AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There is no time to question, no time to wonder what it means, only time to answer.
“Yes.”
I squeeze my eyes tight, willing the images away.
“Why in the Otherworld are you on the ground, Alaric?” There is a lilt of gentle laughter in the question.
A delicate hand alights on my shoulder. The touch chases away the pain and memories.
I lower my arms and look up into Rosalie’s smiling face. It seems impossible that she’s here. She is gone…was…gone?
When I don’t speak or move, her grin fades, and she kneels beside me, brows furrowed with concern. “What’s wrong?”
I take her face in my hands—she is solid and…real. “I—I thought I lost you.”
Why had I thought that?
It must have been a nightmare. The kind that lingers, trying to grasp onto a foothold of the mind to keep from fading with the sunrise, as if it could drag itself into the waking world by sheer will.
The worry eases from her features, and Rosalie lowers my hands with infinite patience. It has always been the other way around. She must think I lost my senses.
Am I drunk?
“No,” she says in the same tone our mother used when we were very young, assuring us no demons could pass over a threshold unless invited. And nobody in the right mind would ever invite a demon inside. “Yousavedme, Alaric.”
I shake my head.
“I lived far longer than I was ever meant to.”
My temples throb with the steady pounding of a drum. “What are you saying?”
“And even though it was a cursed half-life, you gave up everything and more to make me happy. And I was.” Rosalie ruffles my hair. “I was happy for a long time.”
The awful truth seeps through with every word she speaks.Lived... was…A sharp ache twists beneath my chest, squeezing my heart painfully.
“You… died,” I rasp, barely able to get the words out.
She nods, confirming the fear I desperately need to be wrong. “I didn’t feel a thing.”
“That doesn’t—”
“I knew how she felt about vampires, and I knew how you would react.” She pauses, and there is heartbreaking sorrow in her smile.
“Who?”
“I didn’t want you to be alone. She was strong and stubborn enough to handle your moods and brooding—”
“I don’t brood,” I object.
Rosalie only laughs as she continues, “—and drive you mad with frustration.” She sighs, then stands, taking me by the elbow. Urging me to get up.
I let her pull me to my feet and look around. Despite what she told me, I still half expect to be in my room at our parents’ house—to find that Rosalie woke me from a nightmare caused by too much liquor.
But there is only that strange fog of nothing, for as far as the eye can see. Then, it changes before my eyes, fading to reveal two endless, paths forking out from where we stand, stretching out in different directions, growing farther apart with every inch.
Facing her again, I ask, “Where are we?”
Rosalie tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “You are in the space between the Otherworld and life.”
