Skye
I’m dead. I must be because I open my eyes to grainy sunlight highlighting a room I’d be able to see fully in the dark. I know this shallow, cream-colored carpet. I know there’s a bright purple nail polish stain in the corner of the walk-in closet on the far side of the room, hidden beneath a stack of boxes. I doubt my parents know it’s there.
There’re three windows along the wall–circular and wide. My grandma Leona fussed so much over the fact that Dad designed windows no one could make curtains for, and by some miracle, she managed it herself. But the curtains in my childhood bedroom aren’t… familiar. They’re different. Thick and black, they block out the majority of the light, only letting fractals of what I believe is the sunset through.
Am I in hell? Is this what it looks like? Being thrust back into my awkward teenage years? I fist the comforter–velvet corduroy–my favorite.
I turn my head away from the strip of light flickering over the room and watch speckles play across the smooth, limestone-washed plaster walls. Scuff marks and nail holes pepper them from years of wear and tear. I lived an entire life in this room. Grew from a little girl to a woman.
And now, apparently, I’ll spend eternity here.
“It’s a valid question,” says a deep but dry male voice that sends prickles of familiarity washing over my skin. “I don’t have an answer to it. It was something we often discussed, however.”
“Moonrise doesn’t have a biology program. I mean, it does, but not like in Crescent Falls or Lunaria. Tarsian University is the closest you’d get to the level of tech you have back in Aurorium.” Dad’s voice effectively wakes me from the deepest, limpest stupor I’ve ever experienced. I jerk into awareness. The room spins.
“This conversation is premature.” Alex. That’s–that’s Alex’s voice just beyond the door. “I have to return to Lunaria. There’s no way around it.”
“She cannot travel.”
“She won’t,” he replies briskly, but his tone? I imagine him pulling his lower lip between his teeth like he always does when he’s mulling something over in his mind. “She can’t risk it, but I have to face the tribunal. The Alpha of Aurorium would like my head on a spike.”
“He’d have to catch you first.” Uncle Soren’s words are broken by chuckles.
I… must be dead. I have to be, because if I’m not, Alex, my vampire husband, is standing in the hallway outside of my childhood bedroom laughing with my father, the scariest man in existence, and Soren, who backs Dad up on everything.
Heavy footsteps break the soft, easy laughter, and I recognize the voice of my great-great-uncle Ryatt. Oh, my Goddess. He’s here, too? “Any progress?”
“She woke up briefly this morning,” Dad replies.
“Posey and Aris just arrived. They’re at the castle as it stands, but Posey has been biting her nails to the quick waiting to see her.”
“Did they bring the kids?” Soren asks, and Ryatt mumbles something I can’t catch, and then footsteps are edging away from the door, fading with every passing second.
“Wait,” I whisper, but the word is a jumble of sound like I haven’t used my voice in weeks.
The light fades, and the house falls into silence. It’s heavy, like the Goddess is lowering a thick, weighted blanket over my room as the sun sets, and I drift on a current of starlight, snug and settled between realms.
* * *
“Her fingers are stiff,” Posey says, her voice pulling me back into the present, but the room is a wash of bright sunlight, and a cool, late winter breeze lifts the thick curtains I can only see because they’re the darkest items in the room. Everything else is hazy–blurred beyond belief. I’m not sure my eyes are even open. Posey bends and flexes my fingers, her powers warming my skin like she can feel my–what’s it called? Resonance–right. That’s what alchemists call magic like mine. I wonder if she realizes I have literal stardust in my body–that I’m made of it. Made of the… same stars I… study….
* * *
“I don’t have a choice in the matter.” Alex’s voice is so close, I swear, if I opened my eyes, he’d be right here beside me. “I’ve been in contact with the university president. I’m being called back. The Alpha of Aurorium is demanding it.”
“You have the support of the royal family. It’s my decision, actually. The Alpha of Aurorium can get fucked, for all I care.”
“Maeve,” Soren growls in warning.
Open your eyes. Please. Just open them. Wake up. Wake up!
“Last I checked, I was still the Firestone Queen, and Lunaria has long been an ally. Unless that’s changed, it’s my decision! He has immunity.”
“They believe I am responsible for the murders that took place,” Alex says dryly, so casually, like he’s spent ages in the presence of my loudest, most opinionated family members while I've been… here. Trapped in my own body.
“The university doesn’t think that,” Mom says sharply, tsking. “And what of the Alpha King of Lunaria? What does he have to say?”
“Nothing. He hasn’t said anything.” Maeve chuckles under her breath like this entire situation–whatever it is–has been the most amusing thing that’s happened in a very long time.
“He’s terrified of her. That’s why. The Alpha King of Lunaria will not force her hand–or Alex’s.” It’s Dad this time.
Oh, Goddess, I need to wake up. Where am I? Is this a dream, too? It has to be because Alex and I—we hadn’t decided yet. We were still deciding how to do this, taking it one day at a time so we didn’t lose our minds and then…
Kai.
Oh. Oh.
I reach into the darkness, feeling for… anything, anyone. A shuffling ensues, and the bed dips, because I'm horizontal. I’m in bed. My bed. My bed in Moonrise. My bed in my childhood bedroom. It isn’t a dream.
None of this is a dream.
“Skye, don’t move,” Alex says as other voices rise and tangle around him, but in my mind, I’m back on the ice, facing Kai, thinking it’s our way out.
“Skye, please don’t spit this out–”
Something bitter and slippery slides to the back of my tongue, and I gag, choking on the liquid as my throat refuses to work.
“You have to try. You can do it. You’ve done it before,” Dad’s voice rings out. I feel his hand on my arm, tight, fingers expanding and squeezing my bare skin. “You can do this. I know it hurts. Just try.”
“Someone call Misty and see if she can get back here as soon as possible,” Maeve says, but her voice is further away, lost in the shuffle.
I swallow. My throat burns like it’s on fire. My chest convulses, and I jerk, crying out as bright, overwhelming pain tears across my neck.
“Good job. Good girl,” Dad says weakly before cursing under his breath and letting me go, but his presence is replaced by someone else.
Cool hands grip my upper arms, turning me onto my back. An icy, deliciously clean scent wraps itself around my senses and tugs, forcing me to submit, to remember.
“How much longer do we have to do this to her?” Alex asks bitterly, each word clipped with frustration. His touch starts to fade. My body numbs. My arms and legs grow heavy, and my heart rate slows to the point that I feel myself drifting… off… again…. No. No, no I will not… fall… asleep again… Stop. Wake up. WAKE UP!
The scream that sears the room from top to bottom is a sound I’ve never heard before. It hurts. It stings my throat and bursts my eardrums. A screech echoes somewhere in the distance, followed instantly by a strange stillness that traps me in an unwanted embrace. I can’t move. I can’t see. I can’t feel.
But someone is here with me. In my head. Gripping my powers and twisting them into submission until I fold, slipping back into the void.
* * *
“The baby is due this summer, if my calculations are correct,” Kenna says, her voice whispering through my mind, reeling me back to the surface. “Late spring if it’s early. Early babies are so common in this family. They just can’t wait to get here and meet all of us.”
Mom exhales deeply, nearer, like she’s standing right beside me. “And the baby’s healthy?”
“As far as I can tell. It would help if anyone, including me, had any knowledge about vampire babies, but we only have Alex, and he’s… well, going through a lot.”
Mom exhales again, and my body slips to the side as the bed dips from her weight. My eyes strain against the darkness, then a pinch of light, filtering through my eyelids. I can feel the comforter again. I flex my fingers under the blanket, the soft fibers playing over my skin.
“Maeve has made it clear he’s not going back to Lunaria until the Alpha drops the case. The university has already done a thorough investigation, and he’s innocent. That’s clear. It’s all for show now.”
“Misty wants to talk to him.”
“I know. Blake said as much.”
“I’m worried about it. I don’t think–I really don’t think she should. It took years for her to get over the war, and still. I can’t believe she wants to revisit it.”
“Do you believe she met Alex’s family, like she thinks?”
“He told Soren he recognized her somehow. Not like he’d seen her, but heard about her. I was sure he was confusing her with Isla, but based on his story, I think there’s a high probability that she did, in fact, see his aunts and his cousin that day, when she went into another realm–”
“He–she went–further–” I gasp against the pain of my voice leaving my throat. I’m not sure why my powers tangle, giving me a vision of Misty during that terrible war. Her going through that portal, seeing two women like I’m now seeing them, the memory of that moment written in the stars doing their best to wake me up.
Mom gasps, her hands finding mine under the covers and gripping them tightly. I open my eyes to slits, the room coming into startling focus, much more detailed than before. Kenna hovers over me, her face twisted in concentration.
“She–saw the future—that day–but they’re real–” The sentence turns to a whimper. I taste blood. My eyes burn from lack of use and fill with tears I can’t blink back.
“Take it slow, sweetheart,” Kenna urges, glancing at Mom.
Mom shakes her head. “No more tonics. Please. Alex made us promise. Blake is in agreement.”
Kenna bites her lower lip and sighs. “Fine, but you know how I feel about it.”
“Alex?” I mouth, sucking in a breath that hurts so fucking much. “Where is he?”
“Shhh, honey, please,” Mom begs, smoothing my hair away from my face. “Don’t talk. We’ll fetch him.”
“I’ll get him right now.”
A crack echoes through the room. I turn my head toward the door. A shadow fills the doorframe.
Alex steps into the lamp light radiating from my bedside table. Reality slams into me, knocking the air from my lungs. This is real. He’s real.
I slowly, carefully, lift a hand to my neck, my fingertips dusting over thick bandages. Memories of the ice come sprinting back to the forefront of my mind. Bloody, terrifying memories.
“Stop,” Alex says, arriving at my side at the speed of light. He kneels at my bedside, grabbing my hand before I rip the bandage to pieces.
“How–long–” I whisper, and his eyes glisten.
He looks up at Mom and Kenna, shaking his head in disbelief. “She’s awake? This is her? She’s lucid now?”
Mom nods but seems just as shocked and uneasy as he is.
“How long?” I repeat, my voice is like gravel.
“Three weeks,” he says, closing his hands around mine and bowing his head. “Oh, gods. Fuck. Okay. Okay.”
I missed all of it. Him meeting my parents. Their shock. The fights I was sure would ensue. I am, honestly, a bit disappointed.
“What happened?” I ask, and Alex looks up from our joined hands, resting his chin against my fingers. He looks like hell. Tired. Stressed. The works. But his features aren’t sunken, and he has a warm glow to him that he only gets after he’s been… thoroughly fed.
Jealously like I’ve never experienced soars through me, waking up the rest of my body in an instant.
“You’ve missed quite a bit,” Kenna says with an annoyed huff, looking at my mom. “She really needs to be resting. Sleeping. Preferably not talking.”
“Tell me everything,” I urge. Alex’s face is blurred by my tears. “I want to know.”
He smiles and then laughs, shaking his head with a deep, broken sigh, but… his eyes are bright, locked on mine, and shining with knowing.
“You’re the same. Persistent. Always with the fucking questions even after almost dying.”
“She did die,” Kenna huffs. “Several times!”
“I missed you,” Alex says and leans toward me, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “It’s over now. You’re safe. It’s all over.”