The End

The End
Sebastian's POV

I should be dead, yet when I felt my fingers, they moved. I touched my trembling fingers together, scraping them against each other to make sure it was real, and it damn was. My fingers touched each other like they were real. How could this happen? I screamed loud in my head, and I snapped my eyes open.
At first, all I saw was a sharp bright light. It stung my eyes, and I had to squint, shutting them tight. I opened them again, and a woman was standing before me, an older woman, her skin folded into wrinkles on her aged face. She stared down at me, and I could clearly trace the wrinkles on her face. She covered me completely with her face, so it was the only thing I could see, except a peek of what seemed like a glowing white garment that she wore. 
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“Your savior,” she said in a rather calm yet agile voice that betrayed her age. “But technically, I am the gatekeeper.”
Her face so directly beneath mine made me a little uncomfortable, and I tried to stand, but somehow, I couldn't. My new lease of life didn't seem to extend to moving. I shut my eyes from her looming face. When I opened them, my lips had tightened and my eyes were breeding heat. “If you save me but can't make me move enough to make Brian pay for his crimes like Aaron and Harrietta did, then you better just let me die. I am—”
She grunted, her wrinkled face tightening to accommodate her frown. “This is the hundred and first time we would be meeting, and yet you are always very stubborn and aggressive each time.”
That sent a shiver down my veins, and I narrowed my eyes on her, tilting my head to the side. “What the hell do you mean by a hundred and one times—”
The rest of the words died in my throat. Instead of speaking, I just watched as if hypnotized as she sighed heavily and then leaned lower to me. She pressed her thumb on the middle of my head then.
A rush of energy screamed through me, and I shook on the marble floor of the throne room, squirming a bit in the pool of my own blood. My eyes shut tight as the energy surged through my veins with a force so strong, I groaned hard for a moment. And when I opened my eyes again, slowly, like a curtain, I felt more alive, felt like a million memories had just bombarded my mind, because they did. I looked up to her, and I recognized her immediately—the portal keeper. The woman in charge of gatekeeping the portal between my world and my wife's. The same woman who had sent me a hundred times to Emilia's world to warn her not to come back to mine after she left with her friend.
“I thought you told me last time that if I convinced Emilia not to return to this world, then all this would end.”
She smiled with her ragged old teeth, which, like I remembered now, were always sparkling white like her clothes. “You heard me wrong, then, Sebastain Everhart. I didn't say this would all end. I only hinted that the end would change, that your end would be rewritten.”
“So has it been rewritten, because you like you are about to send me back to tell her and collect me back before I could ever spend any real time with her.” I challenged.
She smiled again. “Do not worry again, Sebastain Everhart. Your sacrifice for giving up your love and hers for giving up hers as well and not returning has successfully rewritten your sad end—”
“But she is dead.” I yelled, nudging my eyes to her limp form on the floor beside me, lying in a pool of caked blood.
“That is but a shell. Her suit to wear when she comes to your world. She is alive and kicking in her world right now.” She smiled.
“Remember you say I can't go stay in her world because I am from this world.” I said, my tone careful, my eyes searching her face. I didn't want to rush to claim the hope her tone was dishing out to me. I couldn't stand another disappointment. I couldn't take another of fate’s jokes to keep me and my wife apart.
She smiled with the whole of her face now. “You can stay in her world now, Sebastain Everhart. You have officially died in this world, so you can start anew in hers.”
I started, squishing on the blood around me so I could squint my eyes at her and search for any hint that this could be a joke, but I saw nothing in her clear luminous eyes to suggest she was teasing me.
A wave of joy so strong crashed into me, and I gasped hard, so hard, I knocked every breath in my lungs out. A fluttering wave claimed my insides, and my lips stretched in a wide smile. I panted to reclaim back the breath I had knocked out of my lungs before.
“Then take me back to her, portal woman. Take me back to her.” I screamed at her like an excited child.
She chuckled, smiling down at me with her eyes. “I will, Sebastain. But I am not called Portal Woman…” she said, mimicking my tone a little. “I am called the Gatekeeper—”
I swallowed hard then, pushing back the rage surging through me that she could be bothered about something as simple as that. “Just take me to my wife, Gatekeeper.” I said, a slight edge to my voice. 
Her lips curled as if she wanted to rebuke me, but then she hesitated, a slight frown splitting her eyes then. “I will, but you have to promise to let go of your hate for those that wronged you, the Lancasters and the whole Senate of Duchester. And also you have to promise never to try to return to this world. You have to make those promises—”
“Okay, I promise.” I yelled at her. “Just send me to her already. Send me back.”
She looked down sharply at me, and her face crumbled into a half smile at me. “Goodbye, Sebastian Everhart.” She said, and she pressed her fingers hard on my head.
My eyes shot tight by themselves under the weight of the massive energy that shot into my body from her touch. My whole body felt like it was being ripped apart from the inside, being torn inside out, as the magical force kept pumping into my veins.” 
Eventually, the chaos in my body eased, and I sighed low, feeling hot yet breezy air brushing my face and neck like I was out in the open instead of under the massive shade of my throne room.
I opened my eyes, and I shut them quick from the sting of the harsh rays of a sun, the same heat beating against my face.
I waited for a minute, and I opened my eyes again, and I was staring at a very tall window. I was about to search for her through the glass screen, but I stopped, my breath stilled inside me, my lungs taking a quick pause, as my eyes settled on her—Emilia, my wife.
She sat bathed in a stream of golden light, her head bent over some yellowed map. Her auburn curls fell softly over her face as she studied the lines, completely unaware of the world around her, the strangely dressed people idling down the spaces around her.
My lungs boiled hot, empty of air, and I had to inhale hard the hot air around me as I watched her again. I blinked my eyes, shutting them tight and opening them afterwards, trying to confirm that this was real, and each time I did, my eyes fell back to her, over and over again, my heartbeat spiking to a higher note each time.
Beyond her, spreading far into the massive hall she was in, were rows of massive shelves—so many, all filled with books, hinting that it was some sort of library in her world.
I beat the glass with my fists, screaming her name, again and again, “Emilia! Emilia!” She didn't respond, as the barrier kept swallowing up my screams. Still, I didn’t stop. I kept hitting the glass, kept yelling her name, my palms fogging the window. My chest heaved, as my heart kept slamming harder against it as if about to burst out of its cage.
“Emilia! Emilia!” I kept screaming. I tried to find a way in, searching around the glass, but I couldn't. Then suddenly, as if fate intervened, her eyes strayed beyond the array of maps and books spread before her. She looked up, and our eyes connected, her pale green orbs brightening to a stronger green as she slowly registered me.
She froze at once. Her lips parted, trembling, just like the rest of her body. The map she held onto slipped from her fingers.
For an agonizing moment, I just watched her, my heart rampaging against my chest, so wild I heard each breath echoing out of me. Our eyes pinned each other down, staring, analyzing, trying to make sure this was real and not a dream. 
Then her mouth moved, forming the syllables that made my name. “Sebastian!” she screamed. Though I couldn't hear her with my ears, I heard her in my head.
I broke from my reverie, and I slammed my palm against the glass again, nodding my head continuously to assure her I was real—very real.
She pushed to her feet then, stumbling over chairs, knocking over stacks of books before her in her haste. My heart pounded in sync with her every single step she took until she burst through some oak doors, far ahead of me. 
I didn’t think. I only ran. The stone steps scraped my bare feet, but I didn’t feel them. My only thought was her—closing the distance, taking her back into my arms where she belonged.
I spread my arms wide for her, and she flew into me. “Sebastian,” she screamed my name now, and I shut my eyes to savor it, savor the soft ring of her beautiful voice in my ears.
I held tight to her, crushing her to my chest. I drank in the warm lemony scent of whatever she washed her hair with. Her warmth sank into me, her heartbeat thudding wildly against mine.
“Emilia,” I breathed against her skin, reverent, rubbing my head against the silky strands of her curls.
She clung tight to me as if she feared I would dissolve into smoke. She laughed against my chest, and then immediately, the tremor of her sobs cracked against my chest too. 
I leaned back from her a little so I could glimpse her face, yet I held her very firmly to my chest. I wouldn't let her go so soon.
I brushed her silky curls with my fingers, staring lovingly at her face. Tears streaked her cheeks, but her smile lit her face with a radiance that brightened the world inside of me, and my smile broadened to the max, my eyes lingering on her.
“I thought I was never going to see you again when you left with my brothers three years ago. I thought that was the end for us.” she said, her voice so low it sounded like a whisper. 
I assured her with my smile while I brushed off the tears spilling down her eyes with my thumb. 
“That wasn't the end for us, wife. It was the beginning. Now we can be together forever in your world.” 
Her eyes narrowed on me, pinning me up, as if to hold me down to my words.
“Are you sure, Sebastian?” 
I lifted up her jaw, and I sealed my lips on hers. The harsh stinging rays of the sunlight beating down on us bore witness as I breathed against her lips while I sucked on them. “This is forever, Emilia. We are going to be together forever now,” I assured her.