Death is immortality.
Death is your second chance.
Velian Terrashine belongs to a classless society of equality, art and democracy; a land full of creativity and mindfulness. It is in that perfect political system that one wrong movement, one carele...
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AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, the darkness was suffocating. A darkness so deep and cruel that left no room for light, for color, for life to blossom and break through the everlasting blackness. Into a bottomless ocean of dark ink I'd been thrown, into that untouchable moment of the universe's history when the stars didn't exist, when the concept of life was as revolutionary as magic returning to Lantra. It seemed to me that before the beginning of the world, there was only madness, an eerie silence and . . .
And heartbeats.
Heartbeats that lulled me to sleep, but somehow also warned me to keep my eyes open for as long as I could. I didn't know that the darkness had a beating heart; I didn't know that the nighttime was a representation of what lingered in the cosmos before the appearance of the sun. Maybe death was like that, too. A part of me liked it; that stillness, that eternal nothingness.
Yet the moment I was about to savor that glimpse of death and taste its sweet destruction, two blue eyes ruined the darkness, so blue that they were almost white, so bright that they could replace all the light in the world.
In a matter of heartbeats, that guy was standing in front of me again, his face blank of emotions, his hair curly and clean. His clothes didn't so much as differ from the darkness. I couldn't understand where his shirt ended and where the blackness began. Even though I didn't have a body, I could feel his hand reaching for mine, grabbing it with despair. And his touch electrified my whole existence, lighted up the darkest place of my heart and mended every invisible wound.
His voice was a command and a plea. "When in darkness, trust the sun."
Enclosed in their icy color, his eyes held the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. He went on, "When in the dark side of the sun, hold him close and he will trust you back."
When he looked at me, I was bathed in warmth and gentleness and kindness. And for a heartbeat, his eyes weren't that almost transparent blue that made snow look dirty. Instead, they were the softest shade of that redeeming golden of Denfer's.
His thumb brushed down the back of my palm and I was baptized in the name of hope, eulogized by his holy touch. He gripped my wrist a little tighter, his eyes now blue—white—again, making me wonder if the change had ever occurred. Maybe it hadn't. Maybe it was just my mind playing games against me.
And then . . . he was gone.
I jerked awake, my heart skipping a beat or two. The roaring of the storm, the darkness in which my bedroom was drowned, the sound of the clock on the nightstand. Everything was all right.
But the blankets weren't enough of a shelter anymore and even though I tried to close my eyes again, I could only see images of that guy; flashes of my parents worrying about me, about my disappearance and Josh looking at me with such disappointment in his eyes because of the way I'd abandoned him, for the way I'd abandoned them all.
