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.”