He took another step toward me until his pale, lightly transparent face was inches from mine. I sucked at my breath, surprised I stil had the capability of breathing. Even in some other dimension, he stil managed to take my breath away.
It wasn’t fair. He needed to try harder. I needed to try harder. I concentrated on him, on the thin black hair along his wide jaw, his ful lips that were parted slightly, on his eyes that searched mine as frantical y and deeply as mine searched his. I wil ed him to be solid, to be real. He was probably doing the same to me.
“I think it’s coming,” he whispered.
I listened hard and could hear a growling off in the abyss.
He closed his eyes. “I need to take you back with me. I can’t leave you here.”
“I know,” I said, my heart drowning in desperation.
“Concentrate.”
“I am.” The strain in his voice was palpable.
The growling grew louder and I was aware of another presence coming closer, one that brought a wealth of pain and suffering along with it. Red eyes gleamed somewhere.
I looked away, looked at Dex. We were going to run out of time.
“You have to get out of here,” I told him. “Go back.”
“Not without you.”
“We both can’t stay here,” I pleaded. “You must go.”
“Roman is growing weaker,” he said.
“So, please go!”
The red eyes were almost upon us. My body shook and shuddered from the waves of evil and ugliness. It would drown us in them.
Dex reached up with his other hand and tried to place it against my other cheek. It was like he was trying to cup air in his hands. “Wil you forgive me?”
I was taken aback. “What?”
“For al the things I’ve done to you. Wil you forgive me?”
I knew forgetting what happened was impossible. But I was ready to forgive him. I didn’t want that weight to be on both of us for the rest of our short lives.
“Of course,” I whispered.
He smiled, soft and sad.
A gust of hate whirled through us. Red eyes appeared over Dex’s shoulder.
Dex leaned forward and attempted to kiss me. Despite everything, I wished I could have felt it. I wished it was the last thing I could feel.
The beast descended.
Our hearts are magnets, I thought.
And with that thought, I felt him.
His warm hands on my face. His soft lips flush on mine.
A current of electricity and light flowed from him to me and back again, invigorating my skin and jump-starting my heart.
A heaviness descended on us, crushing us down with insurmountable malevolence.
But Dex’s grasp was strong. I wrapped my arms around his waist and together we were pul ed back by an unseen force, ripped right out of the blackness.
Somewhere in the dark I heard Pippa say goodbye.
Then there was a horrid screeching sound, like we were swept up in a violent, high-pitched windstorm, fol owed by a blinding white light and Roman’s commanding, monumental voice.
I felt Dex’s hands drop away from me and my arms fal slack to the side. Then with a giant push I screamed my way back into the real world.
It felt like I had been hurled straight into a brick wal . I opened my eyes to find myself back in the nearly dark room. A charred ring surrounded the bed, which was broken in two.
I was on my knees, as was Dex beside me. Roman stood between us, one hand on top of my head, the other hand on top of Dex’s.
“Your soul is yours,” Roman said, his voice dropping with exhaustion.
I dropped too, straight back onto the ground, and let the gentle darkness carry me away.