Zoe unfolded the invitation for the hundredth time.
You are invited to the twenty-fifth birthday celebration for Davide Roth Beowolf.
She closed the elaborate card and tossed it on the ornate coffee table in the tiny sitting area of her hotel room. She leaned back and rested her head against the cushions of the overstuffed couch, and then lifted her skinny legs onto the table. Using her foot to shove aside a picture book of places to put on one's "bucket list," she closed her eyes, and in her mind traveled back almost twenty-five years to the day she'd first seen Davide. A bittersweet smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She had been seven years old and traveled with Fawn, her nanny—later to become her beloved stepmother—to visit Roth and Rainey Beowolf and their new baby. As she'd approached his cradle, the aura surrounding him had taken her breath away; it only radiated shades of gold, and in that moment, she'd known he was very special.
Zoe opened her eyes and sat up. She reached for the picture book and flipped it open. It landed on the massive sandstone mountain of Uluru in Australia. To distract her mind, she read the caption.
Uluru is located in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. It is the world's largest monolith and a sacred site to Aborigines because of its importance in dreamtime legends. If you are adventurous, a visit to Uluru in The Red Center of the Australian Outback is the journey of a lifetime!
She closed the book, picked up the invitation again, and then crushed it in her palm. Her simple act brought tears to her eyes. Destroying the invitation felt like she was destroying her own heart—yet again.
She'd loved Davide from the first moment she'd seen him. As a child, that love had been as one child loves another. Later, when he'd reached his late teens, she'd loved him as a young woman loves the man of her dreams. Of course, she'd never revealed her feelings, waiting for him to grow into adulthood. Naively, she had believed he would come to love her in the same manner. All because of the "pretty" voice.
Zoe contemplated the voices she always heard when she was near Anasazi ruins. Fawn had discovered that the voices were coming from sipapus located in the circular ceremonial sites of all Anasazi kivas. For Puebloan peoples, sipapus were symbolic of the place where the chaotic third world entered the current fourth world. When she was home, they originated from the cliff dwellings in Hidden Canyon on her father's ranch. Somehow, Zoe's heightened perception had tapped into that metaphysical realm. As she'd grown older, she had learned to ignore the chaotic voices just as her mother had.
She felt the sting of tears; she hadn't thought about her birth parent in a long time. Remembering her gentle mother now brought the familiar heartache. Kristal had died in a senseless car accident caused by a drunk driver that Zoe and her father had survived.
Two years after the accident, Fawn had entered their lives on a mission from her council to assist Zoe and her father in understanding Zoe's unusual abilities. At first, her father hadn't believed the fantastical revelation that his daughter could see auras and hear otherworldly voices. Later, after Zoe had been kidnapped and Fawn had revealed herself as another species of creation—not human—he had incredulously accepted the impossible, and finally understood the last few minutes of his first wife's life. She had also had the ability to see auras. Unfortunately, her ability had only allowed her to see murky grays and blacks associated with evil. However, with her dying breath, her sadness had been replaced by wonder. Her last words to her husband had been, "I can see the beautiful colors. They've come for me."
Zoe swiped at her tears and traced a finger over Davide's crumpled name on the invitation. Then she walked to the bathroom and dropped it in the toilet. She hadn't attended last year celebration and she wasn't going to attend this one, either. The decision to cease contact with Davide had been made during his twenty-third birthday party. It wasn't until then that she'd realized the futility of her love for him. At that party, she had been thirty years old and still believed the words of the "pretty" voice from the sipapu.
You are the Great Love of the Great Prince. You are his Princess.
She flipped the toilet handle and watched the invitation swirl, fighting the crushing desire to quickly reach and retrieve it.