Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4) Emma Hamm (popular novels txt) 📖

she didn’t get that. Not a single night passed where she slept without dreaming. And that was when she didn’t fall asleep for months on end.

At least she wasn’t sleeping years anymore. Now it was just the passing of a few months before she woke back up. With a sunny, smiling, chirping cat suggesting she should wake up with a smile on her face too.

Lydia growled as she yanked a journal from the shelf. It didn’t matter which one. She had read nearly every single one.

Together with the memories, she had watched the entire courtship of Pitch and his lovely Sil. She saw their first kiss, their first dance, their first sexual encounter. She saw the first time Pitch’s family had met her.

Hundreds of moments only made her more and more angry. Sil was perfect. Every tiny fiber of her being had been good and kind. Even the moments when she wasn’t kind, there was something in her obviously trying to do good.

She was impossible to hate and because of that, Lydia hated her. No person should be that perfect. Although, if one was going to be perfect, it would have to be a goddess.

Wheeling to her corner of the office, Lydia shoved herself to her feet.

Sometime between Pitch leaving and Lydia waking up, her legs had decided they would hold her weight. Not walking, she still couldn’t move them that well, but she could stand. Balancing was less and less difficult.

She braced her hand against the wall, pivoting to sit on the window seat. All this should have been encouraging, but she only grew angrier. Lydia didn’t want to be this weak. She huffed out another angry breath and slapped the book down upon her useless thighs.

Today was a bad day, and not all the days were bad. Sometimes she had moments when she realized how lucky she was to be living in a mansion where no one cared what she did. Today was not one of those days.

Opening the page in front of her, she closed her eyes. She didn’t know why opening the journal helped anymore. She knew the threads of Sil’s history as though they were her own.

“Pitch!”

The screams echoed in her mind as she fell into the golden thread of history. Screaming? Her brow wrinkled before her body went slack. There weren’t a lot of these journals with screaming.

“Pitch!”

The voice was familiar. Why would Sil be screaming for Pitch?

Lydia fell onto the smooth black floor of the ballroom with a harsh crack. Her knees ached. Another first. Usually in these time threads she didn’t feel any injury to her body.

Wincing, she rubbed at the pain and stood up. First, she had to get her bearings. Where in the castle was she and where in the castle was Sil?

It didn’t take long to find her. The doors busted open behind Lydia and Sil spilled through them. Silver hair hung off of the tines of her antlers, broken diamond strands wildly swung around her face, a panicked expression twisting her features.

Lydia whirled as another door opened and Pitch rushed forward, catching Sil in his arms. Even in a state of panic, the black cloak of shadows trailed behind him like the night sky.

“What is it, my love?” he cried out. “Why are you here?”

“I saw it. I saw the end and I am so sorry!”

“You aren’t speaking sensibly, Sil. Darling, please, tell me what is happening?”

“I saw the future,” Sil whispered. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry my shadow, I never should have come here. I brought death with me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My world is gone. It was my fault, I could not find the future which would prevent the end of so many lives. I came here hoping I could redeem myself but I only set things in motion. I was good for you that was it. Pitch, I brought about the end of your world and I cannot stop it!”

Sil’s scream echoed in the hall. Dumbfounded, Lydia sat her butt down on the floor next to them.

It was Sil who had started the end of this dimension? She saw the realization dance across Pitch’s face.

“My siblings,” he murmured.

“In a way, they were right. The Light will snuff out the Darkness, and they will not stop until they control the world. I cannot prevent this from happening, but I can show you how to fix it.”

“No, I will stop them.”

“This world is going to die. You have another waiting for you. You will save that one, my love.”

“Are you leaving me?”

Lydia recognized his tone. He had spoken to her like that before when he poured Juice between her lips. The tone sounded angry, but it was not.

Pitch was falling apart. He was breaking into a million stars before her as he stared down at the woman he loved. He knew he was going to lose her, she realized. Maybe he had always known since the moment he set eyes on her.

And he loved her anyway.

His thumb skated across the plane of her forehead and trailed down to her lips. “A moment with you was worth thousands of lifetimes.”

“You will have to live thousands of lifetimes to find me again.”

A tear trailed down Lydia’s cheek as she watched the two of them press their foreheads together. It was Romeo and Juliet all over again, except Romeo never kills himself. Instead, his soul waits for her.

She knew the words Sil was going to say before she said them. A pinprick of pain made Lydia’s brow crease, and she whispered with the Goddess, “We started in the middle, and that is the most difficult place to start. I will see you again at the beginning, my phantom.”

The words unlocked something inside her. A blasting force of white light blinded Lydia until she fell onto her back and stared into the nothingness of her mind. She knew nothing. She was nothing. She was light and justice and brightness and…

Silence.

The pain from the light faded. It took with it all