She glances away. “I… I don’t need to know. I don’t want to make you remember.”
I take her chin gently, guiding her gaze back to me. “I want you to ask. I want you to know me.”
She swallows, eyes searching mine. They’re pale now, that soft pinkish hue her irises take in low light. So beautiful.
“How… how does it work?” She pulls in her plump lower lip, swollen, teeth sinking in. “The mind melding? Because I’ve noticed, I mean from what you’ve said and what I’ve seen, ours don’t really seem… the same.”
I tear my eyes away from her mouth, because she’s asked a question, and we promised we’d answer anything.
“I haven’t met many beings who can meld minds, but it’s always slightly different for each individual,” I explain. “I’m able to access, alter and erase memories.” Her eyes widen a little. “I can’t create something from scratch, but I can make you see things, like when we were on the phone…”
“Thank you for the… reminder,” she says a little breathless. “But it’s different for me. I can’t dothat.I don’t really understand what I can do.”
“From what I’ve seen, your empathetic abilities have been enhanced, or amplified by it.” She nods slowly. “But specifically… Can you describe what you did when you last used it?”
She thinks for a moment, then her cheeks bloom. “I… I used it on Julien.” I arch a brow, waiting for her to clarify. “I wanted him to imagine… well, to just think about another vampire… biting me…”
“Wow.”
She winces. “I know, stop. I just… I just pictured what I wanted him to see, and it happened.”
“You can create realities,” I murmur in awe.
That blush never leaves her cheeks as she adds, “And, before that, I’ve used it to make peopledothings.” Her eyes can’t quite reach mine, and I know she’s being hesitant for a reason.
“Jasmine, I once locked a being in a nightmare where he drowned for three days.” Her mouth parts, but she has no idea that was one of my lightest punishments. “Whatever you’re about to say, I doubt it’s worse than what any of us have done.”
“I made someone slit their throat with a broken bottle,” it tumbles out of her. “At The Inferno, that’s when I—we—first realised I maybe wasn’t just an empath. But that only works on certain beings, they have to have this…” She purses her lips together in thought. “Thisfeelingabout them, it always makes me feel a little nauseous. Like those guards in the cell, it was easy to make them…” She trails off, and I realise it’s because the shadows began creeping forwards the second she mentioned that memory.
I blink it away, feeling my light burning the edges. “Sorry, it’s hard to hear about that.”
“How do youdothat?” she asks, her voice a little too light, almost sounding a little… awed herself. I frown and her eyes dart back to the shadows now scuttering from us. “You didn’t even move, and the shadows just… dissolved.”
“Using the light I have,” I say simply, letting her know it isn’t a secret, that she can keep asking whatever she wants. “That’s how I create barriers, it’s how I ground the others when they need it. But unlike the dark, you can’t always see it.” I raise a hand, allowing slivers of light to form and weave between my fingers. “But it’s there.”
As they dissolve, a small wisp lands on Jasmine’s cheek, before sinking into her skin.
“What exactly are you?” she blurts in nothing more than a whisper, then immediately winces. “Sorry, that was… reallyrude. I should know, I’ve been asked that before, and it really is none of my—”
“Did my brother tell you where I was taken from?” I keep my voice soft, easing her panic before it spirals. She cautiously nods. “Demons reigned over the Dark Realm, and the Light Realm was always ruled by…”
“Angels,” she whispers, the word softening her previous concern. “I wasn’t sure they really existed. I’d heard of them, I just… never met any.”
Never met any? So she still doesn’t know.
“But they weren’t called angels, not back then.” My thumb slowly grazes the curve of her lip.
“What were they called?”
Our eyes lock. “Immarus.”
She frowns as a small sound escapes her lips, I only catch it because we’re close. But it isn’t one of surprise, more of recognition.
“Immaru,” she repeats, beautifully. She transforms that single word into a seraphic hymn.
“You’ve heard it before?” I smooth the crease between her brows with my thumb.
“Kane… he called me that, once.” She looks away, embarrassed.
