Undying Hate~ Book Three

Sylvie floated in and out of consciousness. A melody echoed in her head repeatedly, and soon out of delirium, she hummed it. For hours and hours until she didn’t know if she was awake or asleep.

Alive or dead.

Perhaps she wanted to be dead. Then she could talk to him again.

Why wouldn’t the song stop? Usually, if she sang or hummed the earworm-song burrowing in her mind, it would cease, but this time her mind was filled with noise.

Constant, tinkling, lyricless noise.

Elias lay still beneath her, wrapped in the tight embrace of the earth and roots of the trees that surrounded their home. Footsteps paced around them, the dull sound matching the beat of her heart.

Perhaps everything would be dull now that he was gone. Now and again, they would try to speak to her. Try to coax her from the earth, but she only blocked her ears.

She wouldn’t leave him. She wished they would just leave her alone.

Sylvie?

Rowan’s beast spoke to her in the mind link forcing more tears to fall past her waterline. She had been so selfish with him. He was injured, too, and she just left him.

I’m sorry, Rowan. I wish I didn’t have to leave you.

I’m right here, Sylvie. I’ll stay right here with you until you’re ready to come home.

She shuddered and buried her hands in her hair. It was too much. She couldn’t do it...

What if I can’t come back? I can’t - I can’t live without him, Rowan.

The cocoon shrouding them bent inward like someone was leaning on it from the outside. Was that him?

Whatever you decide, I’ll be here. I love you, Sylvie. I won’t make you choose.

She wept. Why was he so understanding?

I don’t deserve you.

Don’t say that.

She lay down and resumed her wordless humming with nothing more to say.

Time began a meaningless construct in her grief.

The only signal of time passing was the gradual loss of Elias’ body temperature.

Laying against him now was like climbing inside a refrigerator. She didn’t know the decomposition process for Vampires, so she had nothing to compare the experience with.

With each degree colder, though, it was harder to deny what had happened.

He was gone.

And she didn’t even get to say goodbye.

During their last interaction, he was mad at her. She had lied to him, and now she’d never get to apologise.

“What will you sacrifice?” A voice asked from inside the cocoon of her making. Sylvie jerked and blinked in the darkness. Was she asleep?

“What?”

There was silence for a long time, and she almost wrote it off to exhausted delusions when a breathy voice asked again.

“What will you sacrifice?”

It was hard not to voice the raging thoughts the question invoked. Sylvie bit her lip and slowed her inner monologue, trying to find a suitable answer if she was speaking to the Fates.

She wanted to scream until her throat bled about how she’d done enough. She’d sacrificed her morals, killed people for the Fates, and still, they wanted more.

Instead, she whispered, unsure if they were even there.

“Anything.”

“You are no longer Lycan.”

“No,” she confirmed, shivering against Elias’ cold body. Her body wasn’t running hot anymore.

“But you can mind link.”

Despite the closeness mind linking brought her to Rowan, she would give it up instantly for Elias.

“Take it. I’ll give up anything. Please. Please.”

Her vision swam as if she were floating into another Realm, and she landed on all fours in long grass.

Alone.

“Elias?” She scrambled around on her hands and knees as if she would find him sprawled in the grass.

“Where am I?”

“Hart?”

Kerensa’s voice swam with confusion as Sylvie spun and faced her, mouth ajar.

“What’s going on?”

Sylvie cleared her gravelly throat. “I-I don’t know how I got here.”

“You’re realm splicing.” Kerensa’s brows furrowed as she took a few steps through the long grass. “You’re here, but you aren’t here. Like a ghost.”

A ghost. If she were a ghost there, maybe she could find Elias.

“Elias is dead.” It was easier to say the words in the ‘ghost’ state. Her emotions weren’t as potent. It felt like they were wrapped in cotton, tucked away for her protection.

“What?”

“I’m gonna save him.”

“Sylvie-”

“No. No.” Despite her dulled emotions, her eyes still filled with tears. “I can do this.” She just had to figure out where she was and if this was even real. Maybe she was hallucinating.

“Where are we?”

“You can’t see?”

Sylvie frowned, but Kerensa’s usual attitude brought her peace. “I can see. I’m just disoriented.”

Kerensa’s lip twitched as a sympathetic smile rose and fell from her lips.

“We’re by your felled tree. Look.” She pointed behind Sylvie, and she followed Kerensa’s gesture. In this ‘ghost’ form, the dead tree was very much alive, its pastel pink veins glowing along its length.

That was where she had to go.

“I think I know what to do,” she whispered. “I’m going to go now.” She turned back and gave Kerensa a long look.

“Goodbye, Hart.”

“Goodbye, Kerensa.” She turned and reached for the tree, about to sink into its magical highway, when Kerensa called out one last time.

“Oh, and Hart.”

“Yeah?” Sylvie placed her palms on the trunk.

“I love you, too.”

She sank deeply into the tree, and her heart squeezed. Kerensa had heard her. The realisation brought her the briefest peace as the gooey warmness of the trunk dragged her along.

Pale pastels swirled in her vision until she heard Elias’ voice, and she leapt towards it. This time she landed on a hot patch of sand, and in front of her, an oasis of palms surrounding flowing fresh water bubbling from underground streams.

“Hello?”

She stood and wandered down the sand, jumping as the hot ground bit at her calves and burned inside her tattered shoes.

The shade of a palm offered solace, and she leaned into it, lifting her feet out of the sinking sand every few seconds. The place wanted to swallow her up. There was no other living soul around from what she could see, but her skin crawled as if dozens of eyes watched from the hidden corners.

“Hello.”

She jumped at the voice, and her head jerked up, expecting a person.

It wasn’t.

A featureless creature swayed from behind a nearby palm and stared at her. Its intense posture was the only cue that it was staring at her. Sylvie hugged closer to the palm and nodded to the figure as it mimicked her movement.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” it echoed.

Fear coiled into Sylvie’s stomach as she observed the creature.

Was this a Fate?

Or could she have stumbled into a demon realm by accident? She didn’t think a demon realm would be so beautiful or peaceful. Or empty.

“I’m looking for-” she paused, ignoring the copycat in front of her and thought about who she actually wanted to see. Who could fix the mess she had created?

Could it be fixed?

“That is the right question,” the shadow figure intoned.

Without her emotions clouding her mind, it became easier to rationalise Elias’ death.

He was gone.

No amount of bargaining, anger or depression would bring him back, and she was sacrificing the undying love she had with two other men by distancing herself from them.

Elias’ marks would fade, and eventually, so would the pain.

There was nothing she could do but say goodbye.

With that, she leaned away from the palm and clasped her hands. “Please,” she started.

The creature stilled.

“Take me to Elias.”

It remained still as if contemplating and nodded once, lifting its long arm and pointing at a tree dead centre of the spring in the middle of the oasis.

Could ghosts swim?

She could hardly swim in a solid form, she hoped the rules of floating and doggy paddling were similar here.

Sylvie hiked to the water’s edge, giving the creature a wide berth, and dipped her toes in. Inside the cool liquid, orbs of light darted around like tiny fish.

She shuffled her feet further into the water, afraid she would squish them and gasped as the ground dropped out from under her almost immediately.

It wasn’t a spring. It was more like a bottomless pool.

She kicked and pulled her arms through the water, yelping when one of the orbs touched her skin and gave her a light zap.

Electric orb fish.

Maybe getting into unknown waters wasn’t a good plan.

She distracted herself from the zaps by thinking of Elias. Memories of their first meeting, his mysterious eyes raking over her body during her interview, the first time they kissed on the couch in his cabin, their marking night, the first time he told her he loved her.

As the zaps continued, memories flashed in her mind. These ones were not hers, though. A first birthday of a fox shifter, a crowning ceremony in Evergreen- the wearer of the crown far younger and joyful than Sylvie remembered.

Katarina?

The memories continued.

A graduation, a wedding, a marking ceremony.

Flashes from the lives of thousands of creatures flooded her. Overwhelming grief, joy, and confusion followed her as she tried to swim faster. The tree didn’t seem to be getting any closer, though, no matter how far she paddled.

A funeral.

A birth.

A first meeting.

She paddled harder, but she wasn’t even moving. She wasn’t going to make it. She was going to die in there with the zapping fish orbs.

A job interview.

A kiss.

A vampire escaping his home and hiding in a tiny cabin he built with his own hands.

“Elias?”

She wrapped her hands around the orb grazing against her palm and flipped onto her back, floating as she lifted it over her face. More memories hit her.

Her face stared wide-eyed up at him in a blouse far too tight, the middle button holding on for dear life.

A flush on her cheeks and a smile threatened her lips as he told her to leave his office.

His hands twirled a ring between his forefinger and thumb, the familiar ruby shining as he ran his other hand through his hair.

She could almost feel his heart increasing as he contemplated the ring. He was nervous to propose...

His hands ran across the bark of an old willow in Stone Court, his voice disappearing as he called to her until the sun cast a shadow over its trunk.

“Sylvie, you need to come back. Come back to me.”

The fear in his mind was palpable.

How many times had she disappeared into a tree only for him to pull her out again? He thought he lost her every time.

And the final memory of him yelling at Kian.

“Let me through, Kian.”

“You won’t survive it. You aren’t strong enough.”

“I don’t care. She needs us.”

“She needs you alive, Elias. This will kill you.”

“I know what this will cost me. And I won’t leave her in there defenceless. Open the portal.”

She pulled the orb to her chest and cried. In her hands, she held his essence.

Maybe she could stay here forever, holding the piece of him that was still alive. She could hear his voice again and again. It was so peaceful there. As her emotions subsided again, she hummed the song playing its infuriating yoyo game in her head, and her shoulder bumped into a sandbank.

She rolled, expecting to be back on the shore where she started swimming from, but she had floated right to the tree. Ready to get dry, she pulled herself onto the sand and cradled the little orb.

Elias’s memories.

His soul.

She hummed and closed her eyes, bringing it to her cheek.

It could never get old, seeing her life through his eyes. So many of his memories were of her. He watched her even when she thought he was busy with other things. She looked beautiful through his eyes.

Without thinking, she leaned back into the bark of the palm, and it took her. She fought against it, but it took her in and spat her back on the earth realm into her body so hard her bones ached.

“No!” she groaned, her emotions flooding back. She wasn’t ready to leave him yet. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye. How could the Fates be so cruel? They dangled the carrot in front of her and snatched it away just as fast. She wriggled against Elias’ lukewarm body and froze.

“Elias?”