A Shade of Vampire 77 A Fate of Time - Bella Forrest Page 0,96

thanks and clink our glasses for having lived through this.”

I, for one, wanted nothing but three days’ worth of sleep, given everything we’d gone through. But hanging out on Neraka and partying with daemons, Imen and Manticores didn’t sound all that bad, either.

“I’m all in for a party,” Pheng-Pheng exclaimed, emerging from the crowd.

Unable to contain myself, I took her in my arms, laughing. “We have all the time in the world, now, don’t we?”

It wasn’t in Pheng-Pheng’s nature to get all soft and cuddly, but this time, she’d let herself go, hugging me back and tilting her head back to look up at me. “All the time in the world,” she repeated after me.

Her mother and siblings were safe. My family, my friends, too. Our allies, our people. We’d all pushed through, beyond the limits of everything. Fortune had been on our side, giving us the opportunity to live through another day, and many more after it.

We were lucky. And we would never take that for granted.

Taeral

We made our way back to Earth through the pink waters. The sense of hostility we’d experienced before was gone, as we reached the surface and found ourselves surrounded by the beautiful Amazon rainforest, where we’d spotted werewolves and humans coexisting peacefully. Now they could keep living, without the threat of the Hermessi looming over them.

Of course, Earth had not been affected by the ritual—we’d stopped it before it had gotten that far, but just the thought of the Earthly Dimension falling like the others would have… it made my stomach clench.

Holding Eira’s hand in mine, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling as I breathed it all in. The solace from knowing our ordeal was over. The thought of going back to my parents, knowing they were both alive and well. The idea of tomorrow coming, with its bright sun and summery scents, and that I’d finally get a chance to see where this thing between Eira and me would lead. It felt like love. I wanted it to grow. I yearned to discover its depths.

“How are you feeling?” she asked me.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I laughed. “I think I’m okay.”

“I can’t believe we pulled through,” Herakles said, holding Riza tight by his side. The night had settled over the jungle, a starry sky stretching overhead. The moon smiled down at us, casting its twinkling lights across the Amazon River. The leaves rustled in the soft, midnight breeze. A panther roared somewhere in the distance.

Why would anyone want to simply delete all this and start over? It wasn’t perfect, but it was as good as it got, given the time it had taken to reach this stage. There was value in the life that had grown here. It deserved to keep going for as long as it could, unfettered by outside forces like the Hermessi.

“For a moment there, I thought we wouldn’t,” Amelia replied, her arms tied around Raphael’s waist. He gave her a soft smile, and love glowed in his mismatched eyes. After all the fighting, they, much like us, could finally allow themselves to feel things, to explore their relationship and to see where it might take them. “I was ready to accept my fate, you know?”

“I think we were all ready to do that, but we just didn’t want to,” I said. “I guess it had something to do with Death’s mark on me. The thought of immortality in front of the Hermessi did give me that extra kick in the pants.”

“But that’s gone now, isn’t it?” Eira asked. “Death did confirm earlier that the three of us would be marked until you stopped the ritual and brought Thieron back to her.”

“You did both, even though she couldn’t take Thieron just yet,” Lumi said, a faint smile settling on her bright face. Her white eyes glistened in the moonlight, the bluish rings shimmering with hope. “But Herakles is well within his rights to feel like this is all just… unbelievable. I’m still grappling with it, myself.”

Eva exhaled sharply. “I think we’re going to be okay, in the end. We lost five million people, among many others, but at least we got them back, right?”

“It’s better than nothing. It’s certainly better than spending the next few weeks organizing mass funerals across the In-Between and the Supernatural Dimension,” Varga said.

“We got a pretty sweet deal, if you think about it,” Nethissis chimed in. “Considering who we were dealing with. These higher powers are not usually so easy