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  At that moment, Perodine charged in the door. “NO!” she yelled at us. “It’s an illusion!” she said, pulling the drapes on all the mirrors.

  “I can feel her,” Landen screamed, pulling Libby to us.

  “Marc! Dane!” Perodine screamed.

  I looked into Libby’s eyes, and I could see the fear and terror that I felt from her. I began to help Landen pull her by grabbing her other arm.

  “It’s an illusion!” Perodine yelled again.

  Dane and Marc crashed into the door, and the little girl we were pulling - the one we thought was Libby - turned demonic and began to pull us to her. Dane wrapped his arms around my waist, Marc did the same to Landen, and it took all of their force to pull us free. We landed in a pile on the floor, then Perodine tied the drapes that surrounded the mirror closed.

  I fell apart; I couldn’t be strong anymore. I cried breathlessly, gripping my towel against my chest, trying to understand how, why. I pulled my knees to me and buried my head, trying to block the horror I’d just seen. Landen pulled himself free from Marc, scooped me up in his arms, and rocked me back and forth.

  A roar filled the room, then we heard breaking glass on the other side of the drapes. In a whisper, we heard Libby’s voice say, “You left me,” over and over again. Landen gripped me tighter, feeling the pain of the words.

  “Come, let’s leave this room,” Perodine said, walking calmly to the door.

  Landen picked me up, and Dane grabbed my things. In the room where we’d slept, Marc and Dane turned, allowing me to dress. My hands trembled as I pulled my clothes together, so Perodine calmly helped Landen dress me. When I pulled my shirt over my head, I squinted with pain; the necklace had burned itself into my skin.

  “Let me see,” Landen said, examining my neck.

  He gently pulled my hand away to see what was hurting me. It looked like they’d melted into my skin; blood seeped from the sides of the metal, and I closed my eyes and looked away, blocking out the thought of the pain. I felt Landen’s hand on my chest, bringing with it a warm rush of energy, calming and peaceful. He reached for my hand, and the rush intensified. I opened my eyes to see him staring at me, and his eyes glowed as the healing energy left him. I looked down and saw that my wounds were gone; he’d healed me on his own. He wrapped his arms around me and held me as tight as he could.

  “Look at me and tell me it was an illusion, that they’re safe,” I heard Landen say.

  “It was an illusion; they’re safe,” Perodine repeated, we both heard the truth in her words.

  I let go of Landen, then pulled my jeans up and put on my shoes. A shiver ran down my back as the smell of the blood came to my memory, and Landen’s hand was on my shoulder as soon as he felt the emotion. “I’ll be fine; don’t use all of your energy,” I whispered.

  “We need to cover all the mirrors in the palace. We need help,” Perodine said, walking to the door that led back to room where they’d been working. When I focused, I could feel someone beyond August in there; I assumed it was the woman that had been shadowing Perodine since her return.

  Marc and Dane peeked to make sure I was dressed. When they saw that I was, they walked closer.

  “What happened?” Dane asked, looking over me carefully.

  “A cruel illusion,” Landen said, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and guiding me to the study.

  When we entered the large study, we saw August sleeping soundly on one of the couches; he had one of the books we’d brought open across his chest. Perodine was whispering to the young woman, and she looked up at us as we entered the room. “She’s going to ask the old staff to return and help us cover them all; it will take us a week if we try to do it on our own,” Perodine said, nodding for the silent girl to go.

  I felt a rush of fear and looked to August; it was coming from him. He sat up straight, focused his eyes, then stood. “We have to cover the paintings,” he said into the room.

  “You mean the mirrors,” Perodine corrected.

  “That, too, yes - but the paintings, the paintings must be covered,” August said, walking to one of the walls to turn the portraits.

  “Where did you read that?” Perodine asked, walking to the table to look at the scroll.

  “I didn’t read it. I dreamed of Nyla; she said that Libby and Preston told her to tell me to cover the paintings,” he said, turning the next painting. Marc and Dane began to help him.

  “Were they OK?” I asked in a shaky voice.

  August hesitated when he heard me, then looked in my direction and nodded yes. “Are you?” he asked. I shook my head no and gripped Landen tighter. August looked at Landen for an explanation.

  “We’ve already seen the worst illusion imaginable,” Landen answered.

  I felt a shock come from Perodine. “They are right. How did I not see that? Venus rules art; he can use that as a passage...Willow do not sketch anything,” she said, still looking down at the scroll.

  “I think you need to rest,” Landen said to Perodine.

  She shook her head no. “I stopped sleeping a million years ago - I am not going to start now,” she answered, reaching for a pen to write down something she’d found.

  I think that was the first time that I put into perspective just how long she’d lived in that form. I felt sorry for her; how awful it must be to stand still in time. I heard breaking glass and jumped, then turned to see that Marc had covered a mirror.

  “They will all break when you cover them; it means you blocked him,” Perodine said, not looking up from the scroll.

  In the doorway, I felt the familiar emotion of Patrick, and I turned to look at him; I could sense he was eager to help. “Ma’am, Sir, we are going to start with the floors below ground while it’s daylight. I have close to a hundred people helping me,” he said to us.

  “The paintings have to be covered, too,” Landen said to Patrick.

  Patrick nodded and left the room. The young woman came into the room behind him with another girl, pushing a cart of food. They left it in the center of the room and nodded in our direction before they left.

  “All of you need to eat. Each hour will grow more difficult; you need your strength,” Perodine warned.

  Dane and Marc didn’t hesitate; they made their way to the cart and began to fix themselves a plate. Landen and I stood frozen; we weren’t sure where to start. It was hard to imagine how many mirrors and paintings were in the enormous palace.

  “Eat, Willow,” Perodine said in a firm voice.

  I shook my head in defiance, then felt Dane nudging my shoulder. He handed me an apple, and I looked at him as if he were insane. “You’ll be able to think more clearly if you have your strength,” he whispered. I sighed and took the food from him.

  Landen released me and went to the cart to find himself some food. August went to the table to look over what Perodine had found while he rested. “Have you disproven it yet?” August asked.

  “Disproven what?” Landen asked over his shoulder as he fixed himself a plate.

  Perodine looked and August and nodded, telling him to explain their discovery to us. “Have I ever told you of the pentagonal synodic series?” August asked, looking from Landen to Marc. They both shook their head no. “Come,” August said, gesturing for us all to come closer. He turned his notebook to a blank page, and we all encircled the table and leaned in to watch what he was drawing.

  “OK, here’s the sun,” August said, dotting the center of the page. “Here’s Venus,” he said, putting a dot parallel to the one in the center. “And here’s earth,” he said, putting the third dot parallel to the second. “This is what it looks like when the earth aligns with its sister planet, Venus. Now, Venus moves faster than earth; to align, it has to orbit the sun two point six times in the same time the earth will orbit one point six. In our solar system, this alignment will occur five times – seven signs between each.” August drew a large circle to represent the solar system, then he began to draw the dots for Venus and Earth thougho
ut their next alignments; as he connected the lines, I felt my stomach drop: he was drawing a perfect pentagon. I was beginning to hate stars; they’d brought me nothing but trouble through all of this.

  “The pattern of a star in the sky – a few weeks ago, everyone was telling me a star in a looking glass,” Landen said, frustrated.

  I reached for the charm on my neck; Landen had placed the star behind the sun and moon just a few days ago. We had thought that the supremacy of man was behind the power of the universe – God – which is where it belonged. In my memory, I saw the rings of the looking glass falling apart; that victory was starting to look insignificant now. Perodine’s eyes were on me, on my charm, and I felt a grief in her, a sorrow for a life I couldn’t remember.

  “I cannot undo what was once said,” she said in low tone, looking from the charm to my eyes.

  “What did you say?” I asked in a voice that reflected the terror I was feeling.

  Perodine looked around the room to Landen, then to me. “I did not understand what was happening to Donalt. Without his knowledge, I witnessed rituals, the priest with candles, snakes, speaking in tongues – I saw the pentagons drawn in chalk as he stood in the center. I assumed he was calling on dark magic to grow his power, that he wanted to rule beyond our world, to bring a devastation that would blind us all. I had no choice but to counteract their words. I studied rituals from ancient times and spoke the words that limited his power; I wanted your innocent heart to restore our world. To anyone else, that is a simple charm, a sun, moon, and star - but to us, because Donalt and I believe it has power, because you believe it has power – it does.”

  “Are you saying that it’s what I want it to be? I don’t understand,” I said, staring back at her.

  “That would have been true in your first life. Now, after so many, you have given it a power that is more that all of us could imagine,” Perodine said.

  “How?”

  “When you lost your friend,” she looked at Marc, “when you lost your father,” she looked back to me, “you grieved, you felt emptiness. What you do not realize is that you were grieving the absence of their energy. When you love someone, have them in your life, their energy becomes a part of you; it builds you. When they leave you, they take their energy with them. We feel a void, a loss. You believed that charm had a power in your first life. When you were taken into the string and found your world, your belief grew stronger, and you left that life believing that it held an unimaginable power. In each life, you found it again, and as you studied its history, heard the stories of what it could do, your belief grew stronger. All of the thoughts you had of love and redemption grew more intense with each life. Your signature, your energy, the love you and Landen have for each other and the universe around you was left in that charm. You have protected yourself from what lies ahead; you just have to trust the decisions you made then and now.”

  “This charm’s power is me? My energy from before?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Every woman you were is there,” she said, looking to my charm. “It is a part of this because you wanted it to be; it has always made you feel safe. If you ever surrender, you will not do it alone; every woman that you have been will surrender as well,” Perodine said.

  “An army of Scorpios,” Marc said under his breath.

  “So there’s no connection between the star behind that charm and the pattern you’re drawing?” Landen asked

  Perodine shook her head no and looked at August for help. He cleared his throat. “When Venus lies between the Earth and the sun, it is called an inferior conjunction. When an inferior conjunction is about to begin, Venus moves into what appears to be retrograde; a new pentagonal cycle will begin soon. Willow’s first birth happened at a moment like this; it symbolized that she would be a power. If Donalt wanted to take her power, he could do so at this juncture,” August said.

  “So, you have a new time – what happened to the nineteenth?” I ask, flustered.

  “Not a new time - a deeper connection, a clearer insight to the way this trail is orchestrated,” Perodine said, looking down at August’s sketch. “Many people throughout history have gained power at the synodic point; it was at that point that Jayda overtook the Darkness,” Perodine said confidently.

  “You’re confident because I’m a descendant of Jayda,” Landen said.

  “Not as confident as I would like to be,” Perodine said, pulling the scroll to her. “You see, these symbols are the same as the ones in the book of Samilya and Jayda. It seems that they are one of the ones who you sought council on with your original birth charts. On the last page of Jayda’s book, it said that Jayda and Oba disappeared into a white glow late in their years, taking the scrolls with them. Their people believed that the couple was so great that death took mercy on them – taking them as a whole, body and soul,” Perodine said.

  “Now,” August picked up from where Perodine left off, “we can reason that when Jayda released Oba from the darkness, they realized that there was something bigger than them. We read that they found deep mediation; I would guess that they – well the two of you – discovered who you were and began to try and unravel these charts. Pelhan himself said that the two of you found your final resting place in his dimension. I know for a fact that you found your way to Chara in my lifetime.”

  “So history repeats itself,” I said, almost to myself.

  “Unfortunately, never in the exact same way,” Perodine said. “When you face an enemy, you learn their weakness first-hand. Whatever you learned then, you have forgotten. I assure you that he – it - has not forgotten yours.”

  “Well, was it recorded in detail here?” Marc said, reaching for Jayda’s book.

  “Nothing more than Jayda seeing Oba for the first time. It says here ‘The past will not mirror itself. It shall consume the blood of Jayda and subdue the power,’” Perodine said, running her finger across three words written in a script I’d never seen before.

  “A warning,” Landen whispered.

  August nodded. “We think it means that the darkness will consume either you or Drake, then subdue Willow’s heart,” Perodine said, looking at Landen.

  “Drake?” I questioned.

  “He, too, is a descendant of Jayda - and is most defiantly weaved into this fate,” August said in a heavy tone.

  It always escaped me that Drake was a part of Landen’s family, that through their veins the same blood coursed.

  “So it’s Drake we’re fighting,” Marc said through his teeth.

  “Marc,” Landen said in a low tone.

  “No, I’m right: the darkness is going to consume Drake, then fight for Willow’s heart. Drake, with the darkness inside of him – would that make him stronger?” Marc said, looking back and forth between Perodine and August.

  “Do you understand what the darkness is? What the purpose of Allie, Preston, and Libby is?” Perdoine asked in an astonished tone.

  “No, we don’t,” Landen said shortly.

  Perodine looked up from the sketch at Landen; I could feel her sympathy. She nodded and sighed. “This world, overall, has forgotten what they were made of, forgotten their power; we live in ignorance – a hell. If we were to learn and practice unconditional love on all levels, then we as a planet would be connected to a higher plane, a celestial plane of knowing. Once we have reached that point, we will never return to the ignorance that bore us. You can imagine the glow the planet would reveal if each of us found that place,” Perodine said. She paused and looked to the shadows, then back to the scroll. “Light is the death of darkness. It is said that the darkness, the ignorance that we live in will fight for its existence; the children will bring the light, and the darkness will fight to stop them. Right now, at this crucial point, you are their only line of defense – the darkness must defeat you before it can reach the ones that will bring its death,” Perodine said.

  “It’s evil, fighting for its right to live,” August added.

  “This evil will dwindle it
self inside a human body; it is a sacrifice it must make to keep the veil over all of our eyes,” Perodine said.

  “What do you mean ‘dwindle?’” Dane asked.

  “This evil is the opposite of the light; it opposes - but it is capable of - immense power, more than one body can possess. When it enters the body, it will be at its weakest point; over time, the body will build a tolerance - and then an immorality will set in,” Perodine answered.

  “So we can’t defeat it in the form it’s in now?” Landen asked.

  “No more than you could out run your own shadow,” Perodine replied.

  “I haven’t heard a reason to be confident yet,” I said, leaning closer to Landen and avoiding eye contact with everyone.