Chapter 32

The water exploded under me. I hit the surface at such a high speed; the impact almost knocked the wind out of me. I didn't know how deep the lake was, only that it was cold and unforgiving. In my shock, I sank beneath the surface immediately.

As the waters closed over me, blotting out the midday sun, I felt as though I was dying. The waters weighed down on my chest, and I could only hold my breath for so long. These were my last moments as Ailith Ying. I thought back to my father and mother in our little house in Windflower Springs, where I used to read my books sitting on the cozy staircase up to the attic.

Then I felt a hand tugging at mine. Who was it? Who could have gotten to me in time?

No one.

Not unless it was a vampire.

Grace was here. Her black hair formed a ghastly halo around her head. I saw her eyes glow even in the darkness of the deep waters. Her skin was pale and falling apart with decayed chunks of flesh. They were right; she was dead, had been dead for days.

Yet, she wanted to get to me. To do what? To eat me? To save me?

"Stay back!" I yelled, but it was futile. There was a surge of ice-cold water in my mouth as I struggled to breathe. It hit me with a force that sucked all the air out of my lungs. I couldn't see anything anymore. My sense of panic blinded me. I saw nothing, heard nothing, and my world became one with those waters.

As I opened my eyes again, this time, I saw a dim light in the distance. It seemed to closer with every second as I fought to breathe. Am I dying?

A cold, clammy hand gripped mine. As my limbs stopped kicking and grew limp, I started to see visions.

The first one was of a Samaritan woman with sand-colored skin and bare feet, falling into an ancient tomb. Then, in the blink of an eye, a thousand years passed, and I was the daughter of a Yemen Bedouin digging in the sands of the Saraswati desert. I was digging in the sand one day with my sisters, and I found an emerald of such clarity, I thought it was a star that had fallen from the night sky. My father sold it to a traveling Austrian gentleman who was on his way to India.

Another lifetime flashed by, and I was a Mongolian warrior riding into battle with an eagle on my shoulder. And then another glimpse of another life as an Indian historian studying the artifacts of a sunken city off the coast of Lykos.

In another lifetime, I was a Ta'shi Princess living in the court of emperor Zhu Yuanzhang during the Ming dynasty. I saw myself sitting at a New Year's celebration at the Forbidden Palace wearing my traditional Islamic garbs. The emperor called me his little Chrysanthemum, but it was his favorite concubine who held my heart. I gave her a family heirloom, a jewel continuing the secrets of eternal life like the emerald I later found in the Saraswati desert. It was with that gem she would pass along her descendants — who became known as the Liangs — the secret Lumin pills of Yagerin.

Hundreds of years flashed across my closed eyes. A thousand loved ones I had to watch wither, die, and fade into dust.

Across the world, during the turn of the century, I was a physician teaching medicine in Glasglow. Although I had been born female, I passed as a man easily, going as far as to take a wife. Her name was Elizabeth, and she was the daughter of a famous chemist. Her name was Syderra Vannet, and through her family, I planted the seeds of what would later go on to become Sylvirua.

My soul continued even as the rest of them died. I was eternal, everlasting, cursed to return to this earth until the end of time.

As the light came closer, the small hand grasping mine, turned into the frail human hand of a little boy. This vision lingered longer than the rest. I was standing beside a small boy, barely more than a toddler, with golden curls and the most beautiful green eyes. This was no vampire. He waved his hand across the waters of Tahil lake, and I saw the waters ripple as though in greeting.

My precious boy, my most prized creation, my son. I wrapped my arms around him and tucked his head under my chin. In the span of eternity, our lifetimes would only amount to a second in the passing of the centuries.

"As long as the waters of Tahil are here, I'll always be with you."

"Mother!" He said and grasped my wrist ever tighter. I couldn't forget the sound of his voice calling to me across the curtains of death itself. Even as his name slipped away from me, I could never forget him. Even as I struggled to hold on, my hand slipped from his. A name came to me through the darkness. . . Terciel. That boy would grow up and go on to be known as Chairman Oslen. He sent Joseph to come to Windflower to rescue me. He was once my son. That was my last lifetime before I was reborn as Ailith Ying.

Through that boy, I created an empire that lured the Reaper from his unground lair. The demons that walked the earth would bring the devil to the surface. And from there, I would finally have a chance to correct my wrongs — to kill my stillborn child that was born ten thousand years ago when I smashed the elixir of immortality into that lake and turned the waters black for the first time.

Even as I saw everything in that moment of clarity, once again, I plunged into the cold suffocating depths of the waters. This time, I saw myself in Windflower Springs, in the body of a little girl with a hole in her heart. In another flash, I saw Grace waving to me book bag in hand as she went to school. I was sick again, and I watched her leave from my bedroom.

She was the small hand that held onto mine now. I blinked as the bright light of day reached me even under my closed eyelids. The waters receded from my body and I felt hard, dry land under me.

I woke up coughing on the rocky shores of a lake at the edge of a rocky waterfall. My body was caked with mud, and I kept choking up mouthful after mouthful of water. I hacked and choked until my spit was blood-tinged.

"There you are," Jaduerial said as he approached me on those rocky shores. "Did that quicken your memory? I am tired, Orienne. I am, after all, very, very old, and I have been waiting a long time for this moment." Jaduerial looked up into the distance. I saw a flash of blond hair and then a blur of a blue sweater.

It was Holly, that strange girl Anne Marie, and the others. They were pursuing him despite the danger. They wanted to help me.

I couldn't let them die for me. Especially not Holly. She shouldn't even be here.

I wasn't afraid to die. I was half-dead anyway with all this water in my lungs. It hurt to draw in a breath. I wouldn't put any fight now if some ancient god with a grudge wanted to kill me.

Even as I feared him, I felt another emotion overcome me more powerful than terror. Seeing him here, both of us in human forms once more, I only wished he understood how utterly repulsive I found him. Jaduerial, my first husband, my eternal mate, my everlasting hate. I had never loved him, not for a single second in all those thousands of years. With every new lover I took, I wiped away a layer of his aberrant memory.

Kill him; I willed Grace even though I didn't mean it. I wanted that monster wiped off the earth with such a ferocious hatred that I didn't think twice about what I was asking of her. It was too late. She acted as an extension of my body. Grace bared her teeth and leaped at Jaduerial. He took only one step back as Grace sank her teeth into his neck.

The black-haired boy with the sunglasses went down easily. Much too easily.

I pushed myself to my feet as Grace look up from the boy's severed neck arteries.

"Ailith," a voice appeared in my mind. "My life is over, but yours needs to go on."

I saw her body crumble to dust in the sun. No, more than that, it burned with blue fire. Demon fire. The flickering flames trailed from the boy's hand as he bled out from the wound in his neck.

I kneeled beside him and saw that his sunglasses had been knocked off his face. His blue-green eyes were fixated on me as though my presence there brought him comfort. I placed my hand over his neck as I had seen Livet do for Joseph. The blood continued to pour from the wound.

"Who are you?" I suddenly, unthinkingly, asked. "Do I know you?"

Livet came up from behind me and wrapped his arms around me. He dragged me away from the boy's body. Anne Marie went to his side. She was cupping her mouth with one hand as though she couldn't believe what had happened. As Livet put distance between us, the entire scene faded from view. Yet the red warmth of his blood lingered on my hands.

"No one of any importance to you anymore," Livet whispered into my ear. "Let's go. We need to get you to safety."

Who was he?

"He's no one. Just an orphan boy." Livet said with difficulty. "No one at all."

Don't you remember? Jaduerial's voice echoed in my mind. You said you would sacrifice one life for another.

As I allowed Livet to wrap his arm around my waist and drag me away from the unmoving body on the sandy riverbank, I couldn't look away. It was as though, somehow, despite everything I knew, everything I had figured out under those waters — there was still something I hadn't pieced together. And at that final moment when it truly mattered, I had made the wrong choice.