Cursed by Diamonds (A Dance with Destiny Book 1) (46 page)

The sky, the forest, and the quaint little house all melted away, as a painting tossed within the flames.

Merodach crawled out from under her and managed to get to his feet. She deliberately stalked him, like a cunning beast. He started to run. Instantly, she was in front of him. He slammed into her unmovable angelic form.

Flames licked the edges of her fiery eyes. Her liquid, misty body boiled and churned, tinkling crimson curls flying wildly about her head. She
willed
him to see her, yes, but he was already focused upon her breathtakingly terrifying glory.

“Please, Jenevier. Do not do this. I have only just felt love for the first time in my wretched life. You healed my heart,
healed
it. Do not destroy that. I beg you. I will worship you day and night without ceasing. I can lay the world at your feet. Just please, let me love you.”

“I can rule this puny world with no pathetic help from you.”

Her pretend paradise had dissolved completely, leaving only Prince Merodach trembling before her awesome angelic mask.

“You have been weighed for your countless crimes against humanity.”

He took a wobbly step back. She confidently mirrored him.

“Do not do this thing, my love,” he pleaded. “Forgive me my many sins. Allow me but one chance to make amends, just one. Let me restore all I have stolen from you, the whole of it. Let me prove to you how your gentle love has completely transformed the vile man you once knew. Grant me but one day. I will fix everything. I swear it.”

She ignored his cries, ignored his pleas. The only thing she felt was the shattering pieces of her heart, falling like lead shards within her chest.

“You have been measured by God Almighty—weighed in the balances because of the great evil your heart has produced.”

“Jenevier, listen to me! You released the darkness consuming me, replaced it with pure divine love. Let me prove this to you. Let me restore
all
the lives I have so ruthlessly destroyed. Give me but one chance to make amends before you rend my soul.”

Merodach fell to his knees. He knew she had no mercy left for him. He had hurt her, irrecoverably hurt her. And he knew, it was an unforgivable thing. His once cruel heart cursed him. He wished now to be punished for that most egregious of crimes.

Only love can produce such blinding hate
, he thought.
She loved me. Oh dear gods. She truly loved me.

“And you have been found wanting,” she spat. “Lacking, minus all things good and righteous in this beautiful world.”

Merodach lowered his head as his tears poured forth as a torrent. “Yes, it is as you say. I will resist you no longer, my love. If you hate me and refuse to accept my sincere feelings for you and you alone, then death will be a blessing I now beg for. You own me, Jenevier. Do with me as you will.”

“And you
created
me, oh darkest of all Princes. I am the product of your twisted pleasures, your sick games. I am what I am because of you. Look upon your masterpiece and tremble. What you have sown, so shall you also reap.”

Her movement was so quick, so precise, Merodach wasn’t even certain what had happened… not until he saw she was now holding his still pulsing, once blackened heart. She crushed it within her powerful hand as his lifeless body crumpled to the floor.

All those young maidens, all the grieving families, all the orphaned and motherless crying babies were righteously avenged through this single, ferocious, Death Angel.

She slowly looked up from the gore oozing between the mighty fingers of her outstretched hand, and saw her majestic brother standing before her. His flowing tears were a stark contrast to his radiantly beautiful face. Blessed relief washed over her.

It took her but a moment to realize exactly from whence his tears came. “Vareilious, I felt you there. I heard your growl. I didn’t even realize it, but my addled mind
knew
you were there. My majestic Guardian warrior… you came for me.” She ran to him, leapt into his celestial arms and kissed him. “Tell me now. My brother, my friend, tell me you did not hear me.” She searched his face. “Tell me you did not hear the whole of my dark, hidden confession.”

Vareilious couldn’t speak. His voice was choked off in his closed throat. She had said it. She had finally admitted the truth to herself, to him… and he reveled in every blessed word. Finally, she had given him proof that his feelings had not all been in vain. His heart was exceedingly precious to her, and that was enough.

“Milady.”

She turned toward the strong, valiant voice and found a kneeling man at her side. Loose black curls fell down around his bowed head, covering his face.

“You can see me?” she asked, amazed.

Looking back to her ethereal brother, Vareilious only shrugged his shoulders by way of response.

“Yes, Milady. I can see you.”

“But… how? How can a mortal look upon me in this form?”

The man rose to meet her vibrant ruby stare with strikingly beautiful emerald eyes, eyes that tugged at a place hidden somewhere deep within her angelic heart.

“I can see you because we are connected, forever. Now that I have finally found you again, I cannot bear to leave your side. Please, do not send me away, my beautiful Jenevier.”

She gently touched his porcelain face, wiped his grief-laden tears away with her thumb. Looking deep into those brilliant eyes, a part of her, a very human part, was whisked away across the universe and left floating amid a sea of stars. Had they only been given the chance to know one another, alas, their time was now past.

One ruby tear made its lonely journey down her cheek as she spoke to the valiant man whom she had once loved, the last words he would ever hear from her…

“The name, sweet Alastyn… is Vashti.”

Blessed by Sapphires

Book Two of

A Dance with Destiny

Chapter 1

I was walking down yet another busy city street. Hundreds of unknown faces, thousands of unseeing eyes, and still I was alone.

I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be and yet I walked, always I walked.

During my time on the eighth layer, I had witnessed many horrific things. Countless muggings, beatings, drug use, burglaries, murder, abuse of all kinds, rapes, gang wars—still, I walked.

This street was no different from the thousands of others I had roamed. It was lined with small shops, large buildings full of office workers, street vendors, and all the unknowing masses numbly dragging through their unknowing lives. The sounds here mirrored all the others; honking horns, police sirens, subway tremors, accented voices shouting about their available wares, and the ever present homeless, begging for coins from businessmen who pretended not to notice them, and from the tourists who noticed them too much.

And that’s exactly where I was, head down, trudging along Baker Street near the harbor in a congested town called Baltimore, when I heard the blissful chiming. My mind rocked with the painful remembrance of those tinkling little bells. I slowly turned toward the beckoning OPEN sign, almost daring to hope, yet bracing myself for the disappointing reflection I feared I would find looking back at me from the dusty old store window.

Sorrow shook me once again when I saw the same golden curls and the same deep blue eyes. No tinkling locks and no flaming orbs could be found. I glared at the accursed cheap wind chimes that had made my heart skip a beat and caused my blood to race through my veins. I willed those taunting chimes to burst, or break, or just crash to the filthy sidewalk. But nothing happened.

A large bin underneath those wretched wind-tossed devils taunting me held a name which bade me come closer.

It was only a wire container, pushed out near the street, piled full of old books and faded novels. The shopkeepers used such things to tempt would-be customers into perusing the merchandise within as well. A large handmade sign simply read ‘75% off, all sales FINAL.’

Halfway down the mound of tattered, torn, and previously unwanted paper treasures, one bore the name…
Jenevier
. My name.

I have traveled through many layers of this universe and have yet to meet another Jenevier. I know not if it’s the name that’s rare or if those bestowed with such a name were simply not troublesome enough to need
my
sort of intervention. Yet, I alone can easily disprove that theory. And that little thought made me giggle. I’m amazed, after what I’ve lived through I can still manage to laugh on occasion. It feels good.

I carefully pulled the book through one of the large square holes and cautiously opened the first page. Written there upon that cheap, yellowing paper were the familiar words of my very last thoughts. Words I had never even uttered aloud. The same words that’d run through my mind as I lay dying at the end of all things. I read on.

Bitter word for bitter word, painful moment for painful moment, they were all meticulously recorded upon those loosely held pages within that broken old binding. Here was my entire life, written down for all to see and then haplessly tossed into a discount bin outside an overpriced tourist shop.

The rain started, so I walked on, the book tucked neatly under my shivering arm.

The weather on layer eight is nothing like my homeland of Ashgard. It is unpredictable at best. I’m always traveling to a fairer place, never resting, always searching. Baltimore is definitely no place to be in the tenth month of their calendar year. I’m headed south in search of the blessed sun and the warmth I know it will bring.

I don’t believe I’m invisible. I mean, I can see myself and I can see my reflection. But not one single being on this entire layer has ever acknowledged me in any way. Strangely, that’s become my favorite thing about layer eight, complete anonymity. I go where I please, eat what I crave, and sleep where I want. No one seems to even notice.

My banishment was severe but not completely cruel. I could have all I needed, except companionship. I’ve used up all the friends and love this life had to offer me. I haplessly squandered all that was truly precious, all that was worth keeping, so it was taken from me. Or perhaps more appropriately,
I
was taken from
it
.

I made my way into the dank office of another dingy old motel and chose a random key from the hooks on the wall behind the desk. I’d never figured out how to retrieve one of those sliding cards used by all the newer, much nicer places to sleep. So I either stayed in a rundown old dump still using metal keys, or I slept under the stars when the weather permitted.

Once inside my humble home for the night, I hung up the new clothes I’d taken right off the store rack, uncontested. I peeled off the wet ones still mercilessly clinging to my trembling, ageless body, and turned on the shower. I sat down upon one of my favorite things this layer had to offer, an indoor toilet, and began to read my newly found treasure as I waited for the wonderful water to warm all by itself. No fire needed.

I didn’t sleep that night. I read the stolen novel from cover to cover, the whole of my life, right up until I ripped Prince Merodach’s still beating heart from his pleading chest with my angelic hand. I murdered Ashgard’s Dark Prince, and thus sealed my fate.

How could this be? How could someone upon layer eight even know of my existence, much less my entire life, verbatim?

Yet, here it was. Every single moment, every single decision, perfectly recorded for all time and eternity. My many sins were written right here in black and white for curious eyes to freely behold.

I felt violated and naked as I finished the last page and closed the painful little book. I looked for the prophetic author but found only initials. The inside cover had my life listed as a work of fiction. I’ll admit to you now, I had to laugh at that little revelation. It had most definitely seemed like reality while it was happening. I yet bear the horrible scars to prove it.

I missed my home now more than ever. I missed my beloved friends I could never see again. And, I missed my precious Varick with all my heart and what little of my soul yet remained to me.

I won’t claim to know who the author was or how they saw my tormented life, but I am extremely grateful the gifted seer stopped their words before recording my fateful ending. I alone wish to be the purveyor of the words written herein so inquiring eyes may know my true end, lest I be heralded a hero to even one soul upon even one layer.

Let it be known that I, Jenevier Olesia Embarr, tore the still beating heart from the pleading chest of Merodach, Prince of Wrothdem and crushed it before him in my mighty hand. I witnessed, judged, sentenced, and executed him without a summons from God. In so doing, I murdered this man and freely took the life of an innocent.

Now, if you’ve read the prophetic story of my life, you know well why I carried out this horrific deed. Merodach was twisted, evil, destructive, and definitely no innocent. At least this was true in the eyes of all who knew him. Alas, I am but a created being, flawed at best. My ways are not His ways and my thoughts are not His thoughts. I couldn’t hear Merodach’s pitiful pleas for love and mercy through my bitter, vengeful rage. But God did. I was meant to be the vessel He used to finally turn Merodach’s wicked heart. I was unknowingly sent by God to show the Dark Prince what love was, what it truly felt like.

The Prince of Wrothdem had been denied the meaning of love since he was orphaned as a babe. With Merodach’s heart now capable of priceless love, coupled with his wonderful gift of Elven magic, God was going to use this newly remade Prince to bring prosperous peace and righteous unity to all of Ashgard. Merodach was to be given a second chance to fulfill the role God had intended for him. If he did not, the summons would come down and I would have been chosen to carry out his long overdue death sentence.

Yet, I alone robbed Merodach of his destiny. I alone robbed God of His divine plan. And it was me who robbed the good people of Ashgard from knowing the true euphoric paradise intended for them and their children.

I murdered an innocent!

My vile act was witnessed by my brother Vareilious, my summons was sent down to Vareen, I was judged by my beloved Varick, and my sentence was mercifully carried out by God’s own glorious hand.

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