The edges of my pain burned away until I felt nothing. Darkness swarmed in, encompassing me in its familiarity, soothing my mind with blissful nothingness. But it, too, blinked away a moment later, leaving me standing in a strange foyer that I had never seen before.
I blinked, staring around at my surroundings. Vibrant purple damask wallpaper clung to the outer edges of my vision and flowed into a beautiful cherry wood floor beneath my feet. Paintings and little pieces of art were scattered about almost haphazardly as if they'd just been moved into the area and the occupant of the home hadn't yet decided where to put them. A set of stairs bordered the far wall and led up to rooms that I could not see. But it was the door that drew my attention, the one leading, presumably, outside of the home. It was made entirely of pure silver. I stared at it for a moment and then took a step forward.
My head snapped sideways in the direction of the approaching footsteps that emanated suddenly from somewhere off to the right. I hesitated, eyes flicking to that silver door, calculating an escape route should my mother appear in this strange place. But the person who finally emerged in the threshold of the foyer was not my mother at all.
"Uncle," I breathed in awe.
"I have to say I'm surprised about the choice of meeting place," he replied, striding forward and pacing about the foyer in that familiar studious way of his, hands clasped behind his back, polished shoes glinting in the light of the silver chandelier hung far above us. "I thought for sure you would have chosen Hadley."
"How are you here?" I asked him, my brow furrowed in confusion because I had realized something. This wasn't just my uncle. This was my uncle as I remembered him. Young and vibrant, full of life and vigor. He was in his late thirties, perhaps early forties, at the prime of his professional career and raising me into my adulthood. He wasn't him. He was a memory of him. So where was I?
I backed away suddenly, pressing myself against the wall as my eyes shot rapidly about my surroundings once more, this time, assessing for threats rather than observing out of mere curiosity.
"You need not worry," he called out, raising a hand in a gesture of goodwill. "Nothing happens here unless you want it to."
I frowned, brow furrowing again in even more confusion.
"You-you're not my uncle," I accused.
"I am not," he agreed, picking up a little statue of a goldfinch and examining it. "I am the projection of his consciousness into your own. I'm a conversational piece. I'm not him but I am of him. I know everything about him. I have his motivations, his memories."
His eyes flicked to mine and my heart pounded against my ribs.
"What are you?" I gasped.
"I have no name," he replied with a shrug, setting the figure back on the shelf and pacing again. "I am the elixir. Or, rather, the magic within the elixir. And I'm here to help you understand."
"Understand what?"
"Your father's choice of setting made far more sense. His childhood home where he grew up with your uncle. That, I understood, but this. Tell me, where are we?"
He turned his gaze onto me and I leaned off of the wall, examining him anew. It wasn't my uncle, I knew that, but the likeness was uncanny. Everything was the same. Everything.
"Seren," he said my name and I blinked at him.
"I-I don't know," I confessed, glancing around at our surroundings myself. "Where are we supposed to be?"
"Home. Wherever you believe your true home to be, that's where we go. For your father, it was his childhood home, the place where he lived his most pleasant memories. But you don't know where we are?"
I shook my head.
"Curious," he mused, hand on his chin. "Perhaps you haven't found it yet."
"Yet?" I asked. "So I'm going to live?"
His eyes snapped to mine again.
"It doesn't work that way," he told me. "I suspect your premonition-capable friend would have told you that had she had the time to explain. The future is not preordained. It's not a set stream of events. It's constantly changing, always shifting, based on whatever decisions you make. When you came here, your future was one thing. Perhaps now, it is another."
"You speak in riddles."
"Allow me to clarify. If you wish for eternal life, you may enter that silver door and be granted it. The pain is excruciating as everything against nature is. If you wish to die a mortal death, head up those stairs and be spared from pain for all eternity. The longer you remain in this foyer, the more of your demons will come to haunt you until you've made your choice. I will warn you, Seren Dawnpaw, that the elixir does not give without taking. You will be required to make a sacrifice should you choose immortal life."
"What sacrifice?"
"That, I cannot say. Only the elixir knows."
He spread his hands wide and offered me a sad smile before turning and striding for the door.
"That's it?" I called after him. "You're just leaving me here?"
"You know the rules. You know the risks. Your destiny is your own now, Seren Dawnpaw."
Just like that, he was gone. And I was alone in this empty foyer, surrounded by those purple walls and all its gleaming artwork. What a pretty tomb, I thought morbidly and then hated myself for it a moment later.
"Seren," someone said suddenly and I jerked back to attention to find Cass entering from the hall on the opposite side from where my uncle had vanished. I blinked at her, stunned to find her here, heart soaring at the opportunity to see her again. But then a swarm of visions flashed through my mind and I stumbled back from her.
I saw Cass tossing her head back, laughing at that gaudy dinner table in the center of the Court of Wanderers. I saw her watching me tentatively as she picked through the produce I'd gotten from the market when we had been alone in that apartment. I saw her smiling over her shoulder as a bright bulb of magic light shone from her hand. Then I saw the moment she appeared on that snowy road and pulled me away against my will. I saw her begging for her brother's life, throwing mine at the heels of her vengeful father. I saw her weeping as they hung an imitation of Lark, wincing when I screamed at her to get out of my room, fleeing in the night when I needed her most. I saw her sobbing on my mother's floor, hands covered in Lark's blood. And then that look, that sad, pained expression she had offered me before she left with Lark and the twins to hunt the gorgon.
Because she had known.
I came spinning back to the foyer with a gasp. The accusation was out of my mouth before I even righted myself.
"You knew," I spat at her. "You knew she would catch you. Maybe you even knew what she would do to me!"
Cass stopped a few feet from me, cocked her head to the side, and blinked.
"Premonition," I hissed, recalling the way she had shot shadow at Medusa's magic so fast, too fast. "You saw it."
She lowered her face, her eyes darkening, her smile vanishing. She looked like a cruel imitation of herself, not like the glowing, radiant Cass that I had come to know.
"You could have stopped it," I snapped. "Why didn't you stop it?"
She just stared at me.
"Tell me why!" I screamed, lashing out at her. But the moment my hand reached for where her shoulder would be, she vanished into a puff of smoke.
I stood still, breathing hard, chest heaving.
From off to the right, I heard footsteps again. I closed my eyes and shook my head.
"No," I sighed. "No, no, no."
But when I opened my eyes, it wasn't my uncle standing there at all. It was Wyn Kendrick and he wore a scowl to rival that of any he had given me before.
"You never told us about them," he barked, furious, as he crossed the room in a few strides and pushed his nose up against mine. I felt him there, solid, real. I looked down at my hands against which Cass had just vanished and my brow furrowed in confusion. "You were supposed to be one of us. You were supposed to have chosen us. But you kept their secret. You kept them safe. And for what? What had they done for you? Mortals raised you. Mortals gave your your academic standing, your professionalism, your values. Is this how you repay Xavier Belling? Calling yourself Seren Dawnpaw and becoming one of them?"
My eyes snapped up to his, my lips parting slightly in surprise.
"You do this and she wins," he snarled.
I looked past his shoulders, at the stairs behind him.
"You're right," I murmured, my voice soft.
"You do this and you become one of them. Forever."
"You're right."
"Would you really give up on us so completely? Would you really cast the mortal realm aside? Cast your home aside?"
My gaze snapped back to his and then to my surroundings. My home.
"You do this," he repeated, his voice already fading away like leaves on a stuff breeze, "and Ariadne wins."
Then he was gone, faded completely, and I was alone again. I took a step forward, then another. I whirled around, searching for the next memory, the next shadow person who would come to convince me to die, to convince me that my life wasn't worth whatever sacrifice I would have to make, wasn't worth my mother's victory.
I didn't hear him come. I just felt his breath on my neck a heartbeat before he spoke.
"Ren," Lark whispered against the shell of my ear and my breath hitched as I was assaulted, yet again, by that onslaught of memories.
It started with the kiss. I felt the memory like the ghost of his lips upon my own. The moment we met, the way he leaned toward me as he sat across from my desk. Our jaunt down that arctic mountain. Healing the rift and the moment he pulled me through it. All of the little looks and glimpses we took, we cherished, in the Court of Light and Life. Our conversation in the garden and the way he had laughed. Then when he broke that Fat male's bones, when he was captured, when we begged his father for his life only for him to receive a sentence of death. His execution. His second kidnapping of me, the knife fight we'd had in the snow. Trainings and travel. Juicy peaches, crisp tea shirts, and hot tea.
I fell to my knees, tears flowing freely down my cheeks.
"My love," he breathed in a way that seemed more like a hiss, circling me. "My gift. My bonded."
I heaved in a shaky breath and opened my eyes to find him standing before me, watching me with that same strange tilt to his head that Cass had had.
"She broke you," I gasped because that was the last memory I was given. Lark, broken and bloody on the floor of the Bronze Throne.
"Because of you," he snarled.
I sobbed, chest heaving, body shaking.
"All of this, because of you," he growled. "My exile. My execution. My torture. You. You. You."
"We are bonded," I choked out my argument.
"I am bonded to pain," he roared, lip curling in disgust as he stared down at me. "I am bonded to death."
"Lark, no. Please."
I shifted forward on my knees, reaching for him, but he pulled out of my grasp, glaring down at me with such hatred that I felt it in my bones. It was the same way I'd looked at him, all those weeks ago, when he had pulled me into that frozen wasteland, had begged me to heard his end of the story. When I had spent weeks despising him for all that I believed he had done. He was repaying it to me now. Tenfold. And my heart was shattering to pieces at the sight of it.
"I'll never save you," he hissed. "I'll never come for you. You knew it yourself. Didn't you? I would never pull my people into a war. Not for you."
"Lark, I don't—"
"Come back to me, Seren."
It was his voice, the same as the one before me, but different. It was quieter, softer, and somehow, realer. I blinked through my tears, looking up to find that other version of him just as stunned as I was. That imitation Lark, it blinked in surprise, and then vanished. I reached out for him, the real him, and felt him solidly on the other side. But he didn't speak to me again and I wasn't even sure he could. Part of me wanted to beg him to, to cling to him as the only bit of my sanity I had left. But I couldn't. I knew I couldn't.
The longer you remain in this foyer, the more of your demons will come to haunt you until you've made your choice.
I looked up at the stairs. It would be easy. So easy. No sacrifice, no pain. No war to fight or mother to fear. She would lose something she loved. I could ensure that. I could make sure she felt my death in every part of her cold, cruel heart. I could make sure it haunted her until the day she died, knowing she killed me out of her own selfish desire to keep me. Something about that was satisfying.
But there was no satisfaction in death. Not really.
I turned slowly to that silver door. Immortal life. And a sacrifice.
What would this elixir take from me? What would be the price it demanded for my eternal life, for an immortality I didn't even want?
I rose to my feet and took a step forward. I wiped the tears away with shaking hands. If I were going to face eternity, I would do it with my head held high, I would meet its demands with fearlessness in my soul and Lark's words in my heart.
Come back to me, Seren.
I took a deep breath and reached for the doorknob. I twisted it slowly, until the mechanism clicked into place, until it gave at my touch and was pulling backward with a quiet groan.
I gasped into the blinding white light on the other side.
Seren Dawnpaw has chosen to live, a voice boomed within my skull. I winced, hands going to my temples as it softened and was echoed again by a thousand other voices. The price for life anew is a surrender of the old... of the old...
I blinked into that light, squinting, but saw nothing.
To be immortal, one must relinquish the mortal... the mortal... Seren Dawnpaw must promise never to set foot in the mortal realm again... never again... again...
I felt the command like a blow to my soul. Wyn Kendrick had been right. I had chosen them. I had always chosen them. And now I was to be one of them.
Pain ripped me out of that place, pulling me back into the world to the sounds of my own agonized screaming. My consciousness joined my body and continued that crying out. But not just the physical pain, the burning of my insides as if I were on fire with no way to douse the flames, but for what I had lost as well. For what I would never have again.