Synergy (See #3)(34)

“I do love you!” he screamed over the crowd.

His words halted my racing heart. I stared up at him, and in the midst of the chaos I found myself alone with him.

“Then help me pray for our redemption,” I said boldly, still not finding the courage to tell him that I loved him as much as, if not more than, he loved me.

Silas’ powerful arms held the door open while he screamed for those on street to follow us. The air was thick with smoke; it was so dark that my lamp could barely light the way to the altar.

A young girl helped me light candles, and I fell to my knees and prayed. Silas came to my side and knelt down. The only sounds were the coughs of the people that had followed us there. I prayed with every ounce of my energy. I told the goddess that I was a fool. That I should have trusted her to bring the man that I was to love to me. That I should have been patient for her to light my path. I promised her that if she would set me free from this answered prayer that I would be her voice, that I would stand for innocents. That I would not fear the men in this world. That I would be the change. I told her that even though I didn’t deserve Silas, I would always cherish him; that I would let him protect me, let him be my shield when the world refused to hear the voice of a woman. I asked for a peaceful escape for my city, I asked for forgiveness ... I asked for guidance.

The coughing stopped almost instantly. I looked behind me to see the people who had followed me lying across the floor as if they were sleeping peacefully. My eyes felt heavy. I was exhausted. I felt Silas’ arms go around me and pull me to his chest. He laid us down beneath the altar, and I closed my eyes as I listened to the calm beating of his heart.

The dream began then. I saw the goddess in all of her wonder, all of her power. In the dream, I saw the entire world, places I’d only heard of. Great cities, small villages, land that had yet to be discovered. I saw a darkness linger near innocence. I never heard the words or the command of my path, but I felt it. I felt her tell me that now I must save more than my city; I must save the light in this world. I must be the face that the innocents see at the moment the darkness comes for them, that I must pull them into the light that they were.

Silas was at my side in that dream. I watched as his chest swelled with pride, as his eyes filled with gratitude for the love we felt for each other, for the passion we felt for the weak. The dream was near endless, blissful.

When I finally opened my eyes, I felt the last drops of rain on my warm skin. I rose up to see us lying across ash. Pools of water reflected the purple sunset. I stood quickly, trying to understand where I was. I found Silas next to me and shook him violently to wake him.

We had no idea where we were. My city was gone, and panic consumed me.

“How?” I asked breathlessly as I forced myself to focus on the reality I was in now, as I let a past that I no longer wanted to remember fall into my growing memories. “How were our bodies unharmed, sleeping above the ash?”

Silas stretched his arm around me and pulled me against him, allowing his calm touch to absorb me.

“We never understood the how,” he said quietly. “We awoke on ash that had buried the city. There was nothing left. From the clear sky, we knew days had passed. When we traveled to the closest city, we discovered that almost twenty years had passed since that day. That Pompeii was barely a memory.”

“So what are you? What was I? A ghost?”

He was silent for a moment as he tried to find a way to explain it to me. “I don’t think there’s a word. ‘Undead’ would be the closest in any language.”

“We just didn’t die? We just kept living?”

“Yeah, it took us a while to understand that. We were never tired. We would only sleep when we wanted to dream, when we wanted to seek advice from the gods and goddesses. Hunger never came. Dirt wouldn’t linger on our bodies -- it would just fall away. Our eyes glowed, so much so that often we didn’t make eye contact with anyone.”

“When did this war with darkness begin? When did you find a hatred of Escorts?”

“Immediately,” he said as he moved his arm from around me. I knew he was upset that I didn’t have more questions about the time we loved each other, the words we said to each other then. My focus was still on how to bring peace to Draven. “But it’s not like what you see now, shadows and whispers. It was more about feeding those that were hungry. Ensuring that artists and free minds were protected while they followed the call of their soul. We had many battles, and each battle would force us to flee to another city, to change the way we looked, to start over.”

“Why?”

“I would always fight for you, for anyone who needed me to, and when a blade did pierce my skin, blood didn’t come. The people around us would see us as evil, a ghost, witch, even as demons. The fact that we couldn’t die caused rational minds to see us as the darkness we were fighting. We had to run.”

What happened this morning flashed through my memory, how painful it was when I was dying. I understood what Draven was saying before. He wasn’t telling me that I would face all of the times I’d dodged death before; he was telling me that I would feel what I began to feel this morning, that I would I die a thousand deaths. I still didn’t understand, though. I didn’t understand how I got here, how I went from that life to fighting Escorts, to meeting Draven for the first time, dying for him, being born in this life, what we were fighting now, or how it all connected. Though my eyes were open to what the nightmare was really about, that I knew now that it wasn’t Draven behind that door, I didn’t understand what my mom was saying, how I connected to those boys Bianca had, how Draven connected to that prince.