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  My dad led me to the stairs, then down them and out the wide, elegant entrance. Outside, the sun was starting to descend and gardeners were turning on the water for all the flowers and trees they’d planted. I pulled my arms to me, feeling the cool rush of the sprinkles mixing with the winter air. My father walked at my side as we slowly made our way to the gate. I kept my eyes down, feeling everyone outside gazing at me; they kept their distance, as if they could feel the boundary I wanted.

  When I was little, when I used to fight with my insight, my emotions, my dad would take me on these silent walks through the streets of Franklin. We’d walk for hours without words; it’s strange, but at times we said more when we didn’t say anything at all. I would struggle with what was bothering me and find a way to put my raging emotions into a simple question for him, and he’d always have a simple answer that would make me feel better. Looking back, I felt a gratitude for having such a patient man for a father. Most of my friend’s dads seemed to shy away when their daughters started to display erratic emotions.

  We turned out of the front gate and walked along the streets, which were starting to clear away in the dimness of the day.

  “Dad,” I said quietly. “Do you think I’m self-centered?” I asked, not raising my head as we walked.

  “No,” he said in a voice just above a whisper.

  I looked to my side at him. “I’m sure you and Landen are the only ones that think that.”

  He took the light black jacket he had off and put it around me. He didn’t try to tell me I was wrong; instead, he let his emotion say that I was. He was calm, patiently waiting for me to find my resolve.

  “I don’t mean to be. I mean, I know that most of my thoughts are about what I need, what I want, how I feel – but at the same time, I feel like I put everyone before me, like the way they feel is more important than the way I feel; that if they’re calm, I will be.”

  He nodded along with me as I spoke and put his arm around me.

  “I’ve never been a kid, a teenager, and felt that eagerness for life, for the first experience. I led my life like an old woman who had already seen everything, and now at nineteen, I act like I’ve already lived, that I can just end it and it won’t matter. I know my friends at home are in their first semester of college, going to parties, trying to figure out who they are, with their biggest fear being what they wear or if they’ll pass their next exam – and what am I doing? Fighting a demon, a past I can’t remember and emotions I can’t control.”

  My dad let his hand run across my back as he looked down and smiled slightly. “You’re doing the best you can, baby.”

  I shook my head. “You know it’s bad when you find yourself annoying,” I said, slyly trying to smile.

  “How are you annoying?” he asked in an amused tone.

  “I don’t know. I think the same things over and over. I keep my focus on what I want, but I whine about it – all the time.” I said, raising my eyebrows and feeling better by the moment.

  We walked for a moment in silence, then he let his hand fall into mine. “Maybe you need to stop thinking and start listening,” he said quietly.

  I moved my head from side to side. “Rose tells me to put my thoughts to the end I want and focus there, and you’re telling me not to think at all. Do you see how confused I get?”

  He nodded and smiled. “Well, that’s why I want you to listen. Your grandmother is right: you do need to focus on the end you want - but you have to declare it, then forget it.”

  “What?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows.

  He laughed at my expression and squeezed my hand. “If you focus on the end point and nothing else, then you become paranoid that something is going to keep you from it. You don’t even realize you’re doing it, but you start to imagine all the ways you couldn’t reach that point, then you begin to drift from your path. If you just declare it and listen, the world around your life will lead you there in the most direct path there is. Make up your mind that what you want is yours, and don’t worry about what’s in the way, the planets, your emotions - just live.”

  “Is that what you do?” I asked curiously.

  He nodded. “That’s what all travelers do. Imagine how hard it is to leave your home and go to another world to chase a feeling – just a feeling.” He was silent for a moment before he began again. “Nothing is certain in this life. If we let ourselves get caught up on one point, then we’ll struggle. I remember one of the first people I helped travel when I was a little older than you. She was so scared. The entire time I was trying to teach her how to live in the world we were in, she argued with herself. She was one of the rare ones that could see one passage clearly and another one faintly. Almost every day, she would make me take her back to the string and she would debate. She wouldn’t focus on the language or the culture; she was just too worried about the first step she took. She refused to look forward because she was always looking back. I’m a patient man, but I lost patience with her,” he said, grinning. “I was tired of going back there so much, so I asked a few other travelers to help me with her. Justus, Livingston, and Ashten all came, and one night we sat her down and had an intervention, told her she had to stop worrying and focus on what we were teaching her so she could at least go out in public. She was so mad, she stormed out of the house, screaming at us that we didn’t care that this was her life, her love, and it was too precious not to focus everything she’d done - on the choices she made.”

  “Did she find him?” I asked, knowing I’d never heard a sad story about anyone from Chara.

  A grin spread across his face. “That night,” he said, trying not to laugh. “She left without her keys; she must have locked the door on her way out. We decided to let her cool off and just went to bed. She knocked on the door of our closest neighbor, asking to use the phone so she could try to wake us up; when the twenty-something-year-old man answered the door, it was love at first sight.”

  I let a grin spread across my face and shook my head “He was right there?”

  “Yep, half a mile away. He literally jogged past our house every morning and every night. I even knew his name; he’d borrowed tools from me before. He told her later that he’d seen her on her first day there, but the time never seemed right to introduce himself, that she looked too stressed.”

  “Oh wow,” I said, finding humor in his story.

  “She realized then what we were saying: that she had to go with her gut feeling, declare the end, and just live – and life will bring you where you need to be when you need to be there. He ended up coming to Chara, and to this day she coaches nervous citizens of Chara before they leave, telling them that she wasted almost a year of her life in worry that could have been spent with the one she loves.”

  “A year? You stayed there a year? You must not have helped many people before finding mom?”

  “I would come and go at least once a week to check on her. I managed to help almost thirty others in the time it took her to find our neighbor,” my father said, shaking his head.

  I grinned and put my arm around his back. We crossed the street, then started to head back. It was dark now, and no one was out anymore. My father looked down at me “Did that story help you?” he asked.

  “It made me feel better. But, Dad, seriously I’m losing my grip. I fought with Clarissa and Olivia today. Olivia said I needed to get over myself, and Clarissa is blaming me for an obsession that Dane seems to have with what’s going on between me and Drake and Landen. That alone is almost too much to bear, but I have to add to it what’s coming at me, push down this pull, almost an attraction I have for Drake; it makes me sick to think about it,” I said, making a face and not believing that I’d just admitted that aloud - to my father, of all people.

  I focused on his emotion to see if I could feel shock or worry coming from him, but he held his calm and didn’t seem to struggle to maintain it. His arm tightened around me.

  “Your friends are just trying to find their purpose. It’
s easy for Clarissa to blame you aloud, but deep down she knows it’s not you. Olivia has always found comfort in your shadow; now she’s stepping out of it, and I can see how that might scare you, how you can think that she’s too naïve to find her way – but you’re wrong; she feels her purpose just like you do. Don’t try to control what they do or think for them; let them come and go at will. If they want your guidance or advice, they’ll ask for it. If you want theirs, you ask for it.”

  I took in a deep breath and nodded.

  “And the other thing,” he said, looking sincerely down at me, “how you feel about Drake. That’s human, completely normal; just because we’re in love, we aren’t blind. If you keep pushing it down, you’re going to break apart one day. You need Drake right now, and he needs you. There’s a bond that everyone can see between the two of you, even Landen. At first he wasn’t threatened by it, but the more he sees you push it down, the more reason he has to see Drake as a threat - at the very least, a threat to your health.”

  My eyes questioned how he knew something so intimate about Landen, something I didn’t even know.

  “He’s mentioned it vaguely to me recently.”

  I stopped in my tracks. A numb, sick feeling rose inside of me. I felt betrayed that Landen would talk about something so private with my father. I wondered how many other people he’d confided in. As anger caused my cheeks to blush, my father tilted his head down and raised my chin, forcing to me look him in the eye.

  “No one else. He hasn’t told anyone; I had to pull it out of him. I told him that if he was going to heal people, understand the body well enough to make a difference, he had to find balance, to understand that most of the time the healing process – the speed of it - is determined by the state of mind the person is in. He told me that the only person’s state of mind he was worried about was yours.”

  “He thinks I’m not balanced?” I said shortly, growing angrier by the moment.

  “No, Willow, he feels you hiding these emotions, pushing them down, and he doesn’t understand why you’re hiding a part of yourself from him.”

  “I do that so I’ll be ‘fine’, as he puts it. I’m not the only one fighting emotions; he feels them, too. He wakes up with them.”

  “What do you mean he wakes up with them?” my father asked.

  “I don’t know. I always wake up or open my eyes before him, and just before he wakes, his body tenses and I feel every negative emotion in him. I even feel envy - and he has no reason to feel envy.”

  “When did this begin?” he asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders, feeling guilty that I’d revealed such a private thing to my father. “After Venus. He says they’re not his; I’m sure he’s just picking up on others’ emotions or something.”

  My father’s eyes grew curious as I felt concern coming from him.

  “What?” I asked as fear caused my stomach to sink.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing. We may need to be more cautious with who and when Landen heals.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, energy is a two-way street. If he’s giving his energy to heal, then I have no doubt that he’s getting something in return for that act; those emotions may be coming from the ones he’s healed.”

  “You mean Drake?” I said as a sick feeling rose in my throat. “Are you saying that a part of Drake is inside of Landen?”

  “I’m saying that we are all energy, and Landen may be channeling the ones that he’s helped. We’ll just make sure healing is the only choice we have; he has enough emotions to deal with on his own without adding to it.”

  “I saw Drake’e eyes turn blue today,” I said as all the color washed from my face.

  He raised his eyebrows, telling me to calm down, that he’d figure this out for me; I had enough to worry about. “Landen had to use a lot of energy to heal him; it was a fatal wound - at least without surgery it would have been. Listen, don’t worry about this. The two of you need to work out your own emotions; when you do that, it’ll be easy to recognize the ones he’s channeling from others.”

  “Do you remember what I said about those annoying thoughts I have? Do you have any idea how much I worry about Landen feeling that attraction I have? How worried I am that it’ll give him doubt, make him weak because of it?”

  “Do you remember what I said about not thinking and just listening? Stop thinking that you’re going to hurt him. Even if he couldn’t feel your emotions or see your intent, his blood, his heritage has taught him that nothing can come between soul mates. Love isn’t perfect; it’s messy, tangled, and dangerous.”

  “It’s not that way for you and mom. You two have the perfect relationship,” I said coldly, envying it at the moment.

  “You’re our daughter. It’s easy for you to think that. We lead you to see that, but if you think that we’ve never fought or felt jealously, you’re wrong. I don’t think you would ever realize this, but we would get a babysitter and drive somewhere and just have it out; we knew we couldn’t fight it out in front of you because you’d feel it, and we didn’t want to scare you. Couples fight, they have doubts – even soul mates. How boring would it be if we didn’t?”

  I started to argue with him, but he raised his hand and put his finger across my lips.

  “But ,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “you and Landen are different. I don’t see a single doubt in either of you, and I shouldn’t. If I had dreamed of your mother, if I could feel her love, I doubt we would have had half the fights we had.”

  He let his finger down, prepared to listen to my rebuttal.

  “What if you could feel her? What if you could feel an attraction, maybe even lust for another man within her? How many fights would that have caused?” I asked, wanting him to see how serious I was about the emotions that Drake brought out in me.

  He stared into my eyes and smiled slightly.“None – because that emotion is nothing compared to love. You know that.”

  “Alright,” I said, holding his stare. “So what do I do – let myself feel that way, then fight with Landen? Add him to the growing list?”

  He shook his head. “If you fight, you fight - but a fight is only temporary; what the both of you are doing now is slowly killing you. It’s breeding darkness and mistrust. Feel them, face them, and move on.”

  “I can’t let him feel this, know this...ignoring it is my only option.”

  “I’ve said my peace, Willow. I can’t live your life for you; believe me, if there was a way, I would have found it long before today. I’m not going to tell you how to love him. I just want you to listen, to declare the end you want and trust that it will come.”

  “I have to have control over my life, my direction - do you realize they were going to have me kill Drake a few days ago? If I just stand there and ‘listen’ or trust the outcome, there’s no telling what could happen.”

  “You made the right decision: you listened. At the last minute, you listened to you, who you were and who you are. You never had a doubt that they would save you, at least not deep down. Take control of your life, but calm down and worry about Willow; Willow and Landen. Let the others play whatever roles they feel they need to.”

  “What if that role puts them in danger?” I asked.

  “Listen to why they want to do what they want to do. If you still have fears, tell them, but don’t force your ideas; state them, then follow your path.”

  I took in a deep breath. “Alright, Dad,” I said calmly.

  He shook his head. “You just pushed this down, didn’t you?”

  I grinned slightly. “I don’t even know.”

  “When you fought with Olivia and Clarissa today, did you yell?” he asked.

  “Um, yeah,” I said with a smirk, still furious with the both of them.

  “Good,” he said, relaxing his shoulders.

  “What?!”

  He shrugged his shoulders “You let it out; we’ve been waiting for you to do that.”

  “Who?”

  “Everyone.
On the inside, you may be struggling, but on the outside you look too calm. A little anger, yelling – that makes you more approachable.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t understand your logic,” I said, looking down.

  He pulled my chin up. “Don’t look down. Look straight ahead and express your emotions; don’t push them down.”

  “OK,” I breathed, smiling slyly and holding my chin higher than I needed to to look at him over my nose.

  He laughed under his breath and shook his head. “That’s my girl.”

  We started to walk back to the palace. He didn’t force me to talk, and I didn’t really try to think about anything; it was actually the most relaxed I’d felt in weeks.

  As we moved closer, I felt Dane. As I furrowed my eyebrows and focused on him. I felt anticipation, lust, and desire coming from him. I knew it wasn’t for Clarissa because I couldn’t feel her; oddly, I couldn’t feel anyone but him. There was an alleyway approaching, and I put hand out to stop my dad; I didn’t want him to see what I thought I felt.

  “Wait right here for a second,” I murmured.

  “Why, Willow?”

  I raised my finger to tell him to be quiet, then stepped closer to the alley.

  Chapter Six

  I’d never felt emotions this powerful in my life; they were heart racing and dangerous. I knew my most heated moments of passion never came close to this seductive rush that I could feel. It took my breath away to feel them. I cautiously stepped closer to the alley, listening for a sound, hoping I was wrong – that this wasn’t him. I peeked around the corner and saw two shadowed figures. The one I thought was Dane was leaning against the wall, and woman had her coat open around them with his arms inside. I stared, paralyzed as I saw his head in her neck and her raising her leg against his.