Silver Dew (46 page)

“I have to destroy it,” I told Sebastian quietly, though it didn’t truly matter anymore if the Others overheard. My voice came out low and strained as I struggled to focus on the spell and to speak at the same time. “It’s going to be dangerous. If we survive, and we may not, most of our memories will be obliterated and the Binding between us will forever be broken; the spell still remains in tact for now but it must be broken in order for this to work.”

The Others inched closer. My hands began to shake as I struggled to focus and form the complicated design in my mind that would complete my last spell. I needed to make sure Sebastian understood before I did this. I wasn’t certain that I could “want” it enough unless I knew that he accepted my decision.

“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” he asked. “If you erase the Binding and the past history between us… what if we don’t know each other anymore? What if our love doesn’t exist without the magic?”

“Then what kind of love is that?”

He considered, dropping his eyes to the ground.

“The necklace!” one of the men yelled. “Get it from her!”

The Others struggled to move closer, fighting against the magic that I was desperately trying to hold them back with.

“We’ll know once and for all if our love is based on a magic that bound us together two thousand years ago or if it’s something more,” I pointed out. Sweat was beading on my brow as I struggled to concentrate, as I tried to be strong enough to hold them back.

Sebastian’s frown brightened and he slowly smiled, the warmth and love in his eyes momentarily overwhelming.

“I already know the answer to that.”

“Then what is there to fear?”

We shared one last smile before I closed my eyes, committing myself to what must be done and finally wanting it with my whole and complete heart.

“I’ll protect you until the end,” I heard Sebastian whisper.

I placed my faith in him and tried my best to ignore everything around me and to focus on the complicated design that twisted through my mind, heart and soul. The dark lines twisted and turned, looped and knotted and braided together in a pattern so complex I began to tremble and sweat as I willed the magic to submit into the correct form and laced it through the air, filling the chamber with its power.

As my concentration shifted to completing the design, my control over the Others weakened even more. I was dimly aware of Sebastian rising to his feet and moving protectively in front of me, ready to defend me as the Others slowly closed in.

I was aware of movement around me. I heard the definite sounds of a struggle and the loud crack of a bone breaking. Someone cried out in pain – or rage, it was difficult to tell. I pushed it all away, ignoring what was going on outside of me as thoroughly as possible as I focused with all my might on completing this complex and deadly design. The pattern had to twist in and on itself, starting and ending as one unbreakable line so that there was no clear beginning and no end. It was the most complicated spell I’d ever attempted and required more focus and magic than I’d ever imagined possible.

Sebastian suddenly cried out and at the same time, someone slammed into me. My concentration briefly wavered as I fell down hard on my back. The wind was knocked out of me but I didn’t dare open my eyes or even try to move. I was only dimly aware of the sound of my own panting as I struggled to regain my breath. The back of my skull throbbed with a dull pain where it had connected with the cold, hard ground. I imagined if my eyes were open, my vision would be spinning as I teetered on the edge of consciousness. My mind pulled backwards, sliding further into the quiet place deep within me where the powerful dark design was being formed. I held onto my necklace while I fought to remain conscious. And I slowly drew more and more of the Lost Magic from the necklace, allowing the magic to find a home within me and to fill my mind, heart and soul with its powerful, ancient magic.

“No!” Sebastian yelled, his voice coming from just a few feet to the side of where I lay. The fear and panic in his voice seemed intensified as it echoed around the vast chamber. My heart was abruptly chilled, an icy calm taking over me as I realized one of us was about to die. There was no way I could ignore Sebastian’s cry. My whole body responded to the sound, praying that there might be some way to help him. My eyes automatically flew open, desperately searching him out as I pushed myself upright. My head spun from my sudden movement and I barely managed to hold onto the image of the nearly-completed design in my mind.

A scream caught in my throat as I saw David lunging towards me, the wickedly curved blade of his knife extended and coming straight for my throat. Sebastian was only a half-step behind him but I could tell he wasn’t going to make it in time. I knew this was the end, sadly, it had to be. The scream that had begun building in my throat changed to a sigh of relief as I realized, at least, that Sebastian was still alive.

Time stopped and my thoughts suddenly became crystal clear. I saw every detail of the scene before me, I saw every moment of my life behind me and it all abruptly made perfect sense. In the blink of an eye, I completed the pattern that I had been weaving in my mind. The lines fell together in perfect harmony and I knew that this was the way it was meant to be. Time started again.

David took the last step towards me, his dark eyes glowing victoriously, his hunger for revenge and violence twisting his handsome face into that of a murderous monster. And just as the tip of his knife made the first cut into the soft, unprotected flesh of my throat, I thrust my amber necklace against the ancient ring on my finger, reuniting the small, heart-shaped chip with the teardrop pendant it had come from so long ago. As soon as the two were rejoined I released the magic into the air, filling the chamber with its pattern of destruction and hope, and letting it braid and twist into the amazing and endless design I had created to contain it.

The last thing I saw was Sebastian’s face, the cold terror in his eyes and the silent scream on his lips. The last thing I felt was the icy steel of David’s knife, biting into my neck and burning pain down my throat. And then the world exploded in a flash of light that blinded my eyes, blasted my ears, drowned out my heart and my soul, and blazed through my entire being. Pain ripped through me, tearing up my arm that held the necklace and searing down my whole right side. I was consumed by the light that flared from my necklace as hot and bright as the sun. It burned through me in an endless torrent of heat and pain, wave upon endless wave. I feared that there would be nothing of me left behind when it was finally extinguished. And I accepted it.

Slowly, silently, the heat cooled, the light faded and I fell into a world of silence and darkness.

Epilogue

I opened my eyes and found myself in a strange place. The lights were bright here, the walls sterile and white. The air smelt strange, a mixture of antiseptic and stale-smelling laundry that immediately offended my nose. I blinked my eyes, trying to focus my vision and figure out what and where this place was.

I was in a hospital. I was in a private room with just the narrow bed I lay upon and a small bedside table beside me. The sun peeked in at the tiny window between the drawn blinds and reflected off the glass of a small television set, mounted in the upper corner of the room. I looked down at my body, trying to figure out what was wrong with me and struggling to remember why I was there.

An IV was inserted into the back of my left hand and I was hooked up to a drip that hung beside my bed. Bandages covered my whole right arm, completely obscuring my skin from palm to shoulder. I shifted tentatively beneath the rough, starched sheets that covered me and immediately gasped in pain. I wanted to throw up and scream at the same time, and ended up just panting in shocked silence. It wasn’t just my arm that there was something wrong with – it was the whole right side of my torso, I realized. I lay as still as possible after that, fighting the waves of fiery pain and nausea that my slight movement had caused. It was while I lay there, quietly panting between my clenched teeth, that the door to my room cracked open and a familiar face peaked inside.

“Sweetheart, you’re awake.” My father spoke in an unexpectedly hushed voice as he stepped into my room and quietly closed the door behind him.

I was surprised to see his eyes were filling with tears, the mixture of joy and relief obvious on his face. I tried to smile back at him, happy to see him but still not fully understanding what was going on. I was also still wrestling with the overwhelming pain that was crashing down upon me in steady waves. A blinding headache was steadily creeping through my temples, throbbing through my skull with each beat of my heart.

“Dad… what happened?”

“Let’s not worry about that right now. The nurses thought you might awaken soon but still, you need to rest,” he gruffly instructed, brushing the tears from his eyes as he came to take a seat beside my bed.

I nodded my agreement, still feeling bewildered.

“But I don’t even know where I am,” I said in a quiet and scared voice.

My father reached for my left hand, holding it between his two large and steady ones and patting the back of mine gently while carefully avoiding the IV.

“We’re in Athens, at the hospital,” he slowly explained.

I watched his face eagerly, distracted from my pain by this new information. He sighed and reluctantly continued.

“You were on a tour of some old caves just outside of Parga with a group of tourists and there was… an explosion of some kind.”

I struggled to remember the events he was describing but my mind came up perfectly blank. I winced as the dull ache of pain between my temples increased to a piercing throb. It took me a second before I could speak – it was so hard to remember, to focus on anything.

“There was an explosion? Do you mean like a bomb? Please… I can’t remember anything. Tell me what happened?”

My father hesitated, looking torn. He roughly cleared his throat.

“The authorities are still investigating it – there has been speculation of the explosion being some kind of terrorist attack. You were with a group of fourteen other tourists and had traveled deeper into the temple ruins of the Necromanteion than most tour groups allow. There was an explosion in the central chamber, it blew out part of the wall and half the ceiling collapsed in on you. All fifteen in your group were injured to varying degrees and knocked unconscious – all with significant memory loss. No one seems to remember exactly what happened. The doctors can’t quite explain it…”

“Oh.” I frowned, trying so hard to remember but no matter how deep I dug through my mind, my hands came up empty. I didn’t even have the sense that I should remember; it was like there was nothing there where the memory might have been. “What happened to my arm and my side?”

“You were one of the three who was closest to the centre of the explosion,” my father informed me, his eyes both angry and sad at the same time. “Nearly the whole right side of your body has been badly burned. You nearly bled to death also – a piece of shrapnel had cut through your throat, only just missing your windpipe and your carotid artery. If the rescuers had found you even a few minutes later…” My father abruptly looked away, rubbing at his eyes again and noisily clearing his throat. I watched and listened with near sick fascination. It felt like he were telling me a story about someone else, despite the matching pain that coursed through my body and burned at my throat.

“I was so afraid I’d lost you, Gracelynn. You don’t know what a relief it is to see you open your eyes, to hear you voice – we’ve been waiting weeks. You both would have awoken sooner but the doctors thought it best to keep you in chemically-induced comas until the worst of the pain had subsided.”

“Both of us?”

My father’s expression soured, his displeasure obvious now.

“Yes, you and the boy you were traveling with – Sebastian. He has sustained almost identical injuries to yours and awoke just a few hours ago himself.”

“Sebastian,” I repeated, wondering over the familiarity of the name on my lips. A face flashed through my mind – black, unruly hair, color-shifting, gray-blue eyes, long lashes, perfect lips, piercings and mysterious tattoos. Unexpectedly, my mind focused on the details of his lips, their perfect shape, their softness and their warmth, the taste of them… “He’s my boyfriend,” I realized, speaking aloud.

I hadn’t been asking but my father nodded his confirmation.

“Yes, something like that.”

“And we were traveling together… we took a train through Europe and… there was a girl who traveled with us for a little while, I didn’t really like her though but… what happened…?” I spoke my confusing thoughts out loud, trying to make sense of the bizarre and disjointed memories that were suddenly darting through my mind. I had only glimpses of images and brief flashes of knowledge of our trip through Europe. I could barely remember Sebastian at all, to tell the truth, let alone the places we had been or the people we had met. I wished I could remember why we had been so deep in those caves too and what had caused the explosion but I couldn’t even remember traveling to the caves in the first place. All I remembered of Greece was a library I thought I might have visited and a flash of walking through a Greek city with someone, perhaps Sebastian, at night time.

“I wish I could remember,” I whispered, my eyes filling with frustrated tears. It was frightening to have so many holes in my memory. My father instantly comforted me.