After that, we fell silent. There was nothing more I could tell Lia right now. Will I ever be able to talk about what had happened to me with anyone? I mused, observing the diamond sparkling in the palm of my hand. What am I doing here?

Even though I only got up a few hours ago, I was feeling exhausted again. It was the effect of the time travel, it had been the same before, when I followed... I sighed deeply, looking away from my ring, remembering how I landed in Vlad's Great Hall a year ago. Yesterday.

Lia looked at me curiously, shaking her head, and as I found myself a more comfortable position leaning against the window, she took a book from her luggage. My last glimpse of this world before I fell asleep was of her reading, completely lost in her medical textbook.

Then I was with Vlad. It was a warm summer day, and we were by our lake. The sunshine, filtered by the thick canopy of leaves sheltering us from the heat of the sun, made the glittering blue-green water spreading in front of me look impossibly turquoise. Vlad called my name, luring me to follow him in the cool shallows, and I felt his arms drawing me nearer as I hesitated at the edge of the lake. He caressed my loose, wet hair when I reached him, and the look in his green eyes made my heart race. I heard his soft laughter, then felt his lips on mine as I admitted to my fear of murky waters...

"Hey, Samara! We are nearly at the station. Are you all right?" Lia asked, shaking my arm. "You've been talking in your sleep, but I couldn't understand anything. I think it was the same language I heard you speak with that blonde guide in the castle. Is it Romanian? When did you learn it?" Lia's caramel eyes filled with worry were piercing through me, forcing me to focus.

I took a deep, shaky breath, brushing a couple of tears away hastily, before the others would notice too. It had only been a dream. Breathe. You can do this.

"What's wrong with you?!" Lia asked when I did not reply.

"Nothing. Everything. I'll be fine." Hopefully. "I just need some time, Lia."

"For what? When you set foot in that castle yesterday, you were, well, you. The lively and cheerful Samara I've known all my life. Now, twenty-four hours later, you are a... a weeping wreck, I don't know. You worry me."

"I'll be fine, Lia, you mustn't worry about me," I said, remembering all those times when I heard similar words from...

I looked out of the window through my unshed tears, getting lost in my thoughts, staring at, but not really seeing, the busy suburbs of the capital which replaced the never ending forests while I slept.

My memories and dreams. The ring, the book filled with my drawings, the note, and even the silvery, half-moon scar that I could feel on the side of my neck, under the tips of my exploring fingers. All of these things were souvenirs from my other life, very real, tactile memoirs taking my mind constantly back to what had happened. They were going to drive me insane if I didn't pull myself together. Fast.

"Well, there's nothing I can do for you until you tell me what's the problem." Lia pulled me back to our conversation.

She stood up and put the book she had been reading inside her luggage again. The train was slowing down. It had been a long journey, but despite having slept through most of it, I was still tired. Even my back hurts now, I realised, stretching and yawning, before I gathered my bags and followed the others out of the compartment. We were only halfway through, though. The flight would take another three and a half hours at least, and then there was the tube, and for me, who, unlike the rest of my travel companions lived in Barnes, not in Hammersmith, even a bus...

"Are they really holding hands?" Lia asked as the two of us followed the other three out of the train station and towards the bus that would take us to the airport.

"They are," I said, watching Anne and Mark, walking hand in hand next to Lucas.

"That was fast!" we whispered in unison, attracting Anne's attention when Lia couldn't suppress a giggle.

I had to giggle too, when she added, a bit too loudly, "Let's see how long they'll last," causing Anne to stick her tongue out at us.

In that precise moment, I understood one thing with perfect certainty. I'd be definitely lost, back here on my own, in this parallel, cruel, 'Vladless' reality, if I didn't have my two friends. I smiled at both of them thankfully, tears threatening, as we reached the airport shuttle.

We got on the crowded bus, already waiting in front of the station, as the last passengers, and it set in motion immediately.

While I stood on tiptoes, my back pressed against the door by the multitude of travellers, and the bus crawled at snail's pace along the hectic roads of Bucharest, my thoughts kept strolling back to my dream. It had been so real. That summer day by the lake was when Vlad spoke about our future spent together for the first time, as if he suddenly believed we could defeat our fate and win our happily ever after this time around. We talked about our wishes, desires and plans...

I looked at Lia, who was laughing at something Lucas had said, through a gap in the wall of bodies crowded around me. What if she and Junior before, were right? What if my sickness, the nausea that I felt ever so slightly even now, was not some kind of medieval flu? Maybe I didn't have the strange illness the other inhabitants of the castle were suffering from, as I had tried to convince myself. What if I was pregnant? That had been a part of my and Vlad's plans, after all...

Our plans. Our future, designed for the parallel reality, where I was supposed to live with him forever.

What would I do if that was really the case now, here, on my own? So far away from him, not certain if I would ever see him again, not knowing how the child would be...

A half-vampire.

I remembered an afternoon a long time ago when Clara confessed to me shyly, in a half-whisper, that she would like to have a child with Ioan before she would ask him to change her. When I enquired her about how a child like that would be, she said that there were not many of them. Those few she had seen, though, looked so perfectly human that unless you knew what they were, you couldn't tell the difference. Poor Clara, where was she now... and poor Ioan... They would never see each other again.

I had to force myself to stop thinking of them. My eyes were full of tears again, and I couldn't cry now, on the crowded bus, surrounded by people who had no idea about my situation. Who would never believe even if I told them...

I tried to stop thinking altogether and failed. The idea seemed to have settled in my mind permanently now, refusing to leave. Could I be pregnant? Would it even be possible... I wasn't sure how much time had passed since... but the time travel... The two different realities, the way how what there had been a year, here had been mere minutes...

I shook my head and rolled my eyes at Lia. She caught me looking in her direction and was now staring back at me, her eyes full of questions.

I'd wait for a while and see what happens, do some research, and take some time to decide what to do next. Then I'd try to talk to Lia, hoping not to lose her, I decided.

The bus arrived at the airport much later than it should have. We ran to our terminal, trying not to stumble over other people's luggage or bump into any of the other rushing passengers, only to find out that our flight was delayed.

We were informed that the plane had some technical problems and it would take two or three hours before it was fixed, rescheduled, and ready to fly.

I hated this. The way an airline assistant, with a perfect smile pasted on their perfectly composed face, told you that your plane was currently broken down, in other words very dangerous and unreliable, but you shouldn't worry, in a few hours, they were sure about it, you would be flying home with that very airplane anyway. As if it was the safest thing to do.

Seeing my friends' untroubled faces, I realised that I was the only one worried. My fear of flying is probably as silly and irrational as my phobia of murky waters, I mused, wrapping my arms around me as I remembered my dream again.

My knees suddenly threatened to give way, so I walked to the nearest bench and sat down. I miss you, I can't do this, I thought, looking outside through the glass wall in front of me at the flock of airplanes, crawling along the runways like slow, huge birds ready to take flight. I wished I could be with Vlad, wherever he was now. Or at least at home, locked in my room, and cry my heart out every time memories flooded my mind like a riptide, unbidden, unexpected and unpredictable. Painful.

"Hey, Sam, are you all right?" Lia sat down next to me, looking bewildered by my mood shift. She wrapped one of her arms over my shoulders soothingly, waiting for me to talk.

"I can't do this, Lia. I don't want this life. Not without..." I took a deep breath and stopped there, unable to tell her more. She wouldn't believe me. Not if I told her like this, out of the blue...

Lia waited for a few moments, then, seeing I wasn't going to add anything, said, "Whatever it is you are talking about, you can do it. And you will. You are stronger than you think, and I'm here for you. Now cheer up. Come on."

She stood up and pulled me to my feet. Lacing her arm through mine, she led me back to the rest of our group. They were still standing where I had left them, lost in conversation about what to do with all the time we had to waste.

It was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon, and as none of us had eaten anything since breakfast, we went through security and then strolled into one of the small and busy airport restaurants. Lia shot me another puzzled look when I started eating my chicken salad, out of the year-long habit, with a spoon. Well, Lia, forks are not in fashion in my other world, I thought, scowling at her while swapping the spoon for the more suitable piece of cutlery. After that, I managed to eat an ice cream and drink a cappuccino without raising her further suspicions.

It was becoming amusing, watching her observing me as if I had morphed into some alien form of life, and it gave me an idea. I decided that from now on, I would not try to act 'normally', the way I did before, but rather like the person I've become over the year I spent in the castle. It would be interesting to see how much of what had happened to me she would piece together alone. Maybe it would help her to get ready to hear the truth in the end.

Noticing that Lia was observing me again as we exited the restaurant, I smiled at her. I could see her mind working overtime to catch up with me, and knowing her, she was on the right track.