GOLDEN.
All I could see around me was golden. From the elaborate tapestries that illustrated crowns and flowers in the darkest shade of the color to the curtains that spoke of luxury and aristocracy. The shades were endless, some of them lighter, as if the sun itself had created its kingdom here, and some darker, but still sweet as honey.
I dared a look at the green marble floor. Again, scattered splashes of gold decorated it, adding a tone of brightness and richness to it. The grandiosity everything in that room radiated was breathtaking. A palace that hadn't been built on the ashes of a fallen kingdom but on the bones of an upcoming empire.
As I lay half-asleep and half-awake in the softest bed I'd ever lounged in, the chandelier that was full of crystals in different colors and shapes made my eyes hurt. A comforting feeling of refreshment and hopefulness was spread all over my body and my mind, like there was something worth anticipating in the near future.
From the cloaked and armed sentinels pacing around the enormous room, I could understand that I was being kept in a golden cage and the realization that my plan hadn't worked hit me like a hatchet in the heart.
My attempt to be forever gone and away from everything had utterly failed. For me, I was in the middle of an enormous room and not a clock was placed on the walls around me. All the mindless wishes and dreams that I was in some waiting room in Heaven vanished the second two figures entered the room. Tall and imposing, I clenched my fists on impulse, my jaw tightening. All the possible options regarding what they might be started dancing around my mind. I could still be in Lantra, in some secret castle before my beheading. That was possible. That could be real.
"She's awake," the woman with the shoulder-length auburn hair said first, approaching my bed. Her long night-black dress with hues of crimson red on the sleeves made the curves of her body point out in the most flattering way possible. I'd never seen her before. And that dress . . .
It was provocative and scandalous and left nothing to the imagination, something no artist in Lantra would have ever chosen to wear. For it wasn't made of soft colors and ethereal flowers but of pure darkness and wild madness. She couldn't be from Lantra.
I didn't know where I was, I didn't know what was about to happen. If I valued my life, I would have been drenched in sweat by now. But . . . I didn't care.
As the woman waved a hand over my eyes to test if I was conscious, I willed myself to look and sound emotionless as I said, "Of course I am."
She laughed, not with a sarcastic, almost evil tone, but a heartwarming one that could announce surprise from continents away. Her black eyes were smoldering, almost cheerful. Her light brown skin immersed her in a darkness that wasn't dreadful or miserable, but powerful.
Next to her stood a man with messy brown hair, the face of a criminal with edgy cheekbones and a raw stare.
"You can go ahead and act like you can't get out of bed for however long you want to, but I'm sure you'll get bored of it." His playful and teasing voice didn't match the sharp edges of his chin, the rough characteristics of his pale face.
Expecting everything to be a trap, a well-organized plan to lock me in an aristocratic cell with no water or food and leave me here to starve, I tried to stand up just to realize that I didn't need to force any kind of pressure on my body to move. I shook my head, then my legs. Not a hint of pain. I ran a hand over my right leg just to see that the bruised skin had completely vanished. Brand new, I could promise that every muscle of my body felt refreshed.
Slithering off the king-size bed, it was an effort to hide the excitement that was a result of my now completely healed leg. Yet I masked the relief and the gratefulness only because I had no idea what these people were capable of doing, what they wanted from me. I could feel two pairs of eyes monitoring my every movement, two pairs of eyes that weren't blue, but black and green.
I wasn't in Lantra then.
I turned my gaze to the woman on my left and asked, "Where am I?"
She shrugged like it was the most ridiculous thing I could have ever asked and maybe it was. A hunter would never reveal the exact location of the place he'd hidden his prey. But I had to know—or at least try to learn—for that hunch that made me believe I was in danger, that I had to run and fight in order to earn my life back—but was that what I really wanted?
"Welcome to the Gap World, darling," she replied. The red lipstick that was applied on her lips created the perfect kind of vibe for a dangerous outcast. But the lightness in her face told me otherwise.
The man raised his hands to the ceiling, and I stood there, observing the way his clothes could have been designed for a king or a prestigious man with endless fortune. A dark red jacket covered his upper body while splashes of purple and gold made their appearance on the parts of his shoulders.
"You should have never tried to beat Jersen," he almost shouted, a smile covering his face, revealing white teeth. "You know, I'm always going to be the king of bets."
The girl punched him on his broad chest and he started laughing. She accompanied him. For a prison, the ambience was rather pleasant. Yet what was going on, I didn't know. Why they were acting friendly, I couldn't understand.
Footsteps echoed on the polished floor along with the murmuring of a few sentinels.
"Jersen and Amanda put a bet earlier on whether you were going to ask first what time it was or where you were, and as always Jersen—who also happened to have healed your leg—won."
I looked behind me to face the person the voice belonged to. As I'd expected it, Denfer had just entered the room, looking more formal than ever. His dark purple hair matched the deep green color of his embroidered tunic, a pair of black pants and black ankle boots finishing up his look. In the dim lantern light, a scratch decorated his face, a thin line marking the spot between his lips and his nose. It hadn't been there before. Or maybe I hadn't noticed it.
"Where am I?" I asked again, taking a step closer to him.
He held my gaze, not taking his eyes away from me and said, "We are in the middle of life and death, Velian. So . . . let me properly introduce you to the Gap World."
With a slight movement of his still wounded hand he opened the curtains behind him, letting the fading light of the outside world bathe the room.
"Come," he commanded and offered me his elbow to wrap my own around. I did not accept such thing, for my personal space would be terrorized by a movement like that and there was no need to do so, nonetheless. Instead, I followed him toward the towering windows.
Mist and rain was all I could see as I focused my gaze on the view. We must be high up on some hill, or at least something like that, because a city full of small towers and even smaller houses lay beneath us. The absence of colors hit me hard as I stared at the fields across the city. There wasn't a tree to alter the grey pallet that had been used to paint this land, not a lake to shift the dull landscape into something brighter and clearer.
Devastating lifeless as it was compared to my hometown, I couldn't hide the disappointment from showing up on my face. The clouds and the rain and the mist created the exact opposite scene of what I'd been used to seeing in Lantra. And even though we still had rainy days, there was something about the way everything seemed to be so still here.
"The ones who don't make it to Heaven or Hell are sent here. It's like the place for the loyal criminals and the fake saints. For the ones who don't fulfill the requirements to accompany God for eternity and beyond nor to be tortured by the Devil forevermore."
As he was talking, the sadness in his words was clearer than ever. At that heartbeat, he could have been one with the rain and the mist. Staring out the window, the dark green tunic and his short purple hair were the colors of desperation and helplessness. I decided to take my gaze away from him and look at Jersen and Amanda, who had now stopped teasing each other. Sitting on the bed I'd been on just a while ago, they admired the view from within.
"Does that mean I'm dead?" I asked, even though the fact that there was a place between Heaven and Hell didn't feel right. I hadn't totally believed it. Legend claimed that after the death of the mortal body, our souls continued existing in one of the two eternal kingdoms, Heaven and Hell, but everyone in Lantra had long ago proclaimed that theory as dated and magic-related.
"No," he replied.
I couldn't decide if I was relieved or disappointed.
"Are you dead?" I asked again.
He frowned as if the word dead didn't sit well with him. And it was reasonable. I'd talked to him; I'd touched him; I'd felt him. He wasn't a spirit, a ghost, a wicked power sent from Hell. He was real. He had a body and . . . he couldn't just be dead.
While I waited for his answer—which was taking a little longer to come than usual—I scouted the room, and then the view from the windows again. I wasn't in Lantra. I wasn't dead, I kept repeating to myself.
So, I raised my stare to the cloud-filled sky and whispered a prayer to whatever God existed up there to keep me safe, to keep me away from facing a death worse than the one I'd planned, worse than the one I would receive if I ever returned to Lantra.
Finally, Denfer murmured, "Yes."
Silence. They were dead.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
"But you have to understand that death is an illusion, death is your second chance. I am dead in the sense that I can't die from any disease. I am dead in the sense that I live in the Gap World, a place no human knows of its existence but you. And I am also dead in the sense that I can't grow old. My body will remain for eternity the way it was when I died," he said as he turned away from the window, facing me now with playfulness in his eyes. "That handsome."
I heard the muffled laughter of Amanda—if I recalled the name correctly—and I flicked my attention to her and Jersen. The latter quickly stood up from the bed to reach Denfer, putting a steady hand on his back.
Amanda let out a sound of amusement while she got closer to us, her gown crawling behind her.
"I don't think a handsome man has so many scars and scratches," she said, and it was Jersen's turn to laugh with her comment.
As for me, I touched my back against the wall behind me, considering what my next move should be. I didn't know.
Denfer lifted his brows as in contemplation of Amanda's comment and then replied, "Yeah. Whatever."
Another laugh came from Jersen.
I watched Amanda as she placed a hand on Jersen's shoulder, a smile carved on her full lips.
"But Heaven, Hell or the Gap World," Denfer continued, his face now serious, empty of any warmth and joy, "they don't offer you the kind of death you had imagined. The final stage of death, the one in which you are no one and nowhere, comes rarely. Very rarely. So in conclusion, we're dead in the sense that we can't die from any illness but we can still be murdered or kill ourselves. In both cases, we end up in Hell for the way we weren't grateful enough for the second chance we'd been given."
He made a pause just to wave a hand through his hair. "And you can get off your lenses. There's no one to judge you or kill you here."
Pressing myself against the dark golden-painted wall, I glanced down the window again. A city of poverty and misery, crowded with empty, unpaved roads and smoking chimneys. I wouldn't take off my contact lenses; I would never reveal my true self here. Because their explanations about how they had come here were useless and unbelievable, a place between Heaven and Hell could only exist in the wildest dreams of the most imaginative artist.
Jersen walked out of the room with Amanda next to him, murmuring something about having to go somewhere. The sound of their shoes broke the silence that had ruled over us, echoing through the whole building as well, which seemed to be empty of people. Studying Denfer, his distant stare was lost in the abyss of the city beneath us.
I was alive, away from Lantra. But everything else seemed dead. Maybe a place between Heaven and Hell existed after all.
Denfer's eyes fell on my body, not like he was surveying me, but as a careless, thoughtless movement. He was looking at me but not really. Either way his stare left me conscious of what I was wearing. I hadn't bothered to question how many hours or days I'd spent in that bed. I hadn't also bothered to wonder how I looked like when I'd woken up.
A dress. A tight silver glittery dress that didn't reach my knees. It seemed like they'd been waiting for me to wake up for such a long time that they'd decided to dress me up as a way to fill up their time.
I looked at my bare feet on the floor. I looked ridiculous.
"Next to the bed," Denfer murmured as he pointed a finger at a pair of knee-high boots.
"You know that I'm not attending any party, right?" I asked, heading to the bed, my footsteps almost silent.
He offered me a wry look, but said, "We like to be fancy here."
The velvet texture of the boots was so soft beneath my fingertips that made me wish I could be touching those black high-heeled boots for the rest of my life. Sitting on the bed, I could feel him eyeing me, studying my face and my every expression.
"What you did in the ocean—" A pause. Maybe it was the first time he'd ever stumbled for words. Or maybe, it was his way of giving me enough time to stand up again and test if I could walk with those shoes on.
The screaming wind that came in through the open window filled the silence. He closed it.
After a heartbeat, he said, "Don't ever think or try to do that again. Just . . . don't."
Walking closer to him, it was an effort to keep my shoulders back, my chin high. They had dressed me like a queen. But queens weren't threatened by execution. Queens didn't run away from their court to meet their own death. Yet I had.
Some shadows passed over his face, but he quickly managed to bury them as he pursed his lips into a thin line. I stood next to him and our eyes locked.
Sliding a hand through my hair, I considered my next words. "Right," I said. "You wouldn't be able to use me as a weapon if I was dead."
He cracked up a smile. A dark one.
"It's not like that at all. You're free from the deal by the way."
Wise choice. What good would do to him a girl who had tried to drown herself?
I opened my mouth to let him know that his deal had meant nothing to me from the beginning anyway, but he added, "I couldn't let you go back to Lantra. They would kill you. I couldn't let you die, either."
The confession of a hero, a savior, a warrior and a king. In my mind, he was nothing but a man who spoke of magic and death, a man who only wanted to use people for his own good.
"My life is mine. And so is my death," I announced before he could say anything else.
But he twisted his head toward me and took a step closer, his breath now caressing my face. He said, "Then don't drag me into your death ever again. Just because you're stupid enough to want to die by your own hands that doesn't mean that I deserve to spend the rest of my eternity thinking that I could have saved you, that maybe I was the one responsible not for your death, but for your salvation."
A reasonable plea, I figured, and my heart thundered. Because he was right and I was wrong. Maybe he wasn't the only one manipulating people here. I'd done the same thing to him, as well. I'd used him in order to fulfill my own cruel desire. He couldn't have done anything else but bring me here. Maybe he wasn't the wicked one in that room.
I couldn't wonder what he must be thinking about me without my cheeks burning.
But I collected myself, destroyed every part of me that was ashamed of what I'd almost done and said, "Good."
He was right. And I was wrong. And I didn't deserve a place in this castle that was made of pure gold.
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