Edward kept pacing around, waiting for the voice to come to him again. Now that his memory was back, he couldn’t stop his worry of how Aliyah is doing. He had been weak when he carried them away with the tornado but he doesn’t know if he succeeded in taking them to safety. Did the rogues catch up with them? And the demon king and the witches, did they find them? He thought of the High chiefs and the High Howlers, he had purposely left Malachi alive with only inflicting a wound he knew he would never heal as a second generation because he wouldn’t want him chasing after Aliyah but Damien had escaped him with just pure luck.
Now as he thought about everything, he just wished he could burn this whole place down and go back to her. He thought of the look she gave him that day, the pain and fear in her eyes when he was falling. He failed his promise, he knows that now and the pain of not knowing how she is was deriving him insane. “Where the hell are you?” He yelled at the smoky clouds. She always come to disturb his sleep and now that he wants her here she was suddenly nowhere to be found. He growled and pulled his hair, for some reason, none of his powers were working here so if he really wants to leave, she has to show him the way.
He glanced around, wishing he could somehow gather his powers back and fly his way out of there but alas, that was impossible. He can feel his powers in him but for some reason, they are not coming out no matter how much he unleased them. He has been trying since he got his memory back. He doesn’t know long it has been but by his calculation of how long he had last heard the voice, he would say four or five days had passed in normal time. Where the hell is she? She never misses in waking him up!
He thought of their last discussion, the person she talked about has to be his Aliyah right? And what was that she said, that she was really strong or that he was making her strong. The he she talked about can’t be his son, right? Has Aliyah put to bed or is she still pregnant? “Where the hell are you?” he shouted, “Answer me!”
“Temper, temper,” the voice said and Edward felt like he was liberated. “You can shout a dead spirit to life with that voice.”
“I need to get out of here,” Edward said, not paying mind to her joke. “My mate and my son…”
“Oh,” the voice interrupted, “I see you have gotten your memories back. Finally, took you long enough.”
“Get me out of here,” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
“What?” He was shocked. “You told me that when I get my memories back that I can leave this godforsaken place.”
“Indeed I did, but you didn’t ask me how.”
“I don’t need how, just point me to the direction. I need to go to her, I need to save her, there is a mad man after her, do you hear me, a mad man and it’s wrong of you to hold me here.”
“Prince Edward,” the voice said, “you seem to have forgotten something, you are dead.”
Her words were like a bucket of iced water was dumped on Edward. He glanced around him, at the cloudy place he had been seeing himself in since he opened his eyes. “But…”
“Yes,” the voice said, “you died that day in that meadow. The tree of death made you what you are and the tree of death took that from you as well. Drink it’s sap, it would give you superhuman strength, superhuman powers and make you immortal, taking only but your life, using it to enhance its own longevity. But stabbed with its bark, it would take away everything it gave you and without giving back your life. Like the name suggests, it kills you and there is no recovering from it. Didn’t you know that?”
Edward closed his eyes as he thought of that day, the pain that coursed through him when Malachi impaled him with that bark. “But I thought that I somehow survived, I mean, I am talking to you aren’t I and you could see me.”
“That’s the thing Edward, you don’t know who I am.”
He glanced up at the smoky clouds then and sighed. “I can still feel the powers inside me, didn’t it take them away?”
“The powers in you were not given by the tree of death.”
Edward furrowed his brows? “The demon powers?”
“It would have saved you Edward, assuming you cultivated it. But you hid it inside, not giving it time to blossom into the strength it should have been hence why it wasn’t strong enough to save you.”
“If it had saved me, what would I have been?”
“A demon, a demon alone since your nightwalker’s part is dead.”
“Why am I here? Where is here?”
“This is the In-between, a place neither for the dead nor the living.”
“So you are saying that I am neither dead nor alive?”
“Yes, I had to pull a few strings to make that possible.”
“Why?” Edward frowned.
“Edward, your love story with Mariah is the origin of the Nightwalkers and Night howlers. I had to denounce a lot of rules just to see you two together and then suddenly, everything has to be a waste? I never thought that evil can rise from love. I only wanted you and Mariah to have a second chance, a second chance to be all that you could have been. So I pulled a few strings to trap her soul here, waiting for the day she would go back to you. Unfortunately, it took her more than two thousand years to do that.”
The more she talked, the deeper Edward’s frown became. “Wait, back up, you said you wanted to see us together?”
“Aye.”
“Wait, wouldn’t that make you…”
“Selene, the goddess of love?” the voice chuckled and just then, a bright light materialized almost blinding Edward and he had to cover his eyes with his hands. He tried peeking through his fingers but the figure in front of him was gigantic and enveloped in blinding light. “You are absolutely correct.” This time, Edward didn’t feel like her voice was resonating around him but was right in front of him that he could actually find her using the direction of her voice. “You can look at me now, I have toned down my beam.”
Edward put down his hands and yes, the light wasn’t blinding anymore but he still had to squint his eyes to see her. He was surprised at the face he was looking at, she had golden light as hair and her eyes were the bluest he had ever seen and her skin was pale, almost white. There was a diagram of red shaped heart on her forehead and a crown made out of red roses and crescent moon shapes was sitting pretty on her head. She may be a giant, wearing long red robe and sitting in front of him but her name was reflecting on her aura: Love. “I can’t believe I have stayed all my life hating you and your moons and now seeing you, I don’t even hate you anymore.”
“Come on now, no one can hate Love,” Selene chuckled. “Mariah was the sweetest soul to keep company you know. She was a feisty spirit,” she chuckled. “You are actually calm compared to her, you too do complement each other a lot and I am more than glad that I paired you up,” she smiled. “Your love fate was so romantic that I was actually looking forward to it, but as always, my nemesis played a role, ruining a perfect love. To put everything right back in track, I had to take the measures I took. I have never been invested with humans like I was with you two and because of that, a whole line of new creations was born and you should know, the God, our father let me have my way, after all, there is no harm in love.”
“Okay Selene, everything is starting to make sense now, but why am I here? You want to send me back to the living world?”
“Of course, only you can stop him. His heart has been sold to the darkness. Well, I feel bad for him, you took his love from him and I should punish you for that but his heart was already blackened before then. He was already coveting something he shouldn’t which was why it was easy for him to lose his soul to the darkness.”
“But I’m dead.”
“No, you are in between, which is why you are here. I can save you Edward, like I saved Mariah but if you take as long as she did, then you can only be reborn into the world as she was.”
“Reborn?”
“Yes, a nightwalker would have to give birth to you and you can only be the reincarnation of the great Prince Edward, no formidable powers to show for it. I don’t want that, your son won’t survive if it happens that way and neither will your Mate and this time, I can’t be able to do anything. Hades will never let me have the same soul twice.”
“No, what must be done,” Edward asked immediately, he didn’t like the image that painted in his mind.
Selene smiled and with a wave of her hand, three doors appeared behind Edward and he turned to look at them. There were identical, there were cracks in the same places and they were all black, nothing to differentiate one from the others. “These doors have different destinations. One would lead you to the living world and you can go back to your old body since it’s not been that long you died and you can easily nourish it back to health. Another will lead you back to the underworld, like I said, Hades won’t let me have the same soul twice. And lastly, one will lead you back here and with that, you will be stuck here for all eternity till your soul disintegrated, flowing back to the underworld. Now, your task is to find the door to the living world and mind you prince Edward, you only have one shot, you can only choose once.”