Dhalia would soon begin to present Senectus Subita’s symptoms, and Alissa wouldn’t be there for her. She never thought she would be away for so long. The unplanned time she was trapped in the capital almost made her every effort pointless, almost impossible for her to see Dhalia with life again.
She hoped the curse could still be broken after the symptoms became evident, but she couldn’t know for sure. They wouldn’t have much time from the moment they crossed the walls to the time Dhalia took her last breath, and that frightened Alissa to the bones.
Again, she struggled with the duality of her relationship with time in her journey, a conflict she had been battling with herself since the beginning. It only worsened from the moment shelearned what would be needed of her to save Dhalia’s life. She wished time would pass by faster to be with her daughter again, and at the same time, she wished it would freeze so Eldric’s life would never be ripped out of him.
The truth was, no matter what happened in the next thirty hours, Alissa would lose.
She used to believe that when this was all over, the weight that had been burdening her shoulders for so long would finally be lifted, bringing her a new sense of freedom. In the reality of her current circumstances, that wouldn’t happen. There would be no victory for her at the end of this. She couldn’t take any more losses, but it was the only way. It wasn’t a matter ofifshe would be losing someone but a matter ofwho: Eldric or Dhalia?
She even dwelt on the possibility of losing them both. The spell Mrs. Ilden had taught her to break the curse was only a theory; they couldn’t be sure it would work because it had never been used before. And although she had been practicing magic for about three months and studying the spell constantly, she still feared the scenario where she went through all this hardship only to lose everyone she had ever loved on the way.
Alissa lay on the firm ground, her eyes fixed on the stars above. Eldric sat by her side, alert to any signs of danger, keeping them safe from any threats. She had opposed his idea of stopping at first, but he convinced her she needed some rest if she hoped to use her magic properly when the time came. Of course he had thought about everything as he managed to somehow include these four hours of rest into the tight thirty-hour schedule they had.
“She must think I have abandoned her,” she said, thinking out loud.
“I’m sure she doesn’t.”
“It’s been almost half a year. She must have grown so much...”
Being away from Dhalia hurt Alissa not only in the weight of her absence and in the guilt of leaving. It ached in the sense that every passing day felt like a missed opportunity, a chapter of Dhalia’s life she hadn’t been there to witness.
“You’ll soon be together again, darling.” Eldric focused on her instead of the dangers that could be lurking out there. “We should talk about our strategy for when we get to the wall. They have probably reinforced the number of guards outside Bryniard since you and Freyah escaped. Are you prepared to kill all those men if you have to?” He frowned in concern, recalling a conversation they had months before when Alissa voiced her fear of having to kill again.
Of all the things Alissa was concerned about now, killing soldiers was definitely not one of them. So much had changed since that day; she had overcome the part of her that feared the killing, because she had learned the hard way that it would betheirlives orhers. Desi’s unexpected sellout played a role in forging Alissa into a hardened version of herself through deceit. Though her heart may have grown colder, her determination still lived. She was not a victim but a survivor, fortified by betrayal and loss, but Eldric had yet to find out for himself that she had evolved into something else.
She looked at him with intent when she posed a new question: “Areyouafraid?”
He furrowed his eyebrows, leaning in closer to her, his elbow on the ground beside her head. “I have killed before, Alissa.”
“I’m not asking if you are afraid of the killing,” she turned her face to look at him. “I’m asking if you are afraid of dying.”
He watched her in silence: the way her chest heaved up and down with her rapid breaths, how she bit her lower lip anxiously waiting for his answer.
“No,” he said with calm and resolve. Not an ounce of him feared what destiny had in store. “My time will come eventually.Why not die for something I believe in rather than dying in vain?” he added as if life and death were in any way a matter of logic.
“Do you not mourn the loss of your life?” she asked curiously, not in the attempt to alarm him but to grasp how he could appear so at ease when his life would likely end in just hours from that moment.
They were so close now, the air stuck in their lungs, their hearts skipping the same beat. “No,” he whispered, his breath brushing her lips. “I mourn the future with you that I wish I had and never will.”
The urgency of his words matched the wild emotions pulsing in Alissa’s chest. Their lips met in a chaotic kiss. Soon, Eldric and Alissa weren’t two separate individuals anymore; they were only one whole mess of entwined bodies and souls. No words could do justice to their feelings for one another, and they didn’t need to. The yearning, the longing of their bodies in that moment, said everything.
As they shared the purest, rawest kind of love, skin to skin, they mourned what could have been and never will. They mourned the time lost and the memories left unshared. They grieved the loss of true love, embraced by the injustice of it all. They cried in pleasure and desperation, with their tears dampening their kisses as they found comfort in each other while exposing the most vulnerable pieces of themselves, the pieces that shared the same passion and love but also the same pain and suffering.
They wished they could pretend the only reality they had was that of the moment they shared in the middle of nowhere under a starlit sky, but it only made it harder to accept the hidden truth that this was goodbye. The only farewell they would be granted in an unfair world where a woman was forced to choose between the life of her child or the life of the man she loved.
The unfair world where happy endings simply did not exist.
24 HOURS UNTIL TIME OF DEATH
Dhalia hasn’t yet developed any Senectus Subita symptoms.
Life didn’t give Alissa any sort of alarm clock to warn her of Dhalia’s last twenty-four hours of life; nothing but her own chaotic tracking of time and her intuition could let her know the Senectus symptoms were about to take over Dhalia’s body. She didn’t need it because when that final day struck—she knew it. It could have been her own power of time that pulsed in her veins as the clock ticked stronger, or the connection she held with the child she carried in her womb. The girl who was once part of her own body, part of her soul.
She didn’t want to picture the years Dhalia was supposed to live being sucked from her within hours, like her time in this world meant nothing, like she was dispensable. She was everything. For Alissa, at least, because for the rest of the world, life would remain the same no matter how this day ended for her.
How was it possible that the same person who made her world turn and made life worthy meant nothing if brought into perspective other people’s own narratives? How could life mean so little in the vastness of this world when life is all we got?
With that in mind, Alissa and Eldric rode at full speed, each stride urging the horses onward, their determination palpable in the fierce grip of their hands on the reins. With every heartbeat, they raced against time as they had been since the beginning of this journey. With eyes blazing with intensity, fixed on thedistant horizon, they drew closer to Bryniard, moved only by the faith that they could save the lives of the people that lay in her hands.