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His jaw tightened. He wasn’t going to give up yet. After all, Elena had survived so much before this.
Dawn was breaking, sending long swathes of pink and gold across the sky, by the time Bonnie finally stirred. She blinked at Damon, seemingly confused. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and her usually creamy skin looked pale and wan.
“Oh,” she said, her voice small. “Oh, Damon.” She pressed one slim hand against her mouth, as if holding back her own words.
Damon straightened, feeling as if he were stepping in front of the firing line. Maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. The tiny spark of hope in his chest flickered and began to burn again. “Well?” he asked.
Bonnie’s eyes reddened, then overflowed, tears tracking down her cheeks. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t even begin to tell what’s wrong. I couldn’t reach her. It was like—like she’s already gone.”
Damon jerked backward, and Bonnie reached out a trembling hand toward him. “I think,” she sobbed, “I think it might be time to start saying good-bye. Whatever the Celestial Guardians did to her, I don’t think Elena’s coming back.”
“No.” Damon heard his own voice, sharp as a whipcrack, and he strode forward, straight past Bonnie, and flung open the bedroom door. The others were out there, all of them, but he ignored their babble of questions as he shouldered past them. He had a brief impression of Meredith’s face, anxious and strained, before he left the apartment.
He didn’t know where he was going. But there had to be something Damon could do, somewhere he could go to help Elena. He’d lost everyone. Everyone he’d ever truly cared for was dead. He wasn’t going to say good-bye to Elena—not now, not ever. He wasn’t going to lose her.
“I love you, Damon,” Elena whispered.
He couldn’t hear her. None of them could hear her. Most of the time she couldn’t hear them, either, just enough to get the fleeting impression of tears and whispers and arguments. She couldn’t understand more than a word or two, sometimes just enough to recognize a voice.
She thought she’d heard Damon. But she had to admit there was the possibility she’d imagined it, that she was imagining all the familiar distant voices, just to keep herself company.
She was dying. She must be. There had been that terrible pain, Mylea had appeared, and then Elena had found herself in this place of emptiness.
Elena had hoped for a while that she might find Stefan. She’d seen his ghost, she knew his consciousness still lingered somewhere, but the place she was in now didn’t feel like any kind of spectral realm. She’d given up looking for Stefan when it became clear that there was no one here except Elena.
A soft gray light shone all around her, just enough to illuminate what seemed like a fog. It felt like a fog, too. She was surrounded by a damp chill.
She’d walked for miles, but nothing changed. She might not have believed she was moving at all, except for the ache in her feet. When she stopped and stood still, the fog was just the same.
Elena clenched her fists and glared into the gray nothingness. She wasn’t going to let this happen. She wasn’t going to lie down and die, just because the Celestial Guardians wanted her to.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Hey! I’m still here!” Her words sounded muffled to her own ears, as if she was wrapped in a thick layer of cotton. “Let me out!” she shouted, trying to get louder, fiercer. Somebody had to be in charge here, and she would get their attention and make them let her go.
Elena’s stomach jolted nervously. What if no one ever responded? She couldn’t stay here forever. The moment she thought this, finally, something changed. The fog drew back, and a sunlit road appeared.
Elena recognized the street. If she ignored the banks of gray nothingness on either side, it was the road that led to the house she had grown up in, back in Fell’s Church. She recognized a long crack in the asphalt, the short grass growing at the edge of the road. But she hadn’t lived there for years, not since that final year of high school. Stefan had bought it for her before he died, but she had been able to bring herself to visit only once.
Elena had a sudden, almost physical longing to walk down the path, to feel the sunlight on her shoulders, smell the summer scent of just-cut grass. As she watched, the sunshine intensified at the far end of the road, glowing so brightly Elena had to squint.
It was pulling her toward it, a steady, warm tug somewhere in the middle of her chest. There was peace down that road, she knew.
No. She stepped back, away from the road. They weren’t going to trap her so easily.
“Walk into the light?” she shouted, suddenly furious. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
The longing only increased. At the end of that road, she was sure, was almost everything she had ever wanted. Stefan, alive again, his leaf-green eyes shining with excitement at seeing her. Her parents, just as young and happy as they’d been when they died. Elena could almost see their welcoming faces, and it made her ache with love and loneliness.
Unwillingly, she raised a foot, ready to step forward, and then forced herself still.
“No,” she said, her voice cracking. She swallowed hard and steadied it, then spoke again more firmly. “No. I refuse. I am Elena Gilbert, and I am a Guardian. I still have a part to play in the living world. Send me back.”
The road stretched farther in front of her, sunlit and tempting. Grinding her teeth, Elena swung around and turned her back on it.
When she turned, she could see the same formless fog. But now there was a dark shape moving through it. A person, Elena realized. Her heart began to pound harder, and her mouth went dry. Was it someone coming in response to her call? For a panicky moment, she imagined a Grim Reaper, silent in black, come to collect her.
But no. As the figure came closer, Elena was able to make out that it was Mylea, the Celestial Guardian who had been overseeing Elena’s life for years. When she finally halted in front of Elena, Mylea looked as serene and unruffled as ever, her golden hair pulled back into a bun, her ice-blue gaze level and cool.
“Elena, you made a bargain,” she said firmly. “Damon killed a human, and so you have to die. You agreed to this, years ago.”
