Reign of Ice (Forever Fae series) (28 page)

THERE WAS pain …

I was standing in the middle of a bright field with flowers as far as the eye could see. I was dressed in a beautiful white, flowing gown just like the dress I wore
on mine and Brayden’s bonding night. There were others here, some reading while lounging in the grass while others walked and picked flowers.

“Please tell me this isn’t what I’m supposed to do while I’m here,” I mumbled to myself.

A deep, sad chuckle sounded from behind me so I turned around quickly and saw someone I wasn’t expecting to see. He bowed his head and smiled. “You can do what you want here, Your Highness. I am not one for the flower picking either.”

“Lukas!” I shrieked, taking hold of his hand. He felt so real … so alive. “What’s going on? How long have I been gone?”

“Not long,” he answered. “It’s been about a day now.”

“Where’s Merrick?” I asked curiously. “I figured he would be here.”

Sighing, Lukas shifted on his feet and hung his head. “No, he’s not here. He wanted to be here when you crossed over, but Calista needed him more.”

When his gaze lifted to mine, I could see the hesitance and sorrow in his eyes. “Oh no,” I whispered, turning away. “I can’t imagine what they must be going through right now.”

Even though I didn’t have a heart that beat, I could still feel the hurt and pain in knowing that everyone I loved was back home suffering.

“What’s going on back home? Is Brayden all right?” I asked forlornly.

He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the same soft, angelic voice of the woman I remembered hearing when I died. I could feel her presence behind me. “They will all be fine, Ariella,” she replied, placing a kind hand on my shoulder. “Losing someone you love is not an easy task to bear.”

I think we all knew how that felt. Taking a deep breath, I turned around slowly and in front of me was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.  “What are you?” I breathed, taking in her whole appearance.

Her hair was like my own, appearing more white than blonde, while her body beamed in the bright light almost like a shimmering glow. She had wings behind her back, but they weren’t feathery like you would imagine an angel to have. They were thin and iridescent, adding to the whole ethereal glow. I was amazed and in awe.

Smiling, she bowed her head and answered, “My name is
Lailah, Your Highness. I am one of the keepers of the Hereafter. I have come to welcome you.”

I tried hard to smile but failed. “Thank you,
Lailah. However, I wish I could say that I was happy to be here. I mean, I’m glad I was given the privilege to be here, but my heart was left back in the Land of the Fae.” I paused for a second and searched around again at all the people, noticing that none of them had wings except her. “So …” I began. “With being a keeper of the Hereafter does that make you an angel?”

She laughed and reached down to take my hand. Her skin was warm and soft, but her grip was firm and strong. I could feel her power and the pureness in her soul, and never in my life or death had I ever felt that kind of power. “I guess you can say that,” she said, “but my wings disappear when I leave the Hereafter and the moment I step back they appear.”

“How is that possible?” I asked. “Did you have to earn them before you could become a Keeper?”

She shook her head. “No, I didn’t earn them in the way you think. I was chosen.”

“By whom?” I wondered. I had never heard of Keepers before.

“You ask a lot of questions, Your Highness,”
Lailah teased with a grin. “I will tell you all that you want to know, but there is somewhere we must go first.”

She looked to Lukas, who had remained silent during our introduction, and bowed her head to him. “It was lovely to see you again, Lukas, as always.”

“Same to you, Lailah,” he responded warmly.

He backed away slowly as
Lailah held my hand tighter and lifted us up into the sky. “Where are we going?” I asked, looking down at the ground disappearing beneath us. The land below us started to fade and I had to close my eyes to the bright light that glared all around us the farther we went.

“Just hold on tight, Ariella, and keep your eyes closed. All will be revealed soon.”

“OPEN YOUR EYES
,” Lailah commanded sweetly.

Before opening my eyes, it took only one second to know where I was. I was in the Land of the
Fae, in the exact spot the life fled from my body. The green meadows flowed as far as the eye could see with no hint of evil anywhere, and where I had met my last minutes in our realm there was a bed of roses that grew where my body had lain. I picked a giant pink one and held it to my nose. It smelled so sweet and alive, and it reminded me so much of my home in Summer before I changed.

“Why did you bring me here?” I cried, kneeling down into the grass. “What purpose is it to remind me of what I left behind?”

Lailah knelt down beside me and placed her hands on the ground. “I didn’t bring you here to make you upset, Your Highness. This is the first step to helping you understand.”

“To understand what,” I whispered.

She took my hand and placed it on the ground. “That this isn’t the end,” she claimed. “Concentrate on the land and tell me what you feel.”

Closing my eyes, I connected with the land and searched deep within its depths. I knew what I was feeling because I had felt it before, before my court had been claimed. The land was waiting for someone to be worthy enough to claim it, to make it grow.

“It wants to be claimed,” I told her, “but with all the four courts who is there left to claim it?”

Grinning from ear to ear, she held out her hand and smiled. “That is the right question, Your Highness. Come, we have somewhere else to go.”

Instead of flying this time, the moment I took her hand the bright light that shone on us from before flashed all around us. I could hear the far away sound of voices off in the distance, and once the lights dimmed and we got closer, I knew who those voices belonged to. When the light disappeared, I immediately opened my eyes and gasped, clutching my chest. I could barely breathe from the sorrow and pain permeating the room … mine and Brayden’s room.

Merrick saw me and rushed over, taking me in his arms. “Oh, Ariella, I am so sorry I wasn’t there to see you on the other side. I couldn’t leave
Calista … she needed me.”

“I understand,” I whispered.

He raised a questioning brow at Lailah and she quickly shook her head in response.
I wonder what that’s about.

“How is Brayden?” I asked him. By the way he bit his lip and looked away, I knew something was wrong. I knew that look like the back of my hand. “Merrick, tell me,” I pleaded.

He sighed and blew out a shaky breath. “He’s not here, Ariella. After everything that happened he took it pretty hard. He said he was leaving.”

“Leaving,” I shrieked. “Leaving where?”

He shrugged. “No one knows.”

“I have to find him,” I exclaimed to
Lailah, wanting to rush out the door. “Please, let me look for him.” There was nothing I wanted more than to see him again, but then if he couldn’t see me ...

Would he be able to feel my presence like
Calista could with Merrick?

Lailah
nodded sadly and brushed a gentle hand down my cheek. “You will have plenty of time to find your mate, Your Highness. However, there is something that you need to know before you do.”

A lone tear escaped down my cheek and she wiped it away, smiling. She walked me over to my family and as we passed them I got a clear view of the bed. There—lying under the sheets—was my body, still and unmoving with my eyes closed and unseeing. But how was that possible? I was dead, so shouldn’t my body have been turned to ash?

“Why am I lying there?” I asked nervously. “If I’m dead wouldn’t my body be gone?”

Elvena
was sitting on one side of the bed sobbing with her head lowered while my sisters and Sorcha sat on the other with their arms wrapped around each other, sniffling and wiping away their tears. Bayleon and Bastian were even in the room with their eyes downcast, probably to keep from looking at Queen Mab or my mother.

Ryder and
Kalen both hung back, grieving to themselves, wanting to give Calista and Meliantha their space. Kamden and Zanna were in the corner, both holding onto each other for comfort. However, Drake was a different story. Never once had I seen him cry, but watching the tears fall down his cheeks at my absence ripped my soul into pieces.

“Don’t despair, Ariella,”
Lailah murmured. She placed a hand on the forehead of my body lying in the bed and looked back at me. I had no idea what was going on or why my body was still whole, but I wanted answers … I needed them.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I cried.

Lailah sighed and explained, “As you already know, when one of the fae dies, the soul in your body leaves and travels to the Hereafter. Your soul is what keeps your body together, keeps it strong. Yours has crossed over, Ariella, and that is what I see when I look at you right now. However, there is something that keeps you tied to this world, something that keeps your body alive even though your soul is not a part of it.”

“What could that be?” I whispered. “I have never heard of this happening before.” Nothing she said was making sense. I had never known any of this to ever happen in the Land of the
Fae. What could be keeping my body tethered to my realm?

Lailah
smiled. “Of course you wouldn’t have heard of this happening before. You are the first, Your Highness. The Keepers had known of your fate to defeat the sorcerer long before you even knew, except your destiny took an interesting turn that we didn’t expect. It wasn’t just something that saved you, but someone.”

I felt the presence of someone else with me when I defeated the sorcerer, but I never understood who or what it was.

Lailah leaned over my body and placed a gentle hand on my stomach, smiling. I gasped and collapsed onto the bed beside my body, bursting into tears. “Are you saying I was pregnant?” I cried, my eyes wide. When she nodded my world came crashing down on me. How could I have been so stupid? I not only sacrificed my life, but the life of my unborn child.

“I didn’t know,” I sobbed, wiping the tears angrily away from my face. “I sacrificed myself when I had a baby growing inside of me. I will never be forgiven for that. Brayden will never forgive me for this, for leaving and sacrificing myself and his unborn child.”

“He knows you didn’t know, Ariella,” Merrick spoke up softly. “Elvena told him there was no way you could’ve known so early if you weren’t expecting it or looking for it to happen.”

“It still doesn’t change the fact that I’m gone and with it my child,” I wailed.

Lailah knelt down and took my hands in hers, her amber eyes kind and full of life. “I am going to change that, Ariella,” she revealed. “That’s why I brought you here … to give you back your life.”

“What? How?” I whispered hopefully.

She smiled and placed my own hand on my stomach. “The baby inside your womb is still alive, Ariella. She needs you and we need her. The night she was conceived she was marked to be a Keeper, and on that night she had already come into her power. That’s why you were able to see Merrick and Lukas when you were here. Those are not your abilities, but your daughter’s.”

“I’m going to have a daughter?” I whispered, wrapping my arms around my stomach.

Tears of joy streamed down my face, but they were soon put on hold when I realized what Lailah just said. My daughter had been chosen to be a Keeper. How was that going to be possible with her alive?

“Wait,” I exclaimed, grabbing her hand. “You said she’s going to be a Keeper. To be a Keeper she will be in the Hereafter. Does that mean she has to die for that? I’m not going to let you take her!”

Lailah lifted a challenging brow. “I am not dead, Your Highness. Keepers are very much alive,” she pointed out sternly. “And your daughter will be also. She will be able to travel from this realm to the Hereafter to assist those in crossing over. She will be able to see Merrick and Lukas or whoever she pleases anytime she wants. This is a very special gift that makes her a very important female in your realm,
and
in the mortal world. There are faeries not only here that she will be helping, but those that are lost in the mortal realm. That is why we are sending you back so you can bring her into your world and make her strong so she can fulfill her destiny. The Land of the Fae has not finished changing, and your daughter is going to be a part of it all.”

I glanced down at my frozen body and then back to her. “So how do you put me back in my body exactly?”

She grinned, and about that time her body began to glow with a bright, beaming light. The brighter it got the more it felt like I was fading and being pulled in a new direction. “Getting you back is the easy part, Your Highness. I look forward to meeting your daughter when the time comes.”

“So do I,” I whispered with a smile. “So do I.”

Closing my eyes, I succumbed to the pull on my soul and let it take me, deeper and deeper. I knew the moment I connected back with my body because I could feel it, I could feel her … my daughter. I could feel her life growing inside my belly and giving me the strength I had lost, but I could also feel Brayden’s grief. It ripped through my chest like a thousand knives. I was home, I was safe, and I needed to find him … fast.