THIRTY-SIX #2
Amelia shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Lyana sighed. “I’ve been here hundreds of years, Amelia. I’ve absorbed everything about this Realm and how to control it. Unfortunately for you, it means I’ve learned how to control people like you.”
Something clicked in her mind. “Hundreds?” she asked, voice small. “You…you aren’t one of the last pair, are you?”
A small laugh. “No.”
Amelia felt her chest rise on a sharp inhale, and she looked around, pleading silently for an exit, a way to leave. Her feet wouldn’t move and there was nowhere to go. She looked back at her. “Who are you, then?”
“I wasn’t the last,” she said. “I was the very first.”
The truth rippled outwards, like a stone thrown in the middle of the lake.
Around them, the forest shifted, the trees seeming to wither and shrivel before her eyes, the stars above bleeding until the sky was nothing but darkness.
When Amelia looked back at Lyana, the red of her hair faded, turning inky black, features morphing, a face of sharp angles and dark eyes staring back at her.
“I don’t…” Amelia shook her, disbelieving.
“I was there when the Monolith’s first arrived, tearing the world apart,” Lyana explained, black hair flowing around her. “We were the first chosen, the first to fail .” Something relentlessly dark, something angry and bitter, shadowed her face. “I was sent here, cursed to be alone for eternity.”
Amelia felt her breaths turn harsh. “I…why would you lie to me…why would you want us to fail? For Silas to be forced to join you!”
“I have my reasons,” Lyana said faintly, her smile widening. “Which you should be grateful for…you get to live! That’s more than all the others have gotten. They are all here…suffering with me. You’re the first to get to go back.”
Amelia’s lip wobbled. “Silas is here…”
Lyana glanced around with a shrug. “He will be.”
Her mind buzzed, trying and failing to process what was being said. “You…the journal. It was never Bane’s.” Amelia fell to her knees, the truth crashing over her like a wave, forcing her body downwards.
“No,” she agreed, “I wrote it.” Then she laughed again, like a joyous child. “I truly never saw it coming that you would find a way to rewrite the entire thing. I was almost eager to see if you would manage it…if you might actually fix everything. But then, where would that leave me?”
She glared up at her with fury. “You’re crazy.”
“Spend as long as I have here and try telling me I’m crazy again. I’d bet you wouldn’t. I’d bet you would stand right beside me.”
Amelia’s head shook. “I would never .”
She shrugged a single, delicate shoulder. “We’ll see, perhaps.”
And with that, she vanished, leaving Amelia standing alone by the lake that shimmered until it looked like glass shattering. Until the forest no longer resembled trees, but tall, spindly ghosts of lost souls.
She was left in a night that screamed with memory.
Amelia woke hours later. She had been given a mild sedative to help her rest, Brinkley describing her catatonic state when she arrived.
She sat at the table now, fingers curling around a warm mug that she hadn’t yet had a sip of. Her hair fell limply around her head, skin pale and eyes shadowed with the truth of everything that had happened, everything she had learned.
Silas’ cloak was still wrapped around her shoulders like armour. It smelled like him, a memory that both comforted and saddened her.
Brinkley set a small plate of bread and cheese in the middle of the table, taking a seat across from her. Next to her was Halpert, and on her other side, was Aurora.
Fabian had, according to Brinkley, ‘ flounced out of here right after you left .’
Brinkley watched her worriedly. “What happened, Lia. Can you tell us?”
Aurora sat back in her chair, the wood squeaking as she folded her arms tightly, looking to Amelia expectantly. She hadn’t said anything yet, her jaw set. She stared at Amelia like she wanted to ask a thousand questions.
Halpert looked on, face grey and weary, as though he hadn’t slept in days.
Amelia pushed her untouched mug of tea away from her with a deep, fortifying breath. “Silas…he’s gone.”
Silence around the table.
Finally, Aurora spoke. “We know that,” she said, voice wobbly, yet holding a strength Amelia wished she herself possessed. “What we want to know, is what happened, why didn’t the changes work?”
Amelia nodded once, her chest feeling hollow.
“We were ambushed.” She kept her eyes low, no desire to see their reactions.
“The Sanctum, Demetrius, was there. We didn’t even get a chance to try the changes.
Silas, he…” Amelia’s throat threatened to close, her finger scratching at the table, trying not to lose it.
“Demetrius threatened to kill me, and so Silas went through with it. The…original version from, uh, the journal.”
The lie.
Lyana’s betrayal, it still had her by the throat.
She stared at the table. “He did it to save me.”
Aurora sucked in a sharp breath. “Of course he did,” she said bitterly. “Silas always thought the weight of the world belonged on his damn shoulders.”
“Why, then…” came Halpert’s gentle, inquisitive tone, “if the sacrifice was performed, is our land still compromised?”
Her eyes closed, foolishness wrapping around her. “It…I made a mistake,” she choked out.
“What mistake?” Aurora demanded.
“I trusted someone I never should have.” Tears sprang and she clenched her eyes shut.
Wood scraped, a chair being pushed away. “Who?”
Amelia looked up. Aurora stood, hands on the table, rage on her face.
“I’m sorry, Aurora,” she offered pathetically, her head shaking, a tear rolling down her cheek.
Silas’ sister shoved the chair once more, the wooden feet thumping across the floor before she stalked away. The front door slammed as she left.
A heavy silence fell, a hollow one. No one seemed to know what to say.
Amelia stared down at the table, knowing she had more to share, but didn’t know if this was the moment. So, she left the rest of the truth for later, so that for a little while longer, they can just sit in the grief, the loss.
And remember Silas Finley.
Amelia lay in the narrow bed of the guest room, the same room she had shared with Silas only a few nights before. She stared at the ceiling now, eyes wide open, the darkness pressing in, but she didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Silas’ coat lay beside her on the bed, her fingers tangled in the sleeve. She hadn’t let it go since returning.
She felt hollow.
Not numb, not broken.
Just empty.
Like everything inside her had been scooped out when he vanished, leaving behind a vessel shaped like him, filled only with silence.
She knew midnight was nearly upon her, the first one since Silas had been torn from her, and she dreaded it.
She dreaded the moment that today became tomorrow, and she wouldn’t find herself with him, in his warm, safe arms. Amelia didn’t want that dreadful confirmation that he was truly gone, that he would never return.
Amelia felt a tear slip down her temple.
She turned her head towards the clock, watching the seconds tick by in time with the sadness in her heart.
Midnight descended as the hand hit twelve, and she sobbed when nothing happened. Her body didn’t tear through space. She remained on her back, on the same bed. No one appeared before her, with her. She was utterly alone, and Silas was…
Amelia sat up with a startled gasp.
There was something.
A tug in her chest.
She blinked, breath catching. It was faint. So faint she thought she might have imagined it. But it was there, like a whisper across the bond that was supposed to be gone.
She clutched the coat tighter, her other hand resting in the middle of her chest where she had felt it and spoke aloud, her voice hoarse. “Silas…?”
Nothing.
She closed her eyes and reached inwards, the way she always had when looking for him, when trying to find him, when she could feel his thoughts brushing against hers like wind against skin.
Amelia pushed past the grief. Past the guilt. Past the fear.
And there…there it was. A flicker.
Not a voice or a word. But a feeling, a heartbeat. A warmth, faint and distant.
She gasped softly, her eyes burning with sudden tears.
He wasn’t gone . Not fully.
What had Lyana said, when Amelia uttered that Silas was in the Midnight Realm?
He will be .
Not was.
She pressed a hand over her chest, as if she could cradle the thread that remained.
“I’ll find you,” she whispered to the empty room. “Wherever you are, Silas…I swear, I’ll find you.”
The shadows didn’t answer.
But the tether pulsed once, warm, and steady beneath her ribs.
A promise.
Hope.