Before the Dawn (22 page)

Trevor huffed, but Raven had already
disappeared from their side before he could protest that he didn’t
need looking after. At least, he was planning to say something like
that. But then a woman wearing a blindfold of gold cloth suddenly
grabbed him and spun him around while pressing her lips against his
mouth. By the time she let him go, or Meran finally pulled her off
him, Trevor wasn’t really sure which, his head felt like he had
drunk an astonishing amount of liquor. There must have been
something in her kiss because he was now finding it very hard to
concentrate and to focus on things. In fact, the whole ballroom
seemed to have become blurry. Not that it was important or
anything, because he was feeling terrific, like he could skip in
the air and dance and—oh, the ceiling lights were so pretty.

"Stupid nymphs can never keep their mouths
off anything in pants," Meran grumbled. "Hey, you okay?" She must
have seen that he still looked goofy because, without any warning,
she slapped him. Hard.

"Ow!" He rubbed his cheek where he was sure
her hand print had permanently marked itself. "Did you have to make
it hurt that much?" However badly his cheek hurt, he was glad to
note that his senses now suddenly felt very sharp and his head was
clear of the confusion that had claimed it earlier.

"You were starting to fall into her spell,"
she told him, not looking sorry about slapping him, at all. Then
Meran became very still and her eyes widened as she caught sight of
something over his shoulder. "Trevor," she now said in a
half-whisper, "she’s over there."

Suddenly feeling his heart start to pound
faster, he slowly turned around and looked at where Meran was
staring. And there she was.

Aline.

She looked like the girl in Raven's memories,
but older somehow, even though her face was as young as Meran's.
Maybe it was her eyes. They were darker and full of emotions he
couldn’t define. She was dressed in a gown of the deepest blue,
which was the exact color of the sky as all the light bleeds out of
it at night. Her hair fell in glossy black waves. While she sat
lazily on some kind of throne adorned with gold leaves and emerald
flowers, several people clustered around her, telling her stories
it seemed, though she looked quite bored with them all. Instead,
she seemed to be far more interested in the silvery smoke that
curled out of the black and gold pipe in her hand. She stared at
the eerie patterns it made through half-closed eyes as if they were
the most fascinating things she had ever seen. By her side was a
woman clad only in flowers and scraps of silk whose only job seemed
to be to fan her with unusually large peacock feathers. However,
this didn’t seem to affect the smoke at all, for it continued to
twist and curl in the air. All in all, Aline presented the image of
a queen—pampered, flattered, and powerful. She looked like she
completely belonged in the ballroom, not someone who needed to be
rescued from it.

Trevor couldn't help himself. He gulped. His
throat suddenly felt very dry and he was almost shaking with
nervousness. For a moment, he felt like he was sixteen again,
suffering from embarrassment at being too tall and too thin,
awkwardness incarnate. "Okay. Okay then." He took a deep breath
then looked at Meran. "So, how do we do this?"

She took a deep breath before she grabbed his
arm and started to lead him towards Aline. "Let’s try it this way,"
she said. She walked with a purpose, and Trevor had no choice but
to march alongside her and try to match the confidence she exuded.
People looked at them curiously as they moved through the crowd,
but no one seemed to view them as threats or intruders, and no one
tried to stop them. So in no time at all, the two of them were
standing before the person they had come for.

"Aline?" Meran said her friend’s name with a
little catch in her voice. "Aline, it’s me."

Slowly, Aline lifted her eyes and met Meran’s
worried ones. A dreamy smile appeared on her lips. "Meran," she
said, her voice low and husky. "Where have you been? I was waiting
for you." Then her gaze drifted, and she looked distracted for a
moment, but her eyes eventually came to rest on Trevor. A frown
then marred her face. "You." She looked back at Meran, and the
first spark of something other than languor came over her
expression. "What is this?" Her eyes flashed with a bitter anger.
"Do you think this is amusing? How dare you!" she hissed. She
suddenly moved forward with alarming speed and her right arm lashed
out, striking a hard blow against Meran's face.

Both Meran and Trevor cried out—Meran because
of pain, and Trevor because of shock. After a frozen second of
simply staring at Aline, he finally remembered that Meran might
need his help. She had fallen to the floor, so he quickly got on
his knees to check if she was all right. When he saw her face,
another cry escaped from his lips. An ugly slash of crimson stained
her left cheek and, as he frantically tried to wipe away the blood
from the wound using the cuffs of his shirt, he saw that the
raw-looking skin was smoking and turning black at its tattered
edges. His eyes wide with a sudden fear, he swung his gaze back to
Aline.

She was standing over them, and her face was
so devoid of expression that it could have been a mask. In her hand
was a curved knife of glittering blackness, its razor edge shining
dully with a ruby bead of blood. While she just stood there, still
as a statue, Trevor's eyes were caught by the sight of that blood.
Slowly, the bead grew bigger and thicker as more blood ran down the
knife's sharp edge until, finally, the bead dropped to the black
stone floor where it disappeared.

Trevor gradually came to realize that the
noises of the ballroom had faded away. Silence now filled the space
and everyone had stopped whatever they were doing and were now all
focused on the little tableau he, Aline, and Meran presented. He
knew he should be terrified because surely he and Meran would be
taken away and imprisoned now, or worse. But, as Aline only stared
at him without giving any such orders, his nervousness eventually
dissipated and he found the courage to speak.

"Aline," his tongue felt awkward saying her
name, "please. This isn't what you really want to do. Meran's your
friend and you have no right to hurt her like this. We came here to
help you, for God's sake."

She was silent and merely looked at him for a
long moment, seemingly taking his measure. Then she took a step
forward and reached out a hand to his face. Her fingers were soft
and light as they tentatively traced his features. He closed his
eyes, his skin tingling from the familiarity of her touch though he
had no memory of ever feeling it before. When he opened his eyes
again, he saw that she was now kneeling before him and their faces
were close enough to be bridged by a single kiss.

A soft smile appeared on her lips. "Trevor,"
she whispered his name, and he almost, almost felt like he could
remember loving her. Then a mad light shone in her eyes and she
plunged her knife into his heart.

***

Chapter 23

There was pain, so much pain that it filled
the whole world. He thought he heard screams; Raven's normally cool
voice sounding ragged and raw as he called Meran's name; someone
shouting like a madwoman, "You're not real! You're not here! He
made me kill you!" But the pain was too great and, soon, everything
else just faded away and all he could see was darkness. Then,
flashes of light appeared before his eyes and he saw a beautiful
face peering down at him with curiosity but no concern. Then there
was more pain as something in his chest burned and he felt like he
was on fire.

Trevor woke up screaming, his chest heaving
and laboring for breath. His entire body was slick with sweat and
his thrashing had thrown off the blankets covering him. For a
minute, he thought that it had all been a nightmare and he was
safely in his bed. But as his eyes became accustomed to the dim,
smoky light, he saw that he was in a strange room roughly carved
out of gray rock. He was lying on top of a hard rectangular block
of white, translucent stone with a glow that was slowly fading away
by the second as his most recent memories came back to him. "Oh,
God," he gasped in horror and sat up when he remembered that Aline
had stabbed him in the heart. His hands frantically examined his
chest for the gaping wound he expected to find.

"There is no wound. Not even a scar. You've
been healed completely." Raven appeared out of the shadows and
approached Trevor. His handsome face was not as smooth as before
and he carried himself like a man who had suddenly been burdened by
the weight of the world. For a second, Trevor almost didn't
recognize him because he looked so somber.

"Meran? How is she? She was hurt." Fear
filled him completely. Was Raven looking so terrible because Meran
was—he could not bear to consider the possibility.

"She has been healed of her wound as well,"
Raven said to Trevor's great relief. "The knife Aline used was made
of sky iron, so it very nearly poisoned her, but I was able to help
her in time."

"Thank God." He suddenly breathed easier.
Then his brow puckered. "Wait. She used the same knife on me, too.
But it didn't poison me or anything, right? Since I haven't stayed
in the Strangelands as long as Meran has. So I'm completely fine,
right?" He just wanted to hear Raven reassure him of that fact.

However, Raven didn't look at all reassuring.
In fact, the other man took his time before answering Trevor's
question. And he spoke very gently.

"You," he faltered for a moment before he
went on, "You died." Then he watched Trevor very carefully.

"Wh-what?" Trevor tried to laugh. "You've got
to be kidding. What do you mean I died? I'm here talking to you
right now, totally fine."

Raven took a deep breath before he launched
into an explanation of what had happened. "My brother knew I was
helping you. So as soon as I got him alone on a pretext of wanting
to talk to him, he tricked me and captured me, and then had his
guards lead me away. Then I heard Aline start screaming like a
madwoman and I managed to escape from my captors in time to see
that Meran had been injured and you were dying. I got us out of
that ballroom by using a nearby doorway then slipped through
another one until we came to my mother's castle where I was able to
heal Meran. You, however, were already dead when we finally got to
safety. But my mother arrived then and offered her help. I'm no
good at resurrection magicks, so I had no choice but to accept her
assistance."

"
And?
" Trevor prompted. "There's
something you're not telling me. There's more, isn't there? Spit it
out!" He was on the verge of breaking down, but he somehow managed
to retain some control over himself.

Raven looked almost sorry as he gazed at
Trevor. "You died in the Strangelands, and you were resurrected in
the Strangelands. You are one of its creatures now. You can never
go home again. Being in the mortal world will kill you."

Trevor was silent for several minutes, simply
staring at Raven's face and waiting for the other man to say
something, anything, that would give him some hope that his
situation wasn't hopeless. But Raven just stared back at him
levelly, waiting in turn for Trevor to accept the truth. "Get out,"
Trevor finally said after a long while. "Just get out."

Raven nodded and disappeared without another
word.

Trevor sat, his eyes unseeing as he tried to
absorb the enormity of Raven's news. He had died and then he had
been resurrected. Because of that, he could never go back to his
life, his world. He would have to stay here, in this beautiful and
dangerous place where nothing made any sense, if he wanted to keep
breathing. Suddenly, he laughed. The whole thing was so absurd. He
laughed and laughed until his laughter turned into sobs. But he
never even realized that he was already crying. His despair utterly
consumed him.

This was what he got for trying to find the
missing part of himself. He had spent most of his life thinking
that if he could only figure out what was lacking in him, then he'd
be able to make sense out of things and finally even be happy
without any holding back or reservations. But where did he actually
end up in his search? For all intents and purposes, he was just a
ghost now. He could never return to the world where he belonged and
he knew he could never live in this new one. Raven's mother just
wasted her power bringing him back to life. He should have just
stayed dead.

How could he help anyone now? He came here
thinking he could rescue a girl he didn't even remember while
hoping she would give him a reason for why he had felt so
incomplete. But that girl didn't even exist anymore. She was just a
corrupted shadow of the person she had been. The years she had been
forced to become someone's idea of a perfect love had driven her
insane. She was not the Aline he had held in his arms, the one he
had kissed and spun dreams about when he was younger. She was not
the brave girl who had decided to sacrifice her own life so he
could live all those years ago.

It took a while, but as Trevor went through
the memories he held close to his heart, recalling each one with a
piercing clarity that he had never possessed before, he gradually
came to realize one soul-shattering truth:
he
remembered
.

"Oh, my God," he exclaimed, suddenly frozen.
He was assaulted immediately by a great rush of memories once he
let the floodgates in the dark corners of his mind swing fully
open. He remembered everything that had happened seven years ago.
Everything.

Moving with a purpose now, he got off the
stone he had been lying on. He was only wearing pants, but he found
his bloodied shirt and his shoes on the floor, thrown aside
carelessly in haste as he was resurrected no doubt. After a
second's hesitation, he put these on before leaving the room. There
was a wooden door set in a far corner and, when he opened it, he
was somewhat surprised to see finely-carved steps leading a long
way upwards. There were torches on the walls, so he could see
clearly, and he quickly started climbing up, hoping that he would
be able to find Raven or Meran at the end. Since Raven had
mentioned earlier that he had taken them to his mother's castle,
then he was quite confident they'd be upstairs somewhere.