Pure Providence, page 1
part #10 of Pure/ Dark Ones Series
© Copyright by Aja James 2019
Dear Reader:
I hope you will enjoy the fifth installment of the Pure Ones saga on the following pages (Book #8.5 in Pure/ Dark Series). You will soon see that much more is yet to come.
Every story has many points of view, many different interpretations and versions of the truth. So what about the perspective from the Dark Ones’ POV? I hope you have a read in Book 2, Dark Longing. And meet Dalair, Sophia and the Creature for the first time in Book 1, Pure Healing, available in Audible. Hear Sophia’s story in her novella Pure Awakening, also available in Audible.
Email me at megami771@yahoo.com to find out more. And follow me on https://www.facebook.com/AjaJamesAuthor and https://aja-james.blog/. I will have free chapters, behind the scenes and other goodies on the Pure/ Dark Ones series.
I love hearing from you!
Enjoy!
Aja James
Contents
Glossary
Prologue
Chapter One: My Brother, My Friend
Chapter Two: A Prince’s Duty
Chapter Three: An Inauspicious Beginning
Chapter Four: If Only…
Chapter Five: Forever Tied
Chapter Six: My Almost First Kiss
Chapter Seven: Traitor in Our Midst
Chapter Eight: Everything I Feared
Chapter Nine: Ten Years of Distance
Chapter Ten: Homecoming
Chapter Eleven: The Plan
Chapter Twelve: The First Time
Chapter Thirteen: In the Daytime We’re Dead
Chapter Fourteen: But At Night We Live
Chapter Fifteen: Waiting For the End
Chapter Sixteen: The Sacrifice
Chapter Seventeen: Let It All Disappear
Epilogue
Other Books in the Pure/ Dark Ones series:
Excerpt from Book 6.5, Pure Awakening:
Author’s Note:
Glossary of Characters
Glossary
Awakening: test of courage and strength of spirit which leads to the subject, who possesses a Pure soul, coming into his/her Gift, a supernatural power, if he/she passes the test.
Dark One: supernatural being who prefers to live in the night and who gathers energy and prolongs his/her life by feeding off the blood, and sometimes souls, of others. Dark Ones are born, not made. Sometimes confused with the term vampire.
Decline: condition in which, or process of, a Pure-Ones’ life force depletes after he/she Falls in love but does not receive equal love in return. The Pure One weakens and his/her body slowly, painfully breaks down over the course of thirty days, leading ultimately to death unless his/her love is returned in equal measure.
The Dozen: see Royal Zodiac.
The Elite: six royal personal guards of the Pure Queen.
Eternal Mate: the destined partner to a given Pure soul. Each soul only has one mate across time, across various incarnations of life. Quotation from the Zodiac Scrolls describing the bond: “His body is the Nourishment of life. Her energy is the Sustenance of soul.”
Gift: supernatural power bestowed upon Pure Ones by the Goddess. Usually an enhanced physical or mental ability such as telekinesis, superhuman strength and telepathy. True Blood Dark Ones also possess powerful Gifts. See True Blood.
The Goddess: supernatural being who is credited with the creation of the Pure Ones. She is a deity to which Pure Ones devote themselves. She protects the Universal Balance.
Nourishment: the strength that Mated Dark Ones take from each other’s blood and body through sexual intercourse. Once Mated, they will no longer need others’ blood to survive, only that from each other. Sexual intercourse is required to make the Nourishment sustaining.
Nourishment is also what Pure males provide their females as Eternal Mates. See Eternal Mate.
Pure One: supernatural being who is eternally youthful, typically endowed with heightened senses or powers called the Gift. In possession of a pure soul and blessed with more than one chance at life by the Goddess, chosen as one of Her immortal race that defends the Universal Balance.
The Royal Zodiac: twelve-member collective of the Elite, the Circlet and the Queen of the Pure Ones.
Sacred Laws (Pure Ones): One, thou shalt protect the purity, innocence and goodness of humankind and the Universal Balance to which all souls contribute. Two, thou shalt maintain the secrecy of the Race. And three, thou shalt not engage in sexual intercourse with someone who is not thy Eternal Mate. Also known as the Cardinal Rule.
Shield: referred to as the base of the Royal Zodiac, wherever it may be. Not necessarily a physical location.
Sustenance: the strength that Mated Pure-Males take from the Pure-females’ spirit. Once Mated, the Pure-male becomes dependent upon the Pure-female for sustaining his life. If his Mate dies before him, he too will perish. In equal exchange, the Pure-male provides Nourishment. See Nourishment.
Zodiac Prophesies: events yet to come, foretold by the Seer of the Pure Ones through the Orb of Prophesies.
Zodiac Scrolls: events past, recorded by the Scribe of the Pure Ones.
Prologue
All my existence, I have loved one woman.
But she was never meant to be mine.
I loved her when she was the intended bride for another.
I betrayed him too.
I loved her after they married.
I took what wasn’t mine.
I paid my penance by dying in his stead.
But it wasn’t enough to restore the Balance.
When the Goddess gave me a chance to make things right, to serve as a soldier of the Pure Ones, I embraced that offer. Even though what I really wanted to do was stay dead and numb.
Never to be reawakened in this world.
Never to feel again.
To yearn and desire and seethe with jealousy and despair at my own helplessness.
The Goddess warned me at the moment of my death and rebirth not to want her again. For our paths would cross in the future, though I wouldn’t know the time and place. Nor would I recognize her physical incarnation.
For she was never meant to be mine.
Will never be mine.
But the moment I realized who she was—the Pure Queen I’d been assigned to protect as the Paladin—the moment I recognized her soul, I Fell again.
I wanted. I craved. I yearned. I seethed.
I resisted.
I pushed her away over and over again. Made her angry and confused.
Made her hate me.
But Goddess above! I cannot change how I feel. I cannot stop wanting her.
Cannot stop loving her.
All my existence, my body, heart and soul have belonged to one woman.
Even though she can never be mine.
I love her still.
I love her forever.
This is the beginning of the end of our story.
Judge me if you dare.
Chapter One: My Brother, My Friend
I am alive, but not living.
I am dead, but not buried.
The body in which my soul is trapped moves on its own accord, jerked about by puppet strings.
My brain is programmed with commands I am powerless to disobey. I think, but my thoughts are not my own.
My heart beats, pumping Pure blood to vital organs, and yet it feels nothing. It is numb, like the rest of my consciousness.
Only when my body rests, when the subconscious licks at the icy prison surrounding it, does a faint fragment of my soul flicker to life.
But memories elude me.
Dreams distort truths.
I know I must fight against losing myself, but I don’t want to.
Every moment I remain trapped inside this physical shell, my soul weakens.
Suffocating.
Desperate to release itself.
It hurts.
The process of losing myself. Piece by piece unraveling into nothingness.
Like dying by countless cuts, not knowing when the end might come.
Or if it will come at all.
Only wishing futilely to feel nothing, because the pain is unbearable and unending. Knowing in a corner of my mind that my body is being used for purposes not my own—
My blood taken to fuel my enemies’ powers.
My sex used to reawaken the Darkness within the one I love.
My body made to maim and kill innocents.
It hurts.
Goddess, make it stop! I scream in my subconscious.
Sometimes there’s an answer from that fickle deity.
She tells me that the pain will end when my life ends. If I stop fighting for my soul, I will feel peace.
No more agony.
No more fear.
If I die, the Darkness within the one I love will win. Countless others will suffer the consequences.
But my soul will finally be at rest.
How I long for it—the embrace of oblivion…
6th Century B.C., Persepolis, Capital City of the Persian Empire.
I was born a few years before Cyrus the Great founded the first Persian Empire, as it would hence forth be referred to in the history tomes.
He was the leader of a powerful tribe, and my mother was part of the tithes he received from the conquered peoples of nearby kingdoms. Media, Lydia, Babylon. One by one they fell, united under Achaemenid rule.
When he became Supreme Emperor, he married to consolidate the lands, taking the hand of the daughter of one of the most powerful nobles in the realm. Her name was Cassandane. She bore him four children in rapid succession, earning the gratitude and praise of her king and the entire empire.
But Cyrus...my sire…he loved my mother best.
She, along with dozens others, was part of the royal harem, even before he formally took the throne.
In the order of things, there was the First Circle, comprised of the ladies of the household, the king’s legal wives other than the Queen and Chief Consort herself.
Then there was the Second Circle, which consisted of unmarried princesses and the married ones who lived with their own family. They made themselves available at the king’s request, but for the most part led independent lives.
Finally, there was the Outer Circle—the concubines. These included beautiful girls bought at slave markets, or received as gifts. Or collected from different parts of the empire wherever the king traveled and whenever a maiden caught his eye.
My mother, Vashti, belonged to this group.
But “belonged” is not the right word.
Because everyone knew that the king favored my mother, she was ever excluded from the inner circles of the royal harem, ostracized and bullied.
I understood this at an early age. I saw the envious and vindictive looks from the other women, though Queen Cassandane stayed above the fray.
They hurt my mother where the king couldn’t see. They cornered her in the bath halls and held her head beneath the water. They pushed her into sewer pits and locked her in cellars. They pulled her hair and called her names. They stole and hid me from her when I was a babe, before I knew enough to avoid their lures.
She never complained of this constant abuse, my mother. She always had a ready smile and made light of her circumstances with careless self-deprecation.
When she came back to our humble hut soaking wet from another near drowning, she would laugh that she’d wanted to go for a swim, so wasn’t her dunking fortuitous timing.
When she returned smelling of refuse and animal waste, the handmade gown she’d worked on for weeks ruined in tatters, she’d make a remark about her clumsiness. It was her own fault for not watching where she stepped.
Only when I was delivered to her after a day and a half of her going out of her mind searching frantically for me did I ever see her cry.
She clutched me to her tightly and berated me for not staying close. For wandering off with one of the other women when they were not my friends.
I learned the hard way, then, that my mother and I had no friends.
I was four summers. I vowed that day that I would never again be the cause of my mother’s tears.
When I was old enough to understand, I asked whether she loved the king in return.
I hated that she suffered so much for so little. Surely nothing in the world could be worth her pain and humiliation.
She said, “Yes, Dalair. I love your sire. I live for the brief moments he is able to share with me. I would endure a thousand more of those hornets’ stings”—as she referred to the other women in the harem and their treatment of her—“to be near him. To give him relief when the weight of the world presses him down.”
She enveloped me in her fragrant hug then. My mother gave the best kisses and hugs.
“But most of all, I love you, my child. My darling Dalair. So brave and strong. You are the king’s gift to me. And you are my gift to him. He may not ever show you favoritism publicly, but never doubt that he loves you too.”
I was not nearly so certain. Up to that point, the king had never deigned to look my way much less speak to and acknowledge me.
I was five when Cyrus the Great took the formal ruling mantle of the consolidated Persian Empire.
I was sent away from my mother to be educated and trained alongside the king’s other children, the royal princes and princesses, the lesser princes and princesses, the noble daughters and sons.
And the offspring of the Outer Circle who would grow up to serve and protect them.
I excelled in everything physical—sports, martial arts, weaponry, horseback riding and mock combat.
Perhaps my skills were born of necessity, for how else was I to beat off the other children who ganged up on me, to punish the “whoreson and put him in his place”?
I showed them very quickly where my place was—on top of the pile with my heel grinding down on those jackals’ throats.
It was just as well. Because I had no head for books, unless they were about battle maneuvers and the art of war.
When I was ten, I was assigned a special honor: I became the Crown Prince Cambyses’ personal guard and companion.
I was chosen not only because of my battle prowess, for I could take down grown men hardened in the ways of war even at that age, but also because Cambyses and I were only a year apart in age.
And, despite having different mothers, we looked almost identical but for our eyes. Mine are gray; his were brown.
What better way to protect the Prince in dangerous situations than to take his place directly so that he could remain somewhere safe and secure?
It was common practice back then, when assassins sent by would-be usurpers abounded. High-ranking nobles and royalty often recruited doppelgangers for their children. Each of the princes and princesses had one, some of whom were brought from faraway lands when nearby villages provided no close match.
It was a serendipitous quirk of Fate that I happened to be right there in the palace, also a son of the king.
Just not a son of worth.
Cambyses was my half-brother, and as the Crown Prince I owed him my allegiance. But more importantly, he was also my best friend.
While all of the other princes and princesses, noble sons and daughters, even the servant offspring of the Outer Circle, sneered and looked down on me because of their mothers’ jealousy of mine, Cambyses took my side from the start.
“What am I to do when you look like my twin?” he told me with his characteristic nonchalance when he was six and I was seven. “If I treated you ill, it’s like I’m treating myself ill. And I happen to like myself just fine. So I guess I’ll like you too.”
He grinned at me. “Even though we both know I’m the far handsomer prince.”
He always spoke to me as if I were his full-blooded brother, as if I was also a prince of the realm. And even though I was resistant at first, mistrustful of his friendship, there was ultimately no denying his mischief and charm, his unrestrained belly laughs that always ended in pig-like snorts, his naughty wit and sly humor.
My role was to protect the Crown Prince and die for him if I had to. I had no fear of that. It would be my honor.
Especially after what he did for my mother.
I never told Cambyses of the abuse the other women heaped upon my mother, but he had eyes and observed the signs.
The king never did anything to help Vashti, because to do so would be to show his favoritism even more overtly. Moreover, Cyrus respected Queen Cassandane and would never broadcast his preference for any other woman publicly or privately. There was an image to be upheld.
But the Crown Prince was powerful in his own right, even at the age of nine. On the very day I became Dalair Al Amir, Servant of the Prince, unexpectedly, my mother and I were escorted to new quarters, a private compound within the extensive Palace grounds, equipped with the most luxurious furnishings and personal guards.
When I found out that Cambyses was the one who ordered it, I asked him why directly.
“The mother of my twin must be my mother also,” he said with a shrug. “My mother deserves only the best.”
Of course, ever after, Vashti adored the Crown Prince as if he was indeed her son too. And for the rest of my mother’s life, she was never mistreated again.
Although King Cyrus had many sons and daughters by many different women, I only recognized Cambyses as my brother.
He was my brother and my friend.
But I would ultimately betray him.
Chapter Two: A Prince’s Duty
I do not feel physical pain when I am trapped inside this shell.
