The Evanescence (Fallen Soul Series) - By Jessica Sorensen Page 0,12
to live without Alex. I don’t even know if I am capable of living without him. It feels like the moment I open my eyes—the minute I see him lying beside me—is the moment where this peaceful, consuming numbness will leave my body and crack me open like a shell. All my emotions will spill out and I’ll lose it.
“Everyone has a destiny, Gemma,” my mom’s voice fills my thoughts. “Yours is just more important. I always knew it would be, since the day you were born.” She smiles brightly. “My violet-eyed girl. You’re going to do great things, but it’ll be hard. You’ll be tested, more than you already have. But no matter what, you can never lose yourself. You have to fight, no matter what, Gemma. Never, ever give up.”
It is what she told me while I was in the Afterlife. Something about it had confused me at the time, but I’m starting to understand what she meant now. Sort of anyway, despite how much I don’t want to. It’s also similar to what Alex said to me before he died. I can’t let myself give up. I can’t let evil win. Maybe if I fight and search hard enough I can find a way to fix this all, just like I have in the past. I just need to be strong and hold on.
I slowly lift my eyelids open to the world. The bright sunlight gleaming through the window stings at my eyes and my vision is blurry. I blink and blink again, the room starts to shift into focus. My gaze settles on a pair of dark eyes that belong to a person leaning over me.
“So you’re Evan,” I say in a groggy voice.
Relief washes over Evan’s face and his lips tug upward into a sad smile. “And you’re Gemma, I’m hoping.”
I bob my head up and down. “As far as I can tell, I am.”
He lets out a deep breath as he places a hand on my forehead. “I thought I’d lost you, too.” Squinting down at me, he examines me closely. “How’s your head?”
My shoulders rise and fall as I shrug awkwardly while lying on the floor. “Good, I guess.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Yeah, in the castle… on the floor.” I slowly nod my head and a sharp pain intensifies and shoots throughout my body. “Ow.”
“What’s wrong?” Evan asks worriedly.
I want to ask him about Alex; what will happen to him, if he’s really dead, or if by some small miracle it’s only temporary; because, in my world, temporary deaths seem to happen a lot. However, my brain is fuzzy and I can’t move my lips to form words as images pop through my skull.
I sit in front of a black coffin that sits in the center of a brick church with a cathedral ceiling and painted glass windows as the backdrop. Thunder booms in the background and lightning flashes across the room. The lid to the coffin is shut and red rose petals speckle the top of it like raindrops of blood.
I don’t know who’s inside it, but in the depths of my heart it feels like I do. I want to know, but I don’t at the same time, so I stay put, surrounded by empty benches and a silent room. It’s just the coffin, me and the thunder outside. Briefly, I wonder if I can just stand in this same spot and never know what lies ahead.
Eventually, though, I can’t take it anymore and I walk forward; my black shoes and the tail of my long, black dress drag across the ground as I move. My body is weighted, my limbs stiff, and in my hand is a single red rose. Step-by-step, one foot in front of the other, the coffin gets closer. Finally, I’m right in front of it. I can see my reflection in the sheen of the surface. My hair is done up and a wisp hangs to the side of my face. My skin is pallid, my lips a dark blue, almost black, and my pupils are so immense only a ring of violet remains in my eyes.
Clutching the rose in one hand, disregarding the thorns stabbing into my skin, I reach for the lid, my fingers trembling as I slip them underneath the lip. Petals start to rain down from the church ceiling as I raise the lid up, but when the petals hit the floor, the lid, my skin, they splatter like drops of