Even though they both would live, Laylen would still be a vampire, and I knew he would struggle with it. He needed someone to help him, and I could not bear to think that after I was gone, he would have no one.

He will have someone.

I will make sure of that.

It was still light outside, but I went upstairs to take a nap. I was exhausted, both emotionally and mentally. I also wanted to sleep, hoping that I could temporary leave some of the pain behind.

When I shut my bedroom door I heard my mom yell my name from the next room, but I didn’t want to talk to her yet. I would, though, once I pulled myself together.

I clicked on my computer and scanned through my songs, finally deciding on Blink 182’s “All of this.”

“Take me away,” I whispered to the lyrics.

And they did.

Light. Light everywhere.

Alex and I holding onto one another, the lake melting before us.

“Everything will be okay,” Alex whispered in my ear. “I promise it will.”

Light all around me and I could feel myself slipping away, fading away with the star; fading away with Alex.

Ashes covered the ground, the snow lifted away.

“It will be okay.”

I woke up, my eyes so swol en they would barely open.

So I just lied there on my bed, trying to figure out what time it was. But then I realized how electric my skin felt and my eyes shot open. I lurched back, nearly falling out of bed as a pair of bright green eyes stared at me.

Alex caught my arm and pulled me back on the bed.

“Sorry…I was just…”

“Watching me sleep,” I finished for him.

“It’s not as creepy as it sounds,” he said, still holding onto my arm

“No, it’s pretty creepy,” I tried to joke, but the tone of my voice cracked.

“You don’t have to do that.” He released my arm. “You don’t have to fake that everything’s alright.”

“Don’t I?” I questioned.

He shook his head. “You don’t. Not with me.” Music still flowed from the speakers. I had set it on repeat, so the same song still played softly in the background.

“So, how does it happen?” he asked rolling onto his back and staring up at the ceiling.

I rolled onto my back as well and let out a loud breath.

“Do you really want to know?”

“I do.”

So I told him, making it sound as lovely and poetic as one can make a death sound.

“It doesn’t sound that bad,” he said, after I finished.

“I guess not.” And deep down, I knew it wasn’t. Being with Alex, while we died…it could have been a lot worse.

But it still doesn’t mean I have come to terms with it. I don’t want to die. I don’t want Alex to die. I want us to be together, for real, not just when we are reaching our end.

Alex turned his head toward me, this strange look on his face as he stared at me. “Will you come somewhere with me?”

“I don’t know…” I was hesitant, even though I wanted to.

Just because I knew when we would die, didn’t mean we could just run around together. We had to wait until all the Death Walkers gathered, until Demetrius and Stephan were there, until we could burn away the bad all in one shot, right as the portal was about to open.

“I promise things won’t get too heated,” he said as if he read my mind. “I’ll even promise to keep my hands to myself.”

I couldn’t help but give a soft laugh.

“And if the electricity starts to fade, we’ll leave, okay?” he promised.

I swallowed hard, thinking of the light that would fade everything away. “So you felt it to? Back when we were at your house?”

He nodded. “I did—I felt it.”

I took a deep breath, my heart aching inside my chest.

“Okay, where do you want to go?.”

He gave a small smile. “To our little hideout where we made the Blood Promise to be together forever.” I nodded. “Alright, I can take us there.” And I did, trying not to think about the fact that our forever wasn’t going to be for very long.

Chapter 32

I used my Foreseer power to takes us to the outskirts of the castle, right in the center of the forest, in front of the bush blooming with violet flowers that hid the entrance to our old childhood hideout.

I didn’t ask why Alex wanted to go, but I could feel that being here was important to him. So I followed him up the side of the hill, he helped me over the bush, and I climbed down the ladder, into the dark hideout.

Alex climbed down after me and I stood in the darkness until a candle was lit. The light radiated around the tiny room made of dirt, and we both sat down on the floor with our backs pressed up against the wall, side by side, letting the silence wrap around us. I thought maybe this was what he wanted, to remember the memories the place held, memories which I could still not remember, except for one.

A promise made, between Alex and me, a promise to be together forever.

Forum.

“You know, I never stopped thinking about you,” he said, looking ahead at the wall. “After you left.” I didn’t say anything. I wanted to. I wanted to tell him that I never stopped thinking about him either, but that wouldn’t be true. I hadn’t thought about him, because I couldn’t remember him—I couldn’t remember much of anything.

“And then when I first saw you again.” He met my eyes.

“That day at school…I had so much trouble shutting my emotions off that day.” This strange look passed over his face as if he were remembering that day. “All that time spent learning how to shut them off, and one look at these,” he brushed the tip of his finger at the corner of my eye, “and everything I learned was momentarily gone.” That I could remember; how the first day I saw him at school, I was magnetized toward him. I felt things that day I had never felt before, and I wondered if somehow, in the back of my mind, I knew who he was; I remembered the Blood Promise, I remembered he was my forever.

“I want to do something,” Alex said, turning to face me. “I want to make another Blood Promise.”

“A Blood Promise.” I raised my eyebrows curiously at him. “What kind of a Blood Promise.”

“One that will help us through this.” He took a deep breath and slipped a knife out of the pocket of his jeans. “One that will make the impossible possible.”

I didn’t understand, but he had this look on his face, begging me to promise, begging me to understand, begging me to trust him.

So I nodded. “Alight, let’s make a promise.” I held out my hand, the one marked with the scar of an older Blood Promise made a very long time ago.

He took a deep breath as he flipped the blade open.

Then he cut his hand, and holding my gaze, carefully cut mine.

He pushed our hands together. “EGO spondeo you'll exsisto totus vox,” The words poured out of him with a deeper meaning than I could grasp. His bright green eyes were on me, only me and nothing else. “EGO spondeo EGO mos reperio a via vobis futurus totus vox.” I waited for him to tell me what he needed me to say, but he dropped his hand and put his knife back into his pocket.

“That was a one-sided promise,” I said, clutching my hand shut to stop the bleeding.

“It was a one-sided promise that needed to be made.” He stood to his feet and helped me to mine.

“But that doesn’t seem fair,” I said with a frown. “I didn’t promise you anything back.”

“Trust me,” he said. “I got everything I needed.” I could see in his eyes that he did; that whatever he needed from that promise, he got. There seemed to be less heaviness in his eyes because of it.

“We should go back,” he said, still holding onto my hand.

“If we’re gone for too long, everyone will worry that we’re gone gone.”

“If that’s what you want.” I shut my eyes. “Then, let’s go back.”