The Fire Within (The Fire of The Soul Series) (17 page)

"I've got to go Anna, they're waiting for me.
Will you come and see me off?" Victor asks his crimson eyes contemplative
and cautious.

"Of course I will see you off." I reply
before I kiss him once more, wishing that this moment could last forever.
"Don't do anything stupid while you're gone, I want to one day continue
this," I say and Victor smiles crookedly.

"I look forward to it," He says, before
quickly kissing me once. He lifts me up into his arms, and throws me over his
shoulder. He carries me all the way down to the foyer, running as fast as he
can, as I scream from the top of my lungs, shocked and surprised that Victor
would do something so spontaneous. He puts me down when we reach the foyer, but
he does not let go of me. He is smiling and it is filled with joy, I breath
heavily, trying to bring some air into my lungs. He cups my face in his hands,
and kisses me lightly on the lips. There are no words to share in between us,
for we have already said our goodbyes. I can feel tears forming in my eyes as I
watch Victor walk away, bouncing down the stairs, and his joy still in every
cell in his body. I wipe the tears from my eyes, and walk out into the
sunlight, just barely standing outside the door frame.

The horses that are to take Victor and his warriors
away stand waiting out the front, pawing the ground with their hooves. There
are quiet a few men already mounted and waiting; others are saying goodbye to
their loved ones. I remember that final kiss I had with Victor, the light sweet
kiss we shared when he pulled me off of his shoulder, as I watch him mount his
horse. It wasn't a long one but it didn't have to be. The kiss tells of his
love for me, the promises that he wishes he could make and keep and it makes me
melt under its radiating heat. I watch him as he tries to keep his joy inside,
cautious of the families mourning their loss around him. I mourn for him, mourn
the loss of him in the castle.

The goodbyes are coming to an end, lovers kiss and
families hug, some men have nobody to say goodbye to and nobody to wish for
their safe return, which saddens me. When all of the warriors have mounted
their steeds, Victor turns towards the crowd.

"For some of us this trip will be swift and
without almost any danger, but for some of us this trip will be long and
treacherous. I would promise you all the return of your loved one's safe and
sound, but I cannot promise what is not within my power, not even of myself. I
simply state that we do what we must to protect all of you, in the hope that
one day our world will be rid of the disease that is the Skin-walkers."
There is a cry of rage at the name of the Skin-walkers, and I know that
Victor's speech was to bring hope to the peoples' hearts, to bring hope to his
Kingdom, but it only brought fear to my heart, fear and the realization that he
may never return. The thought of spending eternity alone terrifies me and I
pray for his safe return. It isn't long before the warriors are ridding off
into the sunset, the tears of their loved one's falling down their cheeks and I
am not separate from the mourning families as I watch Victor leave.

I love you
,
I think as I watch Victor disappear from sight. Even if I never see his face
again, I promise to be ever faithful to the man I love. It is the least I can
do, seeing that he is risking his life to bring us our happy ending.

Anna's P.O.V

The sounds of tortured
screams fills the air as men and women, girls and boys, everyone on the
battlefield falls to their knees in inexplicable agony. My soul cries for these
tortured souls, and yet my mind is set on one track alone; to destroy those who
had destroyed the one I love. There is no changing my course, only following
through on it, and so there is nothing I can do to relieve these people,
whether innocent or guilty, they all have to pay for what has been done. They
all have to die.

I can feel an arm snaking
around my waist, holding onto me as we watch my victims fall to their knees. He
whispers in my ear, encouragement, telling me that I am doing what must be
done, telling me that I am doing well. His warm lips brush against my ear, his
warm hands placed soundly on my slightly round stomach. He is all around me,
the only thing I can feel, the only thing I can sense.

My gift to bring pain and
agony spreads quickly across the battlefield. Some are driven to madness,
killing others in their agony, some are driven to despair, killing themselves
in their desperation, but all I can see, all I can sense is death, agony,
madness and despair, and as the battle rages on, I come to sense nothing but
the demise of the fallen warriors; vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters,
skin-walkers, the Fae and whoever else is spread out on that battlefield.

My hatred, my own
self-destruction is all consuming, it not only sucks the energy out of me, but
it sucks the life out of me as well. As I lose consciousness, falling into my
enemy's arms, my thoughts are not on Victor, whom I had just watched die, nor
is it on Kayden, Will, Shade or Meg, but it is on what life from here on out
will be like, what my child's life will be like, when Christian takes over, not
only as Overlord, but as my husband and my child's guardian.

As my thoughts turn to
Kayden, I search him out on the battlefield. When I have found him, our eyes
meet. I try to see what he is thinking, what he is feeling, but I can see
nothing but hatred towards me, towards what I have done. His eyes, his hatred
is the very last thing I see before darkness encloses on me, in his moss green
eyes that stare into mine.

I awake, shaking and sweating from head
to foot, the bed sheets wrapped between my legs. Victor is missing, for he is
not in the bed beside me, and for a moment I think that my dream has actually happened,
that I have caused all that unfathomable pain, that I have caused all those
deaths, that I have caused it all because Victor had died and that I had caused
Kayden – of all people – to truly loath me. The thought is so unbearable that
it causes tears to fall down my cheeks as violent waves shake my body.

Suddenly, the tears stop flowing as the
memories of yesterday come back to me, an evening of love and proposals, and
then a morning of promises being broken followed by an afternoon of Victor
denying any memory of the promise he had made to me, in the darkness of the
tower before he had to leave. The memories erase my tears, and leave a hallow
numbness within me.

Once I feel more like myself, rather
than the shaking, sweating, scared little girl that I had woken up as, I begin
giving myself small simple steps to follow, so that I may be able to face the
very first day of truly being alone. Simple steps – to get prepared - such as
getting out of bed, taking off my nightgown, putting on my undergarments,
putting on the dove grey dress, slipping on a pair of shoes, these are fairly
simple, and although I go through them with a sluggish pace, I soon find myself
sitting in an empty kitchen, eating a simple meal that the servants had cooked
for themselves. It is nothing compared to what is usually prepared for Victor
and I, but this morning I cannot care what goes into me, as long as it makes my
hunger pains vanish into thin air.

Boredom soon finds me, and again I find
myself within the study room. The room seems to have a dark, abandon feeling to
it, and for once it suits the vast emptiness of the room. I browse through the
books lined up against the wall, searching for something to read, something
light and that would, hopefully lift my spirits. My fingers caresses their
spines, caresses thick leather and thin paper, old and new books, thousands of
books upon rows after rows, but there is one that my fingers hesitate on, one
grey book that has enraptured my attention before. The book seems pale, bland
in comparison to some of the other, grander titles that adorn the selves. The
book if at all possible seems lonely, abandon as if fingers had never caressed
its pages before, as if its words, its story had never been devoured before. On
a whim I pull on the book, wanting to discover its abandon secrets, wanting to
devour the abandon story, wanting to know every word on each page, wanting that
and so much more. As I pull on the book it refuses to budge, and when I try
even harder, putting my whole weight into the tug-a-war between me and the
self, the book moves slightly, only slightly but enough to pull it away, and to
reveal it's secret, a secret that I had sort of forgotten in the rush of
Victor's departure.

The grinding sound of stone moving
against stone startles me, so much so that I quickly turn around to face the
grinding sound, expecting someone to pounce upon me as my back is turned.
Instead all I see is the back of the fire place moving aside, and the
metal-grate in front of the fireplace slowly sliding down into a thin crack in
the floor. My curiosity is stirred again, however I cannot deny the pull of my
curiosity, and so I find myself slowly, cautiously moving towards the
fireplace.

As I step into the fireplace, an
unnatural feeling stirs within me as I think of the flames that usually emits
from the very spot I stand upon, I push aside my fears and step further into
the fireplace to find that in the darkness there is a winding staircase leading
down into the ground. The stairs are emerged in darkness, reaching into
darkness and only ever meeting darkness, so much so that it takes away my sense
of sight, and it causes me to reach out so that both of my hands rest upon the
wall. As my fingers graze upon a cold metal, my fingers quickly enclose around
the object feeling the coolness in the middle of my palm but also having a
support system that I could use to guide me through the darkness.

The darkness is all consuming as I delve
through it, as if it is reaching for infinity and beyond, and as I am walking down
the stairs, always one step at a time, with one hand upon the ever-present
rail, it seems to take forever for me to find my way through the darkness. Hope
quickly flees from me, however – after what seems like an eternity – a dim
light emerges in the darkness, and hope resumes it's place within my soul. My
pace increases and soon my feet are pounding down the stairs, as hope flares up
within me, encouraging me on towards the light. The steps are racing away from
me, and before I know it there are no more to run down, as I've reached the
bottom of the never-ending staircase that has almost ironically ended.

My eyes have been yearning to devour in
whatever was at the bottom of the stairs, but I find that I have endured that
journey for nothing as all that is before me is an old, abandon wine cellar.
The disappointment I feel is so obvious that the emotion is thick within the
air, to the extent that anyone would have been able to feel it rather than just
sense it. I was expecting there to be more to this mystery than an empty wine
cellar, but I've clearly hit a dead end.

I try to imagine Victor standing in this
bland room, stocking up the room with wine, picking out a sweet, honey-like
wine to share with friends in front of the fire, or drinking himself into a
stupor as he sat before the flames alone. I try to imagine him here, but the
room remains empty, abandon and it feels as if a dead chill has seeped into the
room.

The loneliness seethes back in, as my
thoughts turn to Victor. It's so unbearably painful that it causes me to fall
to my knees, struggling to breath from the intense pressure on my chest. For a
moment I had almost forgotten his departure, almost forgot that Victor had left
at all. However, my traitorous thoughts bring back my memory and with the
memory, it brings this crippling pain as well.

It is a while before the tears stop
falling down my cheeks, and even longer before I can stand on my own two feet
again. My out-reached hands search for the wall, through the haziness of my
teary eyes. I feel the solid wall and breathe a sigh of relief when both of my
hands are placed firmly against it. I start to slowly make my way toward the
stairwell; I've seemed to have travelled much further from it than I had
thought.

As my eyes dry I realize that I've been
going in the opposite direction of the stairwell but the realization comes too
late. My feet have tripped upon a loose stone and I find myself crashing toward
the ground, in the dim light I see one thing alone. That there is another
secret passage opening before me, slowly but surely, making the awful sound of
stone moving against stone. The loose stone must have been the trigger for the
spring door. I sit up slowly, shaking my head from side to side to get rid of
the ringing dizziness.

The door comes to a stop and emitting
from the room, is a low, heavenly melody that swirls around the room and
embraces me in its loving caress. It calls to me, beckons me to come toward it,
promising me love, warmth and joy. The divine melody is hypnotic, beautiful and
wonderful, yet cold and dark at the same time. I have no choice but to accept
it, to welcome it, to allow it to consume me. I cannot deny the beautiful,
divine melody and so without a thought, I get to my feet, and let it pull me in
through the door, and to its heavenly source.

There is no need to watch my footing,
for it is sure and steady. My hands do not trail against the wall; my body does
not lean against it for support. My body is drawn toward the heavenly music,
emitting from the passage way, like the tide to the shore. I see nothing, I
think of nothing, there is no more than the music, it has completely devoured
me. My heart pounds, races though I cannot understand why. The music is
beautiful, it is alluring, like the songs of the angels, there is nothing to
fear and yet my soul trembles, it cowers in the wake of the music, in the wake
of the divine voice that I can hear with every beat of my living heart.