And yet emotional vulnerability is the greatest challenge, for both of us. As I looked up at him beneath my lashes, a bold sensation stole over me. I trusted Dorian with my life, and I could trust him with all parts of me.
"I want to go farther with you," I said, and forced myself to meet his gaze. "I want to make love to you, but I'm scared. I've never done it before. I want it to be an important moment and—" I glanced around the threadbare room and our makeshift bed. "I imagined a perfect moment for us. I want our first time together to be meaningful." The confession felt like unloading a live bomb from my chest and handing it to him, knowing that he would disarm it.
Dorian smiled as his eyes softened. "Lyra, I completely agree. There's nothing I want more than to be with you and feel that closeness with you, but I don't want to rush it. We're in survival mode. It's not the time. I understand." He gave a small laugh. "As much as I desire you, I wouldn't want that if it wasn't special for you."
How did I get this lucky? He understands me and respects me in every way that I want.
He bit his lip and paused.
"What?" I prodded.
"I have a confession as well," he admitted slowly. "I've actually never done it, either."
I couldn't help the shocked widening of my eyes. I had always thought… I mean, Dorian being so handsome… The cogs of my mind churned wildly. I'd always imagined he had more experience than I did, but when I considered it, I realized there wouldn't have been time for him to form any relationships as the leader of an underground revolution. A feeling of deep connection took root in my heart.
He shrugged. "There wasn't a lot of romance going on for me, particularly once the war started. Before that, I was focused on my training as a warrior. Lanzon managed somehow, but then, he was always more charismatic than me. Actually… I was a bit awkward when I was younger."
I smirked. "You, an awkward teen? I was sweating in combat fatigues and learning how to take down a grown man in three moves at that age. Plus, my only options were other trainees, and my parents always discouraged Zach and me from dating within our unit. Until they met Gina, that is, who they absolutely adore. Basically… I can empathize."
He chuckled and scratched the back of his neck. "I’ve dated in the past, but it was nothing serious. We were all too worried about survival, training, and the future." He stared at me, and his face cracked into a grin. "And then I found you. How could I ever have imagined that there would be someone as perfect as you in this universe?"
A wave of desire flooded me. I kissed him hard, and he kissed me back. "Thank you for telling me." I raised a teasing eyebrow. "So, you never felt close enough to a gorgeous vampire woman to sleep with her?"
He let out a dark laugh and kissed me again. "Lyra, none of them were the one. None of them were… you."
I basked in his love and adoration. An idea sprang to mind. Although I didn't want my first time to be on the floor in a decrepit tower, I wanted to be close to Dorian. I looked down at our half-naked bodies. "Do you think we could just hold each other, like this? We can kiss. We don't have to go further."
His grin showed off a sharp fang. "I would never say no to that."
We laid down on our sides next to one another. He traced the contours of my waist with a delicious touch as our lips seared together in a delectable heat. I pushed my hips into him, enjoying the grunt of pleasure I earned from the movement. Slowly and surely, we undressed each other. I slid out of my pants as Dorian helped me tug them off my body.
He admired my legs and shook his head. "Your strength and beauty combined never cease to make me lose my breath."
I eyed his equally naked form appreciatively. "I could say the same thing."
We came back together again in hot kisses. I moaned with pleasure as Dorian's tongue traced soft shapes on my jawline. I kept stealing glances down at him, admiring everything he had to offer. He was truly beautiful, in spirit and body. I pressed my skin against his. He buried his face in my hair and breathed in my scent.
If we had been in the lower planes, we must've been tangled up together for hours with touches and kisses. His fingers tracing shapes on my back were hypnotic, and gradually my eyes grew heavy. Although I didn't need sleep, it felt so good. Maybe it would help our brains to rest, even if the higher beings said we were in stasis. I tugged my clothes back on with a drowsy grunt. Dorian did the same. Neither of us wanted Gate Maker walking in on our naked bodies pressed together.
My eyes grew heavier. "I could try to sleep." With my eyes closed, I could hear the amusement in Dorian's voice.
"I think you already are." He stifled a yawn.
I fell into a drowsy state. I was on the cusp of sleep, hearing sounds that weren't there but still aware that I was next to Dorian. I snuggled up against him underneath the blankets, closing my eyes and breathing in Dorian's scent as I softly fell into a white space.
When I registered that I had sight, I initially saw only whiteness, but of a different texture to the formless mist of the Higher Plane. Trying to gain my bearings, I looked down to find that I was wearing a soft dress the color of freshly fallen snow. Next to me on my left, Dorian stood, holding my hand tightly.
I smiled, perfectly content. A breeze rustled against the dress and my skin, and I relished the sensation. We stood together in a gazebo draped with a type of trailing, climbing vine that I knew from the Immortal Plane. The fuzzy vines moved and danced over the wooden lattice. In the sky, the air was bright with amber soul-lights that floated around us in a gentle spiral. I leaned against Dorian as we took in the sight. It was glorious, beautiful, too perfect for words.
Dorian pulled away from me. A rush of sadness struck me as I looked down, confused to see him backing away. He peered through the gaps in the vines where they hadn’t completely consumed the gazebo, leaving openings that allowed us to step out. An irrational fear shot through me that whatever was outside the gazebo was going to take Dorian away from me, so I reluctantly stepped forward to see what he was looking at.
We stared at the dancing, swirling amber lights, but I gasped as they began to shoot up toward the sky. A dark crack sliced through the sky, the void sucking the souls up with a speed that made my stomach clench in unease. It looked so… cold and final. There was nothing of the peaceful beauty of souls drifting to the unknown afterlife. No, it was all wrong. The soul-lights emitted a terrible wail as they gathered together before being wrenched through the jagged tear by some unknown force. I felt tears begin to fall from my eyes. Everything felt numb. I tore my gaze from the sight, unwilling to look at the souls being ripped away. Dorian took a step forward, his eyes fixed on the tear, his face filled with anguish.
"No," I said desperately, choking on the fear that he would be pulled up too. I tried yanking him back, but he wouldn't budge. He took another step, and the vines from the gazebo started to reach for him, attempting to tangle around his body. I lunged forward to grab him.
As I did, I caught sight of a figure out in the field of golden grasses surrounding the gazebo. He was a short distance away but stood peacefully among the tormented souls being sucked into the sky.
He was familiar. My mouth opened as I tried to form words, tried to think of how I knew him, of what he'd said or done. It was a strange, muddled memory—no, not a memory, but a dream.
Lanzon. My heart stopped.
I blinked, and suddenly I was standing beside Lanzon in the field, the two of us looking up at the churning souls surging toward the crack. I turned to him. In many ways, he was like Dorian, but his dark hair was cut close to his head, and his golden eyes flickered to me just for a moment. I couldn’t see Dorian anywhere, except echoes of him in the ghost of his brother.
Lanzon took off running through the field. I tried to call after him, but my voice refused to leave my throat.
"Laini," Lanzon cried desperately. "Laini!"
A trail of tears followed him, glinting in the light like floating diamonds. I leapt forward but stumbled hard into the golde
n grass. It was sharp, not pleasant and flowing, each frond a razor blade slashing at my legs. Soon my beautiful dress was stained with the blood running from my fresh wounds.
I forced myself to keep running, to continue searching for Lanzon, but he was gone. I stumbled again and fell on my head, throwing my hands up to protect my eyes from the sharp grass. As I did, I woke up somewhere else. Somewhere I hated to see.
Beams of light rained down like meteors from the sky. My eyes swept across the ruined cityscape of Vanim. I lay on the ground, looking up helplessly as blasts of energy from the gem gauntlets flew overhead. Someone, Dorian, shifted above me, looking down with such love that I broke inside. I focused on his face as he stared down at me, broken open with devastation.
"Take this." I spoke, but it was a deep male voice coming from my dry mouth. I pressed something small and hard into Dorian’s unresponsive hands. “Keep it with you always. Get to safety, dear brother. Take care of Laini. Please.”
A single tear ran down Dorian's cheek. No. My chest threatened to crack open as grief and failure buffeted me from every side. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears and scream for it all to end.
An amber light swallowed everything up.
“Lanzon?” Dorian called out. His voice, ragged and tired, reached into the air, echoing in the empty tower of Gate Maker’s estate. I blinked my sleepy eyes. As the bleariness and confusion cleared, I made out the distinct presence of a figure standing near the door. My hands instinctively scrambled for Lanzon’s stone, still in its setting in the bracer by the side of the bed. Tears rolled down my face, a continuation of the dream. But that wasn’t the only thing that had carried over into reality.
Lanzon stood in the doorway.
Chapter Eight
Lanzon.
No. It can’t be.
My body froze with utter disbelief as I focused on his form. I had to be dreaming. I rubbed at my eyes, but my vision was perfectly clear besides a gloomy blue at the periphery that created a certain feeling of tunnel vision. It was like the universe framed my own vision. The dark hair cut short to his head looked just like it had in my dreams. The eyes held the same piercing power as Dorian’s, but Lanzon’s were a blend of flecks of dark brown and green. I glanced around the room, searching for signs that this wasn’t real, that I was stuck between consciousness and sleep, but I felt Dorian’s solid presence next to me. A blue fog darkened above us, filled with his grief. My heart raced.
Dorian stood, his hands shaking. His eyes were hollow with grief and disbelief. As he bared his fangs, tears fell. My own eyes stung in response, my heart aching for the shock and trauma this must be for him. The brother he hadn’t seen since the day Vanim was destroyed and he lost everything was now standing mere steps away. But I knew Dorian would be struggling with suspicion and fear more than anything else right now. We’d both been lied to and tricked too many times to take something so utterly unexpected at face value. Blue mist was now blooming throughout the room as if someone had set off a smoke bomb. I yanked at the curtains that had tangled around my legs in my sleep, struggling violently with them, trying to scramble up to stand by Dorian’s side.
I had felt Lanzon die in that dream—the memory—long ago. None of us moved as the fog swarmed over to the doorway and around Lanzon. It curled through his stomach, like a ghostly hand extending its reach into this world. So he was incorporeal. My insides tightened with surprise even as my mind began to work through the possibilities of how he was here. Did that mean he was a glamor? Or was this some kind of torment created by an arbiter? It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that they would be able to discover things about our deepest pain or fear. There was a certain masterful touch to the figure—the mist soaked through him, but his body was stable. His structure didn't fluctuate or flicker like the illusions I had seen in the Immortal Plane. But could it be a different kind of magic? After all, everything is different in this place…
I reached for Dorian's hand, taking his fingers where they hung limp at his side, and found him to be trembling slightly. I gripped his hand, trying to anchor him while he reeled with disbelief, but his body felt like it had no strength. He didn't acknowledge my touch. He was a statue carved of anguish. Suddenly, he let out a snarl that was almost a wail, fangs flashing as he released an intensity of emotion that I couldn't understand but made me weep to see.
"Lanzon," Dorian cried. His voice creaked like an old wooden house. "Why are you here? Are you even here?" Tears dripped off the sharp line of his jaw to soak the collar of his shirt. I looked back to Lanzon's figure, watching to see if there was any response to Dorian’s heartfelt plea.
The apparition, or whatever it was, made a slow beckoning motion with his hand, making it clear that he wanted us to follow him. My hand tightened possessively around Dorian’s. Could we trust this ghostly Lanzon? The apparition gestured toward the staircase just beyond the doorway.
Dorian shook his head, his face contorted with pain. I hated to see him like this. "I don't understand,” he said to it. “What do you want me to do?"
"Dorian… I don't think that's your brother," I said gently. It couldn't be; Lanzon was dead. My heart slammed in my chest, blood rushing hot in my ears. "Even if you think it might be his soul, it wouldn’t be here in the Higher Plane. It would be in the Immortal Plane or would have already passed on to the afterlife."
But Dorian was lost in himself. He shook his head again. "I know that… I think I know that…" His voice cracked with strain. "But… is it trying to communicate with us? Maybe…" He trailed off, unable to find words. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and drag him away from this place. Dorian took a step forward, and my breath caught. He clearly wasn’t thinking this through with his usual rationality. What if this vision of Lanzon—whatever it really was—intended to lead Dorian to a grisly death? A lump of fear settled in my throat. I grasped Dorian's hand tightly. What would I do if I were in his situation?
A different shade of blue caught my eye, not the mist of Dorian's grief, but the owlish eyes of Jia. He now stood in the doorway next to Lanzon. Jia's luminous eyes cut through the gloom like a lighthouse beam. He would know the answer, but if it was a bad one, it would devastate Dorian. I sighed deeply, knowing what I had to do.
"Jia, is he really here? Is it a… soul?"
My question hung in the air for a tense moment.
"This figure is not physically present, no," Jia replied. "It is a construct, similar to a proxy like myself."
Dorian stared hard at Lanzon's figure. The tears began to lessen, but grief had turned his face into a battlefield of conflicting emotions. I swallowed hard, dreading the answers to my upcoming questions.
"Who created this construct? Was it one of the arbiters?"
Jia's eyes seemed to glow brighter as he looked closely at the figure that was now standing patiently in the doorway. "There is only energy of the universe in it, so it has not been formed by an arbiter. There is a possibility that it may have originated from your minds, brought into being in a similar way to how your emotions physically manifest, but something is now causing it to operate independently. I am unable to determine how this has occurred or the intent of this construct. This is the extent of the knowledge available regarding this being."
His reply slowly sank into my mind. Could I have done this? I’d seen Lanzon in my dream, and now he was here. I bit my lip hard and stared at the ghostly form. Perhaps I'd inadvertently created him in this world without realizing it.
"I dreamed about Lanzon," I confessed to Dorian. He stared at me, his face now blank, emotionally overwhelmed with everything unfolding. "I told you before that I’ve dreamed about him a few times before—because of the stone, I think. Maybe the force of that dream summoned the image of Lanzon? A bit like our emotions affecting the weather like Jia said?" I let out a ragged breath. "If that's true, it means it’s our thoughts that are keeping him here, but it also means that we can let him go, just like the weather. He can dissipate."
/>
Dorian dropped his gaze. "I couldn't even succeed with the weather." I'd never seen this vampire I loved look so broken. He lapsed into silence. I didn't want to push him further, so I zipped my lips to brainstorm.
Okay. I'd changed the weather before, and I could do it again, right? My eyes flickered briefly to Lanzon. He stared back, occasionally repeating the same beckoning motion. An involuntary shudder ran down my back as I remembered experiencing his death. I let my eyes fall shut and tried to think of something happy like I did with Gate Maker to create the light energy. I thought of Sike's laughter, of Bryce's commentary, of my parents back home in safety, of Zach’s stupid jokes. I imagined Lanzon fading away with a peaceful smile.
I cracked one eye open to see how Dorian was managing with releasing the apparition. He wasn't. He simply stared at the image of his brother with haunted eyes, a tormented conflict in his expression that I knew meant he was trying to decide whether to stay here or follow it. My body tensed with worry. God, who can blame him for not being able to focus when his dead brother is standing in the room with us?
I tried harder, focusing more intently. I brought up every positive image I could think of, picturing Lanzon fading away, yet when I opened my eyes, Lanzon still stood there. He was perhaps a shade or more translucent, but nothing significant. I curled my fingernails hard into my palms, almost to the point of drawing blood. The mist surrounding us had thickened so much it partially obscured Lanzon, so it was difficult to tell whether I had any effect at all. Dorian's face grew grimmer and grimmer. His mouth opened as if he wanted to try to form words but failed. My heart hurt for him.
With a frustrated sigh, I relaxed and let go of my attempts for the moment. Trying to will him gently out of existing was getting us nowhere.
Abruptly, Lanzon drifted backward, startling Dorian and me with the sudden movement. Lanzon took a step down the staircase. Again, he beckoned us to follow him, this time the motion more insistent. He disappeared from sight after a few more steps.
Darklight 6: Darkbirth Page 10