I couldn’t help but give a soft laugh.

“And if the electricity starts to fade, we’ll leave, okay?” he promised.

I swallowed hard, thinking of the light that would fade everything away. “So you felt it to? Back when we were at your house?”

He nodded. “I did—I felt it.”

I took a deep breath, my heart aching inside my chest. “Okay, where do you want to go?.”

He gave a small smile. “To our little hideout where we made the Blood Promise to be together forever.”

I nodded. “Alright, I can take us there.”

And I did, trying not to think about the fact that our forever wasn’t going to be for very long.

Chapter 32

I used my Foreseer power to takes us to the outskirts of the castle, right in the center of the forest, in front of the bush blooming with violet flowers that hid the entrance to our old childhood hideout.

I didn’t ask why Alex wanted to go, but I could feel that being here was important to him. So I followed him up the side of the hill, he helped me over the bush, and I climbed down the ladder, into the dark hideout.

Alex climbed down after me and I stood in the darkness until a candle was lit. The light radiated around the tiny room made of dirt, and we both sat down on the floor with our backs pressed up against the wall, side by side, letting the silence wrap around us. I thought maybe this was what he wanted, to remember the memories the place held, memories which I could still not remember, except for one. A promise made, between Alex and me, a promise to be together forever.

Forum.

“You know, I never stopped thinking about you,” he said, looking ahead at the wall. “After you left.”

I didn’t say anything. I wanted to. I wanted to tell him that I never stopped thinking about him either, but that wouldn’t be true. I hadn’t thought about him, because I couldn’t remember him—I couldn’t remember much of anything.

“And then when I first saw you again.” He met my eyes. “That day at school…I had so much trouble shutting my emotions off that day.” This strange look passed over his face as if he were remembering that day. “All that time spent learning how to shut them off, and one look at these,” he brushed the tip of his finger at the corner of my eye, “and everything I learned was momentarily gone.”

That I could remember; how the first day I saw him at school, I was magnetized toward him. I felt things that day I had never felt before, and I wondered if somehow, in the back of my mind, I knew who he was; I remembered the Blood Promise, I remembered he was my forever.

“I want to do something,” Alex said, turning to face me. “I want to make another Blood Promise.”

“A Blood Promise.” I raised my eyebrows curiously at him. “What kind of a Blood Promise.”

“One that will help us through this.” He took a deep breath and slipped a knife out of the pocket of his jeans. “One that will make the impossible possible.”

I didn’t understand, but he had this look on his face, begging me to promise, begging me to understand, begging me to trust him.

So I nodded. “Alight, let’s make a promise.” I held out my hand, the one marked with the scar of an older Blood Promise made a very long time ago.

He took a deep breath as he flipped the blade open. Then he cut his hand, and holding my gaze, carefully cut mine.

He pushed our hands together. “EGO spondeo you'll exsisto totus vox,” The words poured out of him with a deeper meaning than I could grasp. His bright green eyes were on me, only me and nothing else. “EGO spondeo EGO mos reperio a via vobis futurus totus vox.”

I waited for him to tell me what he needed me to say, but he dropped his hand and put his knife back into his pocket.

“That was a one-sided promise,” I said, clutching my hand shut to stop the bleeding.

“It was a one-sided promise that needed to be made.” He stood to his feet and helped me to mine.

“But that doesn’t seem fair,” I said with a frown. “I didn’t promise you anything back.”

“Trust me,” he said. “I got everything I needed.”

I could see in his eyes that he did; that whatever he needed from that promise, he got. There seemed to be less heaviness in his eyes because of it.

“We should go back,” he said, still holding onto my hand. “If we’re gone for too long, everyone will worry that we’re gone gone.”

“If that’s what you want.” I shut my eyes. “Then, let’s go back.”

Chapter 33

When we returned back to the house, I went up to talk to my mom, figuring it was time to explain to her what was going on. She was awake when I entered the room and she had this look on her face, like she knew I was about to tell her something terrible.

I sat down on the floor in front of her, my heart knocking in my chest as I stared at her for what probably felt like an eternity.

“I saw what happened,” I finally told her. “Dad didn’t want to be like Stephan. Stephan marked him with the Mark of Malefiscus.”

Her expression fell into horror. “W-what?”

“He’s not evil,” I said, hugging my knees against my chest. “He had to do it—he had to change the vision.”

Her blue eyes were huge as she sat there, taking in what I said. “He didn’t want the mark?”

I shook my head. “No, he just wanted to be with you.”

She swallowed hard and it looked like this invisible burden had been lifted from her shoulders, like she had been suffering in silence for years at the thought that my dad wanted to be evil.

“I changed it back,” I told her. “The vision he changed to end the world, I changed it back.”

She looked surprised and the chains jingled as she shifted her legs in front of her. “You fixed it.”

I plucked at the loose strands of carpet. “I fixed it.”

“So, the world doesn’t end then?” she asked.

I nodded, not looking at her. “The world doesn’t end.”

A pause.

“Gemma, what’s wrong? I can tell something’s bothering you.”

Suddenly, I lost it. I started bawling, hysterical sobs and I moved toward my mom and, ignoring the fact that she was chained to the wall because she was marked with the Mark of Malefiscus, I hugged her.

She put her hands around me and gave me what I needed. A loving mother.

And that’s how we stayed until the sun set behind the mountains, until the room grew so dark I had to pull away from her so I could get up and turn on the light and finally explain to her why I was crying.

“So that’s what he erased?” She struggled to keep control of her voice. “He erased your death.”

“And created the world’s death in its place,” I said, nodding. “I think, either way, I probably would have ended up dying, but this way it is just Alex and me that do. And we take Stephan and all the Death Walkers down with us.” I forced a smile. “Which is a good thing, right?”

She gave me this look, this stern, ‘you-listen-here-missy’ kind of look. “You listen to me Gemma Lucas, you are not going to give up that easily.”

“I-I’m not giving up,” I stammered, thrown off by her words. “It’s what happens. I can’t do anything about it.”

She shook her head. “There are always loopholes, Gemma.”

“You always say that,” I said, frustrated. “But I don’t know what it means? How are there loopholes? It was a vision—the only loopholes are to do what dad did and try to change it to something else, and all that will get me is a one-way ticket to being trapped in my own mind forever.”

“There are always loopholes, Gemma,” she repeated, taking me by the shoulders and looking me straight in the eye. “Think about it. Your father took you into the Room of Forbidden, where no one’s supposed to enter. You got me out of The Underworld, which isn’t supposed to be possible. Your soul is reconnected, which was never supposed to happen. All those things were caused by loopholes.” She paused. “Just because you saw your death, doesn’t mean you have to die…I’m not saying that what you saw won’t happen, but that you need to find your loophole through your death…make it so you survive after the stars power fades away.”

I took in her words, unsure whether or not to believe them. Yes, all those things could be caused by loopholes, but a loophole in a vision was different. Visions were seeing things that were going to happen.

“I don’t know mom…” I gave her a doubtful look.

“Do not give up.” Her tone was firm—demanding. “I want you to go into your room and read through that Foreseer’s book—find your loophole. Promise me, Gemma. Promise me you won’t give up.”

“Okay, okay, I promise,” I said because I didn’t have another choice, not with the desperate look on her face; the look that I assume almost every mother would give to their daughter if they were put in our situation.

And so, like almost every daughter, I got to my feet, obeying my mother, to try to find my loophole.

Reading the Foreseer’s book was hurting my brain, and I was only about three quarters of the way through it. Finally, I let out a sigh and set the book aside. I needed a quicker way to read through all this information and I found myself wondering if Aislin knew a spell that could give me a speed reading ability or something.

But then another idea occurred to me; an idea which I had to sit on for a while before I talked myself into doing it.

I needed a loophole.

I shut my eyes and let my brain focus on seeing a loophole. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was right, but I had to try. I had to try and find a way for Alex and me to have our forever.

I just had to.

But as I tried to push my brain beyond the boundaries of seeing something that probably wasn’t supposed to be seen, I felt an explosion from inside my skull, like my brain had burst.

My eyes shot open.

I saw spots

Then I tumbled off the bed and blacked out.

Chapter 34

“You can’t cheat your way there,” a voice said.

My eyelids fluttered open, and the first thing I saw were shoes. A pair of black shoes that shined in the light that flowed around them.

“If you want to find out the answer,” the voice said. “You have to search for it on your own.”

I rolled over on my back and looked up at my father, towering above me. “Am I in your head again?” I asked.

He smiled a gentle smile and helped me to my feet. “So you discovered where I am, then?”

I nodded, glancing around, noticing we weren’t in the same place as we were before. We were on a beach. The ocean’s waves crashed toward us and the bright light was the sun shining from the clear blue sky.

“Where are we?” I asked, getting to my feet.

“We are wherever I need us to be,” he said, heading down the shore.

I followed him. “But I thought you were in the Room of Forbidden….I thought you were stuck in your own head.”