I wake up early the next morning, too excited to stay asleep. The first thing I do is creep over to the boys room and shake Lloyd awake.
"Tasha?" he says, rubbing his eyes. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I just wanted to tell you something."
"Okay." He sits up. "What's up?"
I hold out my left hand, showing him the gem on my ring finger.
"Oh my god. Kai proposed?"
I nod vigorously, smiling so hard my cheeks hurt.
"Oh my god. Oh my god!"
Lloyd throws his arms around me and we rock back and forth.
"I can't believe it. You're engaged!"
"I know!" I say, forgetting for a moment that the others are asleep.
"Be quiet. It's 3 in the morning," Jay groans.
"Actually it's almost seven."
"Same difference."
"I'm so happy for you, Tash," Lloyd says.
"Me too," I say, but then my smile falters. My father's laugh is ringing in my ears again.
Lloyd frowns. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, don't worry about it," I say, smiling as bright as the sun.
He stares at me a moment, narrowing his eyes. I know he can see through my mask. He's always been so good at that.
"Tasha, tell me what's bothering you."
I sigh. "Let's go get breakfast."
A few moments later, Lloyd and I each have a plateful of food and are seated at a ridiculously long table in the dining hall. For a while, we sit in silence, enjoying the delicacies the Royal Family provided us. It's too bad Cole gave up dessert because the coffee cake is to die for.
"So," Lloyd says, wiping his mouth with an ornately decorated napkin. "What's got you so stressed out?"
"I had a vision."
He nearly chokes on his orange juice. "What? When?"
"About a year ago," I say. My knee is bouncing a million miles an hour. "It was the last one before the voices stopped."
"What did you see?"
I tell him everything. Kai bursting into flames. Him and Mom being crushed. Lily and Cole being massacred. Jay and Nya's strangulation. Zane and Pixal's deconstruction. Uncle Wu blaming me before choking on blood. Our father returned with four arms, laughing at all the destruction. And then me. How I had ebony skin and glowing purple eyes. How I joined our father on his thrown. How the energy that swirled around my fingertips was as black as the night sky.
"And there were these creatures Lloyd," I say. "They were as tall as Borg Tower with horns sticking out of they're heads. They were the voices in my head. They told me it was my destiny."
Lloyd sits back in his chair, rubs his jaw. He stays silent for a long time. My heart hammers in my chest. I shouldn't have told him. He must hate me now. He's gonna have to lock me up to make sure this never happens.
Finally he speaks. "This doesn't sound like any of your other visions."
Well, I was not expecting him to say that. "No, it wasn't."
"Are you sure this wasn't just some vivid nightmare?"
"Why would I dream about something like that?"
"Well," he says, drumming his fingers on the table as he thinks. "You were under a lot of stress."
"No," I say, shaking my head. "No, that doesn't make sense."
"Why not?"
"Because everything about it was like any other vision! There were the tendrils of energy clouding my vision, and--" I pause. That's it. That's the only similarity.
The voices were perfectly clear when they're usually kinda hazy. There was no heaviness or tingliness in my body, I just passed out. And according to Mom, I was seizing.
"See," says Lloyd. "It was just a dream."
"No!" I shout, standing up and slamming my hand on the table. "No, it was not just a dream!"
"And why can't it have been?" Lloyd is also visibly frustrated.
"Because . . ."
My heart stops beating. Air doesn't make it to my lungs anymore. It goes into my mouth and shoots right back out.
"It's already coming true."
"What do you mean?"
Tears cloud my vision. I'm gonna throw up.
"The Son's of Garmadon . . ."
"Tasha, breathe." Lloyd is by my side in seconds. "In through your nose, out through your mouth. Count with me."
"I shouldn't've said 'yes.'"
"Tasha."
"I told him 'no,' and he convinced me to say 'yes.'"
"Tash, you need to calm down."
"God, I'm so stupid!"
"Tasha look at me!"
Now I'm staring into my brother's eyes. They're not quite as blue as mine. There's more green in them. Kind of an aqua shade.
"Listen to me," he says. His words are slow and even. "It's not your fault. Saying 'yes' was not a mistake. He is going to be okay. We're all going to be okay. Our father is dead, nothing can change that. The voices in your head were just trying to scare you."
"Then why did they stop?"
Lloyd hesitates. "I don't know. Maybe they weren't real?"
"No. No they were real. That's one thing I know for fact."
"There's the bride to be!" Jay shouts as he enters the dining hall.
I quickly wipe away my tears and smile. "Good morning, Jay. How'd you sleep."
"Like a baby. I gotta tell ya, those mattresses are fit for a king! Oh wait, they are the king's mattresses. Haha!"
"Technically, he's the emperor," says Zane.
Kai sits down next to me with a plate full of bacon and eggs. One look into my eyes and he knows somethings up. He grabs my hand and squeezes. "It's going to be okay."
The rest of the morning is filled with chatter about mine and Kai's wedding.
~
"Moonlit walks on the canal, sharing food--" Cole swings his hammer at Lloyd with a grunt. "Sounds a lot like a date."
"It was not a date," Lloyd says. He had just finished telling us about his night out with Harumi.
"A date: A social or romantic engagement, often involving a meal or an intimate setting," Zane says.
Jay laughs. "Can't argue with a Nindroid."
"Look, if you like this girl," says Kai, "you're gonna have to step up your game."
"What do you mean, 'game?'"
"It means," says Zane, "one's ability to charm. You need to convince her why you are the most logical mate."
I would laugh if I wasn't busy dodging Lily's jab.
"If you want to impress her, you gotta act tough," says Cole. "Like, flex your muscles and break stuff." He destroys one of the training dummies as a sort of demonstration.
"Pfft-- No way!" says Jay. "You gotta make her laugh. Just ask Nya. She couldn't resist my sense of humor."
Nya sighs. "It's an acquired taste."
"Don't listen to them," Kai says. "You gotta act cool. Like you don't even care."
I can't help but scoff. "Yeah. Cause that's how you got me to marry you."
"But I do care," Lloyd says. He seems way too stressed out about this.
"Haha! So you admit it," Jay teases.
"Okay, stop!" Nya says. "All of you guys are really not helping."
Lily and I pause our fight to agree. "Look, just be yourself. It's so much easier than trying to be someone you're not."
Lloyd lets out a hopeless sigh. While his guard is down, Cole takes the opportunity to scoop his legs out from under him. Defeated, he abandons our training session and heads inside.
"You guys are real assholes, you know?" I say.
"What?" Kai says with a shrug. "We're just keeping him on his toes."
"Oh, come on! We all know you wooed me by being the most caring person I know, Kai. And Cole, Lily fell in love with you because you allowed her to see your weaknesses. Jay-- while your jokes may have helped, Nya loves you because you're the sweetest person in the world. If you want to help Lloyd, you first gotta be honest with yourselves. Admit that relationships aren't easy. Consider that the true reason you're happy with your partners is because you actually love them for who they are, and that's also why they love you. Then you can give him advice."
~
That evening, Zane and I are patrolling the halls in the palace. Everything is quiet and peaceful. Almost too peaceful. We've been guarding the palace for two days now and nothing has happened. It's strange. Something in my gut tells me that it's not right. Something should've happened by now. My vision will come true.
"Tasha," Zane says, breaking the silence that's sat between us for the last half hour. "Are you okay?"
Am I really that obvious? "Yeah, I'm fine."
"You know you can talk to me. Right?"
"Yeah, I know. I've just got a lot on my mind."
"Are you regretting saying yes to Kai?"
Damn, he's good.
"I do want to marry him," I say earnestly. "I just have this sinking feeling that something bad is gonna happen before we even get to."
"That's normal," Zane says. "It's called anxiety."
His diagnosis doesn't soothe my worries. But I don't have time to explain anything more. Cole says something over the intercom, but he keeps breaking up. I can't quite tell what he said.
"Cole, you're not coming in," Lloyd says. "You have a bad signal."
And then there's an explosion. The floor crumbles beneath me. The gold pillars give out and the ceiling comes down with it. There's fire everywhere, eating away at the walls and all the elaborate decorations. Smoke instantly fills my lungs, stings my eyes. I didn't realize I'd fallen down until Zane pulled me back to me feet.
"Tasha!"
My ears are ringing. My head pounds. Something is dripping down the side of my face.
"We need to get the Royal family out!"
I can't focus. Nothing is making sense. Zane grabs my hand and leads me down the burning halls.
My vision. Fire. Kai.
No.
Stay in the moment. There's too much smoke for me to start panicking. If I do, I'll surely suffocate.
"Here," Zane says coming to a halt in front of the Princess's bedroom door. Everything inside is in shambles. Fire, smoke, rubble.
Someone is coughing. It has to be Harumi. I hurry into the room and find her trapped beneath a burning pillar.
"Zane!" I shout, and he hurries over to help me free her.
"Come with us, Princess. We need to get you out of here."
"This way!"
The three of us hurry towards the front entrance. Up ahead, a girl with black hair, ashen skin, and a purple helmet has Hutchins pinned to the ground. Zane spinjitzus over, knocking the girl away and simultaneously freezing her.
"You're okay," Lloyd says, running up to Harumi.
The princess dismisses him. "But what about the mask?"
"Uh, I think my brother just destroyed the Mask of Destruction."
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Kai is alive.
"That one was a fake," Hutchins says, hurrying towards the throne. He pulls the real mask out from under it. "I procured the real one from the vaults below."
"A fake?" Harumi echoes.
"Forgive me, your Highness, it is the Mask of Deception. I wasn't sure if I could trust the Ninja. But I do now." Hutchins pulls a lever behind the throne to reveal a hidden staircase. "Take it," he says, shoving the mask in my hands. "And get the Princess out of here!"
"But what about my parents?"
"I'll find them."
"I was wrong about you--"
"Now's not the time for apologies, Lloyd," I say, shoving him down the stairs.
"Go!"
The passage leads us out into the courtyard. It's swarming with Son's of Garmadon. Palace guards are doing their best to hold them off, but they're just not strong enough.
There's another large explosion behind us. It came from the throne room. Fear wells up in my chest, but I shove it aside. Now is not the time to worry about Kai.
A Son zooms past on his bike and Lloyd uses his sword to knock him off. There's only room for two.
"You guys go, I'll hold them off," I say.
Lloyd nods. "Good luck, Tash." He turns towards the Princess. "Get on!"
The pair zoom away.
The remaining Son's of Garmadon surround me, having defeated all the palace guards. Some of them are on bikes, some of them are on foot; they all have weapons. None of them are a match for me.
"Who wants to play?" I say, summoning dark energy to my fingertips.
One of them revs their engine and then speeds towards me. One small burst of energy is all it takes to knock him out. The rest all attack at once. All of them are easily defeated with energy bursts. But none of them have given up yet. We continue like this for a while: me knocking them out with a blast of my power and them running back for more. Eventually, I grow tired of this little game and take away their ability to work. With clouds of purple particles floating around them, they're all frozen in place.
"That was fun, wasn't it," I say, even though none of them respond. "Until next time."
I bow. Theatrics are fun. Then I turn and run into the burning palace.
I've barely made it to the doors when all five of the ninja come running out. A weight is lifted off my shoulders.
"You're alive!"
"Of course we're alive," Jay says. "You really think a measly biker gang can beat us?"
I can't help but laugh, I'm so relieved. "Of course not."
My eyes meet Kai's. They glow a bright shade of emerald in the firelight. He offers me a small smile and I let out a quiet sigh.
He's still alive.
~
Happiest of Fridays to you all!! Lemme just tell ya, I'm on fire with these chapters. I can guarantee updates for the next few weeks at least. I hope you all enjoyed this one, and until next time, remember that I love you all to pieces <3
Word Count: 2358