Balthazar (Evernight 5)

“Skye!” Balthazar had seized her shoulders and was trying to shake her out of it. But this time she didn’t let him. Instead of struggling against the visions—which she’d always tried to do before—Skye exhaled and let go completely. It was like swimming in the river and allowing the current to take you under. Like giving in.

The pain clamps around him, a vise squeezing tighter and tighter. His tongue feels thick in his mouth, his eyes too large for their sockets. There’s no pain worse than this. There can’t be. This is every cell in the body screaming for air, devouring itself, total immolation inside and out.

She was vaguely aware that she’d collapsed, that Balthazar had her leaned against his chest and was saying something—pleading with her—but that was too far away to pay attention to any longer.

The pain builds, and builds, beyond any endurance, beyond any imagining—

Until it turns inside out.

The cells stop screaming. There’s no need for air anymore, or for blood. No need for anything. He’s complete as he is. He let go so the pain could stop, and there’s nothing more joyous than that surrender. The contentment he feels in the death of his human body is the same he might feel when cuddled within a very snug blanket—warm and enveloping, but not any part of him, really.

That makes it easy to throw the blanket aside.

Skye opened her eyes. She sat on the floor, legs twisted up, leaning against Balthazar. He kept saying, “Stay with me, stay with me, stay—Skye?”

“Yeah.” She breathed in, and the mere movement of air in her lungs was inexpressibly sweet. Life is irreplaceable, Balthazar had said, and now she thought she understood some fraction of what he’d meant.

“We have to get you out of here. It’s too much for you.”

“It’s over.” Shakily she coughed once—how did even that feel good? Her pulse seemed to hum throughout her body. The high, silvery sound of her nervous system chimed like a rolling cymbal. “I’ll be okay now.”

And from now on, she thought. Although she knew that there was no telling what other deaths might do to her—she couldn’t begin to imagine facing Battlefield Gorge again—she understood instinctively that this death, in this room, wouldn’t overcome her in the same way if she ever returned.

“You weren’t okay a minute ago,” Balthazar insisted. Still he held her close, and she realized one of his hands was stroking her hair.

Skye jerked back from him. The fast movement dizzied her, but only for a moment. Balthazar seemed to realize what he’d been doing, and he pulled back, scooting farther away on the floor.

She said, “I mean it. The trick is—the trick is giving in.”

“Giving in?”

“Surrendering to the death.”

Balthazar scowled, his heavy brow furrowing. “Surrendering to death sounds like a bad idea. In any situation, but especially this one.”

“I know how it sounds. But somehow—somehow it was the right thing to do.” Skye braced herself against one of the desks as she shakily got to her feet. “I’ll know better what to do next time. It won’t destroy me.”

“I don’t like the sound of this.”

Skye shrugged. “It’s not your choice to like or dislike.”

“Skye—do we have to be like—”

“We’re okay,” she said, and tried to mean it. Her feelings were too raw for that, really, but she didn’t want to turn into a teary mess with two guys in the same day. “Just take me home, all right?”

He took her home.

The drive to her place went even slower than the journey there. The snow had finally outstripped the plows’ ability to keep up with it, and the scant few cars still on the road were creeping along. Balthazar’s car was no four-wheel drive, but he kept it steady anyway. He was as good with automobiles as he was with horses.

“I should call Mom and Dad,” she said, just to break the silence in the car. “They won’t be able to make it back tonight. Their organization usually springs for a hotel room in Albany when that happens.”

Balthazar said, “I’m sorry if I hurt you this morning.”

Skye stared over at him. “That’s not what we were talking about.”

“It’s just a relief to have you talking to me,” he admitted. “I mean it. I shouldn’t have been as—rough on you. Or as rude. And I shouldn’t have bitten you.”

He didn’t regret walking away from her, Skye decided. He only regretted letting her get close at all.