Of Life and Death: [A Dark Academia Paranormal Romance]

Chapter 34

EMMA

Back in the victorian room, I look around slowly. My fingers trail along the swirling edges of the ornate mirror. I could have lived here, grown up in this dimension. 

I head out to the balcony. The vast sea of black greets me. 

It used to be bursting with life, the queen had told me.

The Al Mortem were so ridden with death that they became so obsessed with life. They had the best displays of flowers and gardens in all eight dimensions. No one smelled better than a woman from Al Hara, cross-worlders would say. And no one was as deadly either. Servants of the night, they could suck the life away from you while smiling into your eyes.

Then the queen had also told me her name.

Asmedis.

And she'd whispered mine into my ear, as was their tradition. Our tradition. 

I am snapped back to the present when the door opens.

I turn to meet Rylan's dark gaze. His eyes rove around my body as if searching for injuries. When he'd made sure there were none, they begin a heated journey back up.

Our eyes meet.

"Rylan," I say into the silence. He comes in, shutting the door behind him. Saying nothing, he strides across the space, heading to an arrangement of chairs filled with rushes that had started to spill through. He sits, dwarfing the chair. "Tell me about your blackouts."

He seemed to be obsessed with them. Drawing closer to him, I take the chair opposite him. "Well, what do you wanna know, big guy?"

Those bottomless eyes almost seem piercing. "How often did you trace without your control?"

I shrug. "I don't know. Like twice--three times?--a month."

His shoulders tense and a jolt of something runs through me. "What did you do about them?" he asks.

"Nothing," I say carefully, starting to feel like I'm tipping the edge of something serious. "I just let it happen."

"You just let it happen?"

"I don't... There wasn't really anything I could do, you know? I guess I just kind of got used to it."

A few moments pass.

"How did you do it?" A breath of a whisper. "How do you become okay with losing control?"

Something charged weights the air. My breath catches and a hot flush heats my insides.