Page 97 of Vows Forged in Blood

Chapter 49

DAHLIA

Being dead is strange.

Or, I think I’m dead, anyway.

I feel weightless and disembodied, like a spirit from an old fireside tale. I stand in the empty darkness, though it isn’t a terrifying, oppressing darkness. It’s peaceful. No pain. No fear. No sorrow. I turn in a slow circle, not sure what I’m supposed to be doing or why I seem to be stuck in this place. Wherever this place is. Time has no meaning here. It could be seconds. It could be years. I have no idea how long I stay in the darkness, but I’m not afraid.

After a heartbeat or an eternity, stars of every color flare to life far in the distance. They beckon, taunting me with their beauty and promised peace, and I long to go towards them.

Yes.Yes, of course I should go to them. I should throw myself into that tranquility and freedom. It would be so easy to just float away into those stars, wouldn’t it? I take a step towards them, reaching out, but then I stop, my hand suspended in the air in front of me.No. No, something isn’t right. I’ve forgotten something.

Something important.

I frown, trying to remember, something tugging on the very edges of my mind when a silvery light snakes into the space all around me, swirling slowly. There’s something powerful and almost forbidden in that light, something intriguing and terrifying and intoxicating. It seems to be…judging me? That seems rude, so I tilt my head, judging it right back.

“Not all can survive the gift,” a breathy voice whispers from the light. The voice is inside my head and echoing from all around me all at once. It is neither male nor female, old nor young. It’s a single voice and many. It’s something primal and ethereal and I have no hopes to truly understand its depths, and yet, it feels as if it’s a part of me and I know it as well as I know my own name.

“The gift?” I ask, turning in place as the light continues to swirl around me, a slow, assessing cyclone of power and promise.

“To change. To become more.”

I gasp as realization hits me. What’s happening and the reason that I can’t go to the stars, why I have to keep fighting. What I’ve forgotten.

“Alaric,” I whisper, smiling. Everything comes rushing back: the Obsidian Plain, the challenge, the agony as Kilgren gutted me…knowing that I was going to die and leave Alaric forever. But no. No, he must have attempted the turning at the last moment, when a tiny spark of life was left in my body. I feel it then, my body, heavy and lifeless around me, and I feel like I’m so far deep inside myself that I can never climb out again. A tendril of fear unfurls inside me. Am I too far gone? Was he too late?

Through the silvery light swirling around me, I can just glimpse the stars in the distance, but now I recoil from their beckoning, the thought of joining them abhorrent.I can’t leave him. I’m not ready.

“You have the strength,”the voice continues, “but it will not be easy. There will be pain.”

“I do not fear pain,” I say, shoulders back and chin jutting. The light ripples and shines brighter at that, almost as if it approves of my answer.

“You have been found worthy, Dahlia Clayburn. Now you must choose.”

I wonder if this is how the turning is for everyone, if they’re judged and asked to choose. Or if this is all just a strange trick of my mind as I try to fight back against death. If I survive this, I’ll ask Wesley and Nova one day. Thoughts of my friends fill my mind, Enid and da and Takara and my guard and Braddock and countless others joining them, all giving me strength. I take a deep breath and stare directly into the light as it continues to swirl lazily around me.

“I choose this life. I choose Alaric. I choose the turning.”

The light swirls faster, flaring so brightly that I close my eyes against the sting, and then, with no warning, it slams directly into my chest. Pain erupts as my entire self is broken down into dust. I fall to my knees as my body bends and breaks, as my blood boils and my cells turn to ash. The agony is more than a person can withstand, surely. Now I understand why the turning is a risk, why so many don’t make it out alive. A part of me wants to give up, to give in and stop this pain and drift off into that peace among the stars.

NO.

I grit my teeth and chant his name in my mind, refusing to give up. He’s my talisman. He’s my life. He’s my home. I hold on to him with everything I have, praying to all of the gods that it’s enough.

Alaric. Alaric. Alaric. Take me back to him. Make me whole for him. Make me what I was always meant to be.

Power and strength and a strange hunger fill my body as the light continues to pour into me, to change me and reshape me on every level. Despite the pain ripping through my metaphorical body here in this strange in-between place, I can’t seem to make my actual body move. Not yet. I hold on for seconds or hours or days.

And then, when I’m on the verge of giving up, I hear him.

Over the roar of agony in my ears, I hear Alaric. His voice fades in and out, some words lost in the storm as the light swirls and flows around me and through me, others clear as day. The pain is endless, every fiber of my being broken apart bit by bit, being burned away to ash until I don’t know how there’s possibly anything left, but I strain to hear him, hanging onto every word like a drowning man clings to a raft. He talks about everything and nothing, his childhood, his life, his love for his family and friends and me. He talks of battle and wounds and men lost. He talks of taking me hard and fast and I gasp, a flare of desire blooming so brightly it makes the light flash and spark around me, blocking out the pain for a moment. I want to reach for him, want to hold him so badly that my eyes burn with tears?—

And my finger twitches.

“Keeva,” I hear him whisper, his voice filled with a quiet hope. “Keeva, you must come back to me. I’ll get on my knees and beg if I must, but I need you to open your damned eyes.”

I want to. I want to open them and take the pain from his voice so badly I could scream. And then, I do. Or at least in my head I do. White hot agony spears through my heart, hotter and more painful than anything that’s happened so far and I know without knowing how I know, that this is it. This is the end. I must hold on just a little bit longer. Inside my mind, I drop to my knees and claw at my chest as the heat becomes unbearable, scorching the blood in my veins. Outside, my hand twitchesagain, fingers curling into a fist, and my heart thuds loudly as it begins to beat once more.

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