back to Marc and Dane, then forward again. “Did Olivia tell you about her dream?” he asked. I nodded “Brady thinks we should have taken her. I knew if we did, Chrispin would have come. And if Chrispin came, Brady would have come – they all would have come. It’s bad enough that Marc and Dane are coming.”

  “I’m sure Perodine meant Dane. It just makes sense that he would be more of a protector,” I thought. I knew it was true that both Olivia and Dane had played that part throughout my childhood, but Dane had seen more; he’d traveled through dimensions with me. He was just stronger.

  “I hope so. I told Brady if Perdoine said we were wrong about Dane, we’d come back for Olivia,” Landen thought.

  “Did that calm him down?” I asked.

  “No. He thinks the dream is a warning, telling us that we’ll be divided forever. In his opinion, I just left the key to finding them again there,” Landen thought.

  “Preston told me it didn’t matter that Olivia wasn’t coming. Brady is wrong, I thought, trying to convince the both of us. Do you agree?”

  “I know there’s nothing that will keep us from finding them again,” he answered.

  “Brady said something else”, I thought, feeling Landen suppressing his anxieties.

  He sighed and nodded. “Brady thinks that one of our past lives was in Analess. He has a theory that I was Oba and you were Jayda,” he thought.

  I looked forward and took in his words. It wouldn’t be such a far
fetched idea; apparently, we’d lived several lives oblivious to us. “Well, it seems we defeated this darkness before,” I thought.

  “Yes, but only after the darkness had consumed me and I learned that I’d loved another woman and had children with her, leaving half of the ancestors believing that they could never find someone. I just don’t want to settle for anything in this life. I want to defeat this curse, and I don’t want anyone who comes after us to pay for the choices we make. It overwhelms me when I think of it in that light,” Landen thought, wrapping his arm around me tighter.

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. You don’t even know if that’s true - and if it is, we can’t change what’s already happened.”

  “That’s what Marc said. I just have to work through it,” Landen thought.

  “Well, don’t waste your energy trying to hide your emotions from me; I know them as well as my own,” I thought, looking up at him.

  He smiled down at me. “I’d imagine that you do,” he thought, smiling and bringing his perfect dimples to life.

  “What did Preston whisper to you when he hugged you goodbye?” I asked.

  Landen tilted his head, and I felt curiosity grow in him.”He said everyone deserves to be healed – why would he say that? I mean, who would I not heal?” he thought, looking down at me.

  I raised my eyebrows as the memory of one person came to mind.

  An understanding came across Landen’s face.” He was telling me to heal Drake,” Landen thought as his jaw tightened.

  “So we will see him,” I thought, feeling plagued.

  Landen pulled me closer to him. “I’m not concerned if we do, and I would heal him - even if I was the cause,” Landen thought, a little offended by Preston’s words.

  I held him tight.”Let it go; you have no way of knowing why he said that. He’s just a little boy,” I thought.

  “In this life,” Landen thought, smiling at the memory of Preston and Libby.

  The gray, ashy passages of Esterious came into view.

  “Landen,” Marc said. “There has to be a passage inside the palace. I can’t imagine Drake using the ones that we use.”

  Landen stopped and stared at the passages along the wall. “I think when I fought with Drake that first time, I threw him in this one,” he said in a confident tone.

  “Let me go first,” Marc said, stepping in front of Landen. Dane came to my side. Marc stepped through, then we followed him.

  The passage did lead inside the palace, to a stone room. An enormous bed draped in black silk centered one wall, and the ceiling opened above us; the night sky was clear. Around the bed on the floor stood tall ivory candles, and paintings reflecting my image hung on every wall. At the foot of the bed was a podium, and you could see the outline of a book in the dust.

  “This must be where they invoked the nightmares,” Marc said.

  I could feel the anger and tension building in the room, but my emotion - one of sorrow - was the strongest one among us. I imagined Drake as a little boy, being asked to lie in this bed with lit candles all around him and Alamos speaking words over him; seeing the demons, hearing them. Though it was obvious that Drake had grown used to his monkey friends, I couldn’t imagine that was always the case.

  Landen looked at me curiously. I answered his emotion and thought, “When they started, he would have been too young to stop them; he was just a little boy”

  Landen tilted his head and looked at me. “It’s not the child he was that I have an issue with; it’s the man he is now, the one that chose to invoke them after eight months of peace,” he thought.

  “The childhood makes the man,” I thought, defending my point of view.

  “I don’t want to debate now, Willow,” Landen thought, smiling slightly. He took my hand, then turned to follow Marc and Dane to the lit hallway.

  From the ceiling in the room, we knew we were on the top floor, the same floor that held the observatory. Landen tilted his head to the left, letting Marc know that we could feel August and Perodine in that direction. The hallway was wide, like the estate I’d stayed in just days ago; it had large paintings on the walls and narrow couches between the doorways. We walked past at least twenty doorways before the walls ended. The floor continued, and over the banister we could see more than eight stories down. In the distance, we could see the walls begin again.

  “How would you debate it?” I thought when I couldn’t contain my curiosity anymore.

  Landen looked down at me and shook his head side to side; I could see a sparkle in his blue eyes, which took my breath away. “I just think that people who hide behind their childhoods are foolish. Just because your parents were great doesn’t mean that you are, and just because they’re bad, it doesn’t mean that you are. All the time people spend using their past as a crutch could be spent living a life they want to have. We control our thoughts - no one else,” he thought.

  I stared forward at the hallway that was approaching, going over every word he just said.

  “Waiting for your comeback,” Landen said aloud in an amused tone. Marc looked curiously over his shoulder at me.

  I blushed slightly and smiled. “Well, don’t faint: I don’t have one. I agree,” I answered, looking up at Landen. He laughed under his breath.

  “If you’ve managed to leave her speechless, you have to tell us how,” Dane said.

  I playfully glared at him, and he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just saying,” Dane said, avoiding my eyes and adjusting the books he was carrying. Shaking my head, I reached for one of the books.

  “From the outside, it doesn’t seem as big as this,” Marc complained as he continued to walk forward.

  “Go to your left up here,” Landen said, still smiling at me.

  We passed five more doorways before we turned left into another hallway; from there, we could see August and Perodine at the end of the long hall. We entered the room through one of the doorways that framed the fireplace. August looked up, startled to see us come from that direction. Perodine never lost her gaze with the scroll. Marc looked back at Dane and us when he saw her; it was clear they weren’t expecting to see her so dressed down: she’d pulled her silver hair back into a ponytail, her pant legs were rolled up, and she was still barefoot. Landen set our bags beside the couch and took the book from me. Marc let his and Dane’s bag fall next to ours.

  “Is Nyla safe?” August asked. Landen nodded. “Did you bring the right books?” he continued.

  Landen and Dane set the books on the table. “The ones about Samilya and Jayda, yes,” Landen answered.

  Perodine looked up at us, then to August. “Who are they?” she asked, puzzled.

  “They’re from another dimension. Long ago, Jayda managed to defeat the darkness inside of her sisters Samilya’s husband.”

  Marc pulled out a chair at the table and took a seat. Landen leaned over the table, looking at the notes August had made. Dane and I leaned against the back of the couch.

  “How?” Perodine asked, tucking a loose lock of hair behind her ear.

  “Well, love, I guess they were twins. Samilya was given to a ruler; years later, she ran to her sister Jayda, telling her that darkness had consumed the man she loved. Jayda was taken by mistake by the ruler’s guards. When she stood before him for punishment, the darkness left, and Jayda and the ruler lived a very long life completely in love,” August explained.

  I could feel astonishment come over Perodine; her face lost all of its color, and she slid into the chair in front of which she was standing.

  “Are you OK?” Landen asked.

  “I just...I just remembered Donalt from long ago...he wasn’t always...cold,” Perodine said in a quiet voice. She looked at me. “I told you that at one time I did love him. I...I lost our first two children. The grief changed me, and I went months without even seeing him. I just don’t remember when he changed. I mean, I remember coming to him, wanting to try again, and...he felt empty. He made me feel like a nuisance,” she said. She si
ghed and looked to the shadows of the room, then to the scroll. “I just want to know what I’m fighting: the man I gave my life to, or a darkness that took him from me.” Perodine reached for the books and turned the pages, then looked up at August. “Can you read this? Tell me more so I’ll know.” she said.