You Can't Run From The Dark

{Part 41}

~Zaire~

As soon as they were both inside, Zaire removed their shrouds, and for a second, he just stared at her, drinking in the sight of her unharmed shell. I won't let anything happen to you . . .

"Zaire, there's going to be a rebellion."

Her voice was so small and timid, and he wanted to hold her and assure her that she was safe, as long as she was by his side. But would it be true? If their blood was meant to revive each other, the threads of fate that bound them surely knew that there would be a time where it would have to be done. Injury was guaranteed, in that case. Instead of responding, he gazed at her Mark, and the single shadow that wound around her arm, his stomach clenching tightly. He could think of nothing but his need for her to remain soft, gentle, and innocent, through his unhindered protection. He forced himself to turn away and remove the shroud from the seam, as images flashed in his mind of them abandoning the Dark Realm, hiding in the mortal world until the war was over. It was a sick fantasy, and a future that mocked him with its impossibility. He cursed the Oracle silently, as he stepped aside to give his mate a moment to process what he had hidden from her, in the middle of his living room. A way out of Faerie.

~Dessa~

It almost looked like Zaire's claw tore through the fabric of space and time, creating a strange portal. But no, she could clearly see that he was removing a shroud, much like he had removed from their bodies a minute earlier. A shroud that was concealing . . .

"Is that . . . a way to the other side?" Dessa gaped with open shock.

He gazed at her with anguish in his mismatched eyes, and Dessa felt a numbness settling over her. He had hidden this from her, a door that would take her back. Should she feel angry? She couldn't feel anything as she stared into the jagged, abyssal opening. The energy radiated off of the dense magic even from across the room, and it looked like a wobbling slice of deep space, a stretch of nebulous void. Even if he hadn't obscured it, she would have never had the guts to touch it, let alone step through it. There was really no point in hiding it from her.

"This is a seam in the Veil," Zaire murmured, his gaze lowering to the floor in front of her feet, confirming her assumption.

When she said nothing, his arm lifted a few inches, as if he had meant to offer his hand to her, but he dropped it just as quickly, appearing to be conflicted. Dessa was hollow inside, but she walked forward until she was standing beside him. There was no time to be upset, and she didn't have it in her, anyway. They needed to leave, before everything went to shit. She wordlessly slipped her hand in his, and though she could feel his eyes scanning her blank expression, she kept her gaze fixed on the seam. In her periphery, she could see his lips part, like he wanted to say something, but then he closed them, and he set his jaw, thinking better of it. He stepped through the portal, and tugged her along with him.

The second that she was fully enveloped inside the void, her apathy shattered. She felt the form of her being tested, stretched and compressed by an outside force. She was only emotion, then, only thought. It was like the opposite of the black - there was no peace in this limbo. She was being churned and chewed up by the unforgiving maw of the universe, and her mind was elastic, wound end-over-end like taffy being pulled. The pressure of the cloying galaxy-like netherworld threatened to crush her into a diamond, and just when she thought that she would surely break from the agony of it, they were on the other side.