Love Between Two Worlds - Chapter 13

  

Chapter 13 — The First Guardian

The light came first.

It broke over them in waves, too bright to look at and too cold to feel like fire. Amelia threw an arm over her eyes and tightened her grip on Adrian's hand, certain for one terrible second that the glass beneath them had disappeared entirely.

Then the light pulled back.

The first Hart was gone. So were the stars. Only darkness remained, vast and endless, broken by the faint silver glow still crawling beneath Adrian's skin.

His eyes were still white. Not glowing — white, all the way through, like something had scraped the color out of them.

"Adrian?"

He didn't answer. His fingers tightened around hers — not on purpose, more like reflex, like something ancient had shifted awake beneath years of names and memories and choices he'd buried on purpose.

"Adrian, look at me."

His head turned. For a moment his face held nothing at all. Then something flickered behind his eyes.

"Amelia."

Relief hit her so hard it nearly buckled her knees.

"I'm here."

"I know." His voice sounded like his own again. Almost.

The first Hart reappeared several feet away, but she looked different now — less ancient, more human. Frightened, in a way Amelia had never seen on her.

"You remember," the woman said.

"I remember everything."

"Then you know what you are."

"Yes."

"And what she is."

His eyes moved to Amelia. "Yes."

Amelia's stomach dropped. "Would someone like to explain?"

Neither of them spoke. She stepped between them.

"No. No more of this." Her voice shook but she didn't let it stop her. "No more half-truths, no more memories that only show me what everyone's decided I can handle. I've spent my whole life being told what I am by people who knew me before I ever got the chance to know myself." She looked at Adrian. "And apparently you've been carrying four centuries you never thought I deserved to hear about."

"I was trying to protect you."

"I know."

"Amelia—"

"I'm done being protected."

Silence. The first Hart nodded slowly. "Then listen."

The dark around them shifted, and images rose in the distance like reflections on black water — a battlefield, thousands of Guardians beneath a sky torn in two. At the center of them stood a younger version of Adrian. Not the man Amelia knew. This one wore black armor, his hair longer, his face harder, his eyes burning with the same unnatural white light now lit in the man beside her. He carried a blade made of pale light. Beside him stood the first Hart. Behind them both stretched the Veil — not a wall, not a doorway, but a living ocean of light spanning one horizon to the other.

"That's you," Amelia said.

He didn't deny it. "I was the first Guardian."

"You said you were born into the order."

"I was."

"Then how can you be the first?"

The first Hart answered for him. "Because the Guardians weren't born before him." Her eyes stayed on Adrian. "They were made from him."

Amelia's mouth went dry. "What?"

"The first Guardian wasn't only a protector. He was the first bridge between the Hart blood and the Veil. The others came generations after."

"How old are you?" Amelia asked.

He didn't answer.

"Adrian."

His eyes met hers. "Older than your grandmother."

"That's not an answer."

"No." His voice softened. "It's the truth I have."

Thirty-two years suddenly felt impossibly small.

"How old?"

It was the first Hart who said it, quietly. "Four hundred and twelve."

Amelia forgot how to breathe. She looked at Adrian again — the man who'd laughed with her in the forest, bandaged her hands, looked at her grandmother like he'd lost her only yesterday. He wasn't entirely human. He never had been.

"How did you survive that long?"

"I didn't."

"What does that mean?"

"I died." He said it so plainly it frightened her more than anything else had. "Many times."

The first Hart closed her eyes. "Every time the Veil weakened, the Guardian died with it."

Cold moved through Amelia's chest. "And came back."

Adrian nodded. "The Veil rebuilt me. It needed someone who belonged to both sides."

She looked toward the dark. "And the thing beyond it?"

For the first time, real fear crossed his face. "The thing beyond the Veil—"

"Not the thing," the first Hart cut in, turning toward the darkness. "Her."

Amelia went still. "Her?"

The dark moved. A shape resolved far beyond them — a woman, or something that had learned, over a very long time, how to resemble one. Her body seemed woven from the same impossible material as the Veil itself, light threaded through shadow, its edges shifting every time Amelia tried to hold them still. Two vast eyes opened, and Amelia felt the weight of that gaze settle directly on her.

The first Hart whispered, "The Mother Beyond."

The creature spoke. The sound wasn't loud. It didn't need to be — it arrived inside Amelia's bones.

Hart.

Her ring burned. She gasped. Adrian stepped in front of her.

"Don't touch her."

Guardian. The word carried the weight of centuries. You returned.

"I never left."

You died.

"I came back."

You always do. The creature's attention slid past him, back to Amelia. But she does not.

Amelia's heart slammed. "What does that mean?"

The Mother Beyond didn't answer. Instead the darkness filled with images.

Eleanor — young, standing before the Veil, holding a newborn against her chest. Amelia. Her grandmother was crying, not from fear but from exhaustion, from grief worn down to nothing. The image shifted: Eleanor placed the child into the arms of a woman Amelia didn't recognize, then turned to face Adrian.

"You promised."

Young Adrian stood before her, blood running down one side of his face. "I promised."

"Then keep her away from them."

"I will."

"No matter what they tell you."

"I will."

Eleanor stepped closer. "And if the Veil calls her?"

Something in his expression broke. "I won't let it take her."

The vision dissolved.

Amelia couldn't speak for a moment. "You knew," she finally whispered.

Adrian didn't look away. "I knew Eleanor had hidden you. I knew she was afraid the Veil would claim you one day."

"You knew from the beginning."

"Yes."

"And you still brought me here."

"I didn't bring you here." His jaw tightened. "The ring did. I tried to stop it."

"You failed."

His silence was answer enough.

Amelia looked away. The anger came slowly this time — not loud, worse than loud. Quiet.

"You promised her."

"Yes."

"And you're breaking that promise right now."

"I know."

"Why?"

His answer came so softly she nearly missed it. "Because this time, you deserve to choose."

Her anger faltered. She looked at him properly, and the first Hart turned away, granting them the kind of privacy given by someone who'd watched too many versions of this exact moment to interrupt another.

Amelia stepped closer. "You said you'd do whatever I chose."

"I will."

"Even if I choose to leave you here?"

He didn't flinch. "Yes."

"Even if it kills you?"

A pause. "Yes."

Her throat tightened. "And if I choose to stay?"

He looked straight at her. "Then I stay."

The Mother Beyond moved, and the darkness shuddered around them. The first Hart turned sharply. "She's heard enough."

Not enough, the creature answered.

The darkness split open, and through the fracture Amelia saw something impossible — Blackwood Manor, her own bedroom, her street, her sky. And beyond it, overlapping it, Elarion. Two realities occupying the same space at once.

The Veil was no longer holding.

Amelia stepped toward the fracture. "How long do we have?"

"Hours," the first Hart said.

Adrian's voice was low. "Maybe less."

Amelia's stomach dropped. "Then there's no time left."

"No," the first Hart agreed, stepping in front of her. "Which is why the choice has to be made now."

"Tell me exactly what happens if I become the heart."

"You will live."

"And Adrian?"

"He binds himself to the Veil."

"For how long?"

"Until it no longer needs him."

"And when is that?"

The first Hart said nothing.

Amelia understood anyway. "Never."

"Most likely," the woman admitted.

Amelia closed her eyes. Millions of lives. Her own. Adrian's. A promise made to a dying grandmother she'd barely gotten to know. Two entire worlds. Everything had narrowed down to one impossible line.

Then Adrian moved to stand beside her. Not in front, this time. Beside her.

"You don't have to choose yet."

"The worlds are collapsing."

"I know."

"You said hours."

"I know." His eyes flicked toward the Mother Beyond. "But I don't believe those are the only two choices they're giving you."

The first Hart went still. "Adrian."

"What?"

"You remember what you are now. You should remember what happened the last time you defied the pact."

Something dark passed over his face. "I remember."

"What happened?" Amelia asked.

Neither of them answered right away. Finally the first Hart said it. "He tried to destroy the Veil."

Amelia's eyes widened. "Why?"

"Because he believed the worlds were better kept apart."

"And?"

"He was wrong."

"No," Adrian said quietly. "I was right."

The darkness trembled. The Mother Beyond's eyes widened.

Guardian. Her voice rolled through the dark like a tide. Choose.

Adrian stepped forward, his white-silver eyes meeting hers without hesitation.

"I already did."

Amelia stared at him. "What did you choose?"

He turned to face her fully. There was no hesitation left in him now. No duty. No four hundred years of fear.

Only her.

"You."

The word echoed through the darkness until the Veil itself went silent. Then every star beneath their feet flared back to life at once — hundreds, thousands, more than Amelia could count.

The first Hart stumbled back. The Mother Beyond recoiled.

And Amelia's ring shattered.

Not cracked. Shattered — the pieces hanging suspended in the air between them, glowing like fragments broken off of stars.

Amelia stared at them. "What did I just do?"

The first Hart's face had gone bloodless. "You didn't choose a world." Her eyes moved to Adrian. "You chose a person."

The Mother Beyond spoke again, and this time her voice wasn't ancient at all.

It was afraid.

Impossible.

Adrian took Amelia's hand. The shattered pieces of the ring drifted toward them, and between their joined palms a new light began to form — not gold, not silver, something that belonged to neither world and both at once.

The Veil began to heal.

But the Mother Beyond screamed, and every crack between the two worlds tore open at the same moment.