Chapter 302: Cutting It Close

Leandros growled at her, baring his teeth, practically staring through her.

“Who are you to judge who and how I spend my time?”

Penelope dropped her hands. Her expression went flat.

“You’ve been gone for years, Penelope without a word. Why should I give a damn about anything you have to say?”

Penelope stepped back, her eyes went hollow, and she pressed her lips together. She turned away from him without a word, though he knew she had something to say.

"Why are you turning away from me?" Leandros asked, "What the fuck is your problem, Penelope?"

Her shoulders trembled, and he heard a soft sob come from her as he advanced on her.

"Turn around and look at me, damn it!"

She obeyed, looking as miserable as he felt, her big brown eyes glimmering with tears yet she said nothing just looking up at him, her lips closed as she cried.

"You've been gone for years, and now suddenly you're here, you left me, Penelope. What the fuck are you doing here? Bored of your boyfriend on Thaiandros? Are you just here to torture me? Pay your last respects?"

She choked, lowering her head as if that was an answer. Her body trembled. Her hands clenched and unclenched.

"Why the fuck aren't you answering me? If you were that guilty, you shouldn't have left!"

Penelope wailed, and Leandros felt the sound strike him, somewhere deep, the core of the ache and tore it open.

"Fuck…"

He stumbled into her and moaned at her touch. She wrapped her arms around him almost as desperately though she whimpered in pain and the darkness pulled him under. Something shrieked in the dark, and he woke up in a field of flowers that felt so uncannily familiar it hurt. The glass petal clinked together and shattered around him. The wooden door had been broken open, and the darkness seeped in around him. His eyes burned with tears, and he lay among the broken shards that only added to the agony. The tree in the distance was dead, the rot was spreading and the gleaming, golden door in the distance seemed to grow farther away. The sky dimmed to a bleak, familiar darkness. Shadows rose and devoured the streaks of blue-violet light.

He needed help. He needed someone.

Where had the other door gone?

He braced himself on his elbows and dragged his body away from where he had fallen towards the door. The glass shredded his palms, cutting him with memories that he couldn’t decipher or recall. He ignored the fragments images as he reached the door. The darkness devouring the shards grew higher. He banged on the stone door, scraping his palms on it.

"Who are you?" Leandros yelled. "Why haven't you come to me?" His eyes burned, and he beat at the door. "Why aren't you there? It's supposed to…you're supposed to…"

A shadow stretched up and loomed over him, a long sword of darkness swayed over him.

"Open the door," he gasped. The stone door at his back dissolved. The shriek of a kite cut through the air. Warmth and golden light gushed out like a tidal wave, cramming its way through the narrow door and tumbling him forward with the flow. He rolled as the grass grew and the flowers grew again. The tree in the distance flourished and stretched towards the skies as the clouds reappeared and ignited. Golden light streaked though the air. A river carved a winding path past him as he landed against the tree as if it were made of the softest pillows and tumbled down to the banks of the river. The water was warm with a fast and powerful current that pulled him along. Gushing with power and love and so much more he couldn't stand it, but fighting the current was impossible. The darkness burned and retreated but the light chased it through the wooden door which caught fire as a large being flew through it, shrinking into a familiar figure as it ran through.

Then, he closed his eyes and let rest take him.

He woke up in a bed in the healing halls. He resented it at first, but he felt so rested it was hard to hold on to the anger. Hard to hang on to anything. There was something wrong with that fact, wasn’t there?

"So glad you’re awake." He looked at the healer. "How do you feel?"

He blinked and looked away from the man before reaching to his chest. He sat up sharply with a gasp and looked down. The sprawling mess of darkness that had been growing from his heart had shrunk to little more than the size of his fist. He didn't even feel it. He traced the edges of it.

"What happened to me?"

"What do you remember?"

He frowned, shaking his head. "I… I was talking to someone. I was angry. It's all blurry after that…" He heard a soft sniffling, smelled tears, and his rising anger, but it was so dark. The images fluttered through the dark.

"Someone was crying… I don't know." A sense of urgency pushed at his chest. He had to go. He was running out of time, and it was important that he didn’t run out of time.

But where was he supposed to go?

"Do you know who?"

He shook his head. "I can't… remember exactly. Why? How did I get here?"

"You appeared in the ward unconscious, covered in blood."

He stomach lurched. "What?"

"Not yours, but you didn’t seem like you had been in a fight. We were actually hoping that you could tell us what happened.”

He shook his head. He had no idea.

"From the scans, I'd say someone healed you, purified you, I suppose. You've been given another three or four decades if you keep up with your current treatment."

Leandros laughed, incredulously. "I’ll have to thank them…” The man still looked troubled. “Something I should know?”

"There was no one else in the area or brought in. They’re doing a count of the students trying to figure out who might have been injured enough to leave that much blood behind.”

He gripped the blankets. "Are there any leads about it?"

He shook his head, but his stomach churned with guilt. Then, a deep surge up from within. He leaped to his feet and ran, reaching across space for the last glimmer of her stuttering breath.  Memories flashed through his mind. Naos had attacked him on the beach where the surf drowned out the sound of his pain. He’d been no match for him even before he pulled out a sword. The blade fell, and she appeared, crying out as the blade sliced through her. Her blood burst from the wound and fell over him. Naos twisted in place, screaming and bursting into a tall black flame. Heat and agony clawed through him and as much as he wanted to move, to cradle her close, he couldn’t. She dragged herself up and lay her head on his chest. Magic had fluttered over him. He couldn’t protest, then she was gone, and everything was dark.

That bastard had timed it well.