This is not treachery.
This is freedom.
In the middle of Heaven and Hell, the days of rain and mist are long gone. Now, the Gap World is a kingdom of light and darkness, goodness and evilness, sunshine and clouds. When clandestine forces weave toget...
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FOUR MONTHS.
These two words faithfully followed my every thought, dream and emotion, whooshed like arrows through the air and hit my heart. They also reminded me of my inability to do anything useful besides mapping out plans about where Amanda could have gone, what she could be doing to her captives and what she wished to do next. The demons had never returned. The battlefields had turned back to normal fields with flowers adorning the grounds instead of gore.
Staring out the window, my eyes fell on a solitary oak tree, backlit by the setting sun. Was that what they'd been doing to Denfer all these months? Burning his body, like they'd done in Hell? I couldn't stomach the idea. The uncertainty killed me. The possibilities were endless. And I couldn't do anything but wait. Wait to see if the guards at the borders would someday catch her; wait to see if some villager would someday turn her in; wait to see if she would someday appear out of nowhere.
I'd even gone back to Hell. Begged the Devil to help me find her. He hadn't refused. But he hadn't done anything useful, either. So I was just waiting.
Each day that passed by without having heard of her was a bitter disappointment. Each night I held Denfer's shirt close to my chest was another disappointment. Because slowly but surely his scent on the pillow had started fading away, his voice had started becoming elusive, something I remembered but couldn't fully recall. I'd been humbled down by the realization that Denfer must have felt this way, too, about his brother's loss. That was why when he'd still been here, he hadn't been eating; he hadn't spent a night without looking at the sky and murmuring some sort of prayer to whatever existed beyond the stars. A prayer for his brother to rest peacefully. Now I was the one praying for both of them.
Four months. Winter had come.
Four months. But he hadn't.
"No one is going to like what I'm about to do. You won't like it, either. But—but I'm going to do it anyways," I declared, leaning against the cold wall.
Josh from the other side of the room cleared his throat. "And what exactly are you going to do?"
I didn't know if I was brave enough to voice the idea, the plan, the vision. But I did know that I had no other choice, either.
"I'll give Amanda the card," I said, ready for all kinds of reactions.
"What?" Vanensera said and stood up from the chair she was sitting on all that time. Coming closer to me, she asked, "Are you out of your mind?"
I sighed. "That's the only thing that will tempt her enough to come back here from wherever she's gone to."
I braced myself for the brewing storm.
"Do it," Josh murmured, his voice low enough that I wasn't sure if he'd actually spoken. When he lifted his eyes from the papers on the desk before him, I knew that not only he'd said that, but he'd meant it too.
