I want to say too late, though all I do is nod because I’m too tired to do or say anything else. Tired of fighting. Of running. Of simply existing. All I want to do at the moment is shut my eyes and go to sleep.
“What are we going to do now?” I ask, my eyelids fluttering shut as I yawn. “I’m guessing we have to leave.”
“Now we’re going to get you out of here,” he replies. “Go somewhere safe—somewhere hidden. Nicholas knows where this is and now that we know he’s helping my father, we can’t stay here.”#p#分页标题#e#
I nod and bury my face into his chest while he smoothes his hand up and down my back. “Let me go get Aislin and Laylen to see if we can come up with a plan.”
“Okay.”
He stands up and secures me to the front of him, carrying me with him as he leaves the room. My energy fizzles with each step he takes as I cling onto him. I keep seeing little images of objects and the color red. I see the mark. I see Death Walkers. I see the end of the world. The images are pulling at me to join them and I keep thinking what if I did? Join them? Join the easy side, the one that chases instead of runs.
“I think something’s… wrong with me,” I tell him drearily.
He says something about everything being okay and that he’ll protect me. I keep nodding, but eventually I have to admit to myself the truth.
That in the end this might not work out. That he can try to protect me, but it doesn’t mean that things will always end up in my favor. Once I admit that, I sink into a deep state of sleep.
Chapter 23
Through all of this, I end up losing myself for a moment. I zone out; not asleep, but not really awake, either. I see a thousand images, dream a thousand horrific daydreams. It feels like I die and come back to life again, over and over. I swear I break and then heal… break and then heal.
“Gemma.”
The sound of Alex’s voice forces me out of my own head and back to reality. I jolt upright as I realize I’m lying in a bathtub, submerged in warm water with my head resting against the porcelain. The faucet is on and a light steam rises around me.
Alex is kneeling down on the tile floor, his arm resting on the side of the bathtub. “Are you feeling better?”
I rub my hand over my face as I sit up and the water beads down my skin. “Where are we?” I have bruises and open scratches on my skin, along with traces of dirt.
“At a friend of Adessa’s beach house,” he says. “In Maryland.”
I hunch over, drawing my knees up to my chest. “Did Aislin transport us here?”
He nods, rubbing his hand down my back. “She did—you passed out before she even got started.” Water drips from his hand onto my skin as he rubs the dirt off me. “Or more like zoned out. Your eyes were open, but you… but you were gone.” His hand wanders to my arms where he begins washing off the dirt off there, too. “I think you might need to take it easy for a while.”
I rest my head on my knees. “I need to save my mom and then maybe I can get this stupid star’s energy out of me and be normal for once.”
His hand slides over my cheek and I stare at him as he combs my damp locks out of my face. “You need to rest. You’re doing too much.”
“After I save her.”
“Gemma—”
“Alex, please,” I beg. “I can’t stop thinking about her… I dream about her all the time and she needs my help… she needs me. She could help us, too. She could know something about the mark and your father—she could know a way to stop the vision I saw from happening.”
“But what if she doesn’t?” He shuts the faucet off. “It’s such a long shot.”
I raise my head and turn sideways in the bathtub, grasping onto the sides. “I’ve dreamt about her and I’m not even sure if it was a dream. It could have been real. She said she could help me—that she knew things. Just like she told your father before he forced her into the lake.”
He wipes away some of the water dripping from my eyelashes with his thumb. “But they might just be dreams.”
“But they might not,” I whisper. “Nicholas said I was powerful and could do amazing things with my power if I was taught right, like travel and see visions without a crystal. What if I can communicate through them to? What is she’s communicating with me?”
His finger slides down the brim of my nose and to my bottom lip. “All right, but I’m going with you.”
I nod. “I know. Since you were in the vision with me when we were bargaining with the Queen, I’m assuming you need to be there.”