The ringing in my ears was deafening. My world was spinning.

I wasn't waking up.

Why wasn't I waking up?

In my nightmares, I would wake up now screaming in the dark unaware of reality.

Why wasn't it happening now?

Realization slammed into me.

My breathing became ragged.

"No, no, no. No."

The word felt like a mantra—as if saying it repeatedly would make what was happening in front of me less real.

This couldn't be happening.

This wasn't happening.

I shook Damien's shoulders as hard as I could. His eyes still wouldn't open.

"Please, please wake up. Please!"

"He's dead, girl," Robyn's harsh words cut through me.

I ignored him, I couldn't focus on him now.

The hot tears flowed freely at my attempts. I pounded the floor next to him with my fists as I screamed. "You cocky bastard, open your eyes!"

I started beating on Damien's chest. I had to do something, anything that could wake him. "You can't do this. You can't do this! We're supposed to grow up and be friends forever, you promised. You're supposed to outlive me!"

I was hysterical, inconsolable. I could feel my heart breaking, every beat more painful than the last. I felt my soul had been ripped into pieces, the pain was unbearable.

I cried over him, placing my head on his chest. "Please, please, you can't leave me."

Robyn's voice rocked me back to reality. "You women are all alike. Hysterical."

He crouched down next to us, placing his fingers around Damien's eyes and forcefully opening them.

I reached over at him, slapping his hands away, ready to claw his own eyes out. "Get away from him!"

He laughed at my futile attempt, smoothly moving away from reach. "The king is dead, my dear. It is time to celebrate!"

I shook my head as I placed it over Damien's still chest.

It was so still.

"Now," Robyn cooed. "Tell me, does he have any heirs?"

I couldn't understand what he was asking. How could I possibly know?

He grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled me back away from Damien. My neck cracked from the force.

"Did he have any heirs?"

I shook my head. "I – I don't know."

He sighed in frustration. "Come now, darling, you have the gift of life. You can sense if his line lives on or not." He smiled. "Concentrate. Picture him in your head and seek out his presence in another life."

I could sense life? Was that what Robyn and the stranger had meant by finding his enemies? He said he'd done it before with others like me.

No wonder he knew so much about the Light Fae.

He had used the man in my memory to find Damien - that's how he had become so powerful. He'd find and his enemies.

If I could sense life maybe I could sense if Damien was really gone.

The floodgates opened and, suddenly, I could feel that familiar magic in me. I felt it again like I had that night so long ago. I felt it moving in me--through me, like a river.

He'd let my magic go- stopped the Mark from oppressing it. He really did seem to think I could do it.

I closed my eyes and concentrated. Damien had talked about being with other women and faes but he'd never mentioned a child. I tried to concentrate as hard as I could, could I really sense other life?

Even if I did find a child I wouldn't tell him. I'd protect the child with everything I had.

Yet for as hard as I pushed myself to find them, nothing came to me. Nothing came back. I tried harder - pushing myself to the point of passing out but I sensed nothing.

I couldn't find him anywhere.

If I couldn't feel Damien anymore...then that meant...

Robyn laughed harder than I'd ever heard before. He'd seen the defeat in my face, the agony.

"Thus ends my brother's line." He grabbed my arm pulling me away from Damien, dragging me behind him. "Come, dear, it is time to show you off to the Courts and establish my new rule. You will help me find all my enemies and I will destroy them one by one. Man, woman and child."

I never wanted this. I didn't want to be used as a weapon for a ruthless ruler in a war that could kill innocents for no other reason that they didn't agree with him.

I clawed at his hands, arms, shoulders, anything I could.

I felt something in me start to build. Hate, rage and pure fury was within me and before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed Robyn's arm as he dragged me.

A small tingle tickled my hand but Robyn stopped cold, turning back towards me.

I held his gaze with pure anger as he started screaming. His skin sizzled and burned under my hand and at the last possible second, I pushed him away effectively knocking him back, making him let me go.

He fell to the floor behind him and he cradled his arm close to his chest as he watched me.

I ran to Damien and kneeled next to him again where he lay on the floor.

Robyn's face contorted with hate. "You burned my arm!" He was screaming. "You stupid bitch!"

I tried again this time concentrating on only Damien. I was wrong. He couldn't be dead, I was sure if I could still feel his life source somehow...

Maybe, just maybe...

I tried again concentrating on only Damien in front of me. I could feel the magic in me. I could feel it coaxing me, caressing me. I could hear it thrumming under my skin begging to be used.

I watched Damien.

I couldn't sense him at all.

"He's dead, you stupid girl!" Robyn yelled to me.

Robyn was right. Damien wasn't Damien anymore. He was a shell.

I couldn't feel his presence at all.

My legs gave out from under me and I collapsed fully on the floor.

I watched him where I sat, unable to hold back my tears.

He was really dead.

I felt as if my heart was in a cold grip, tightening as the air escaped my lungs. The only friend I had in the world was dead. The boy that befriended me so long ago when I saved his life...

I thought back to every time he'd made me smile. The first time he tried ice cream, chocolate, he'd said it was too sweet and made a face. When he'd shown up at my ninth birthday party and had never seen a bounce house, how he'd played ...

My sixteenth birthday, when he'd played off how monumental his present had been, and planted a kiss on my cheek. When he gave me flowers from the Underworld for graduation, the laughs we'd have watching movies or walking through the mall.

It was all gone.

My head fell into my hands and the hot, fat tears began to fall.

It felt like I was being split down the middle with a hot, searing knife. I could feel my heart break over and over with each new memory.

My body began to ache, to tingle all over.

When I taught him how football was played, then baseball. He'd been there when my parents had fought for so long they'd forgotten I was in the house with them. He'd played with me in the woods in the treehouse he'd built with his magic to my specifications.

He was gone.

My breath hitched and caught in my throat, my surroundings ceased to exist. All I could hear was the roaring in my ears, all I could see was Damien's lifeless body.

I cried.

I cried for my best friend. The only person in the world that knew me- really knew me. He'd been there for me, with me through every single thing in my life.

I cried for his future, the one he was meant to have, the one that had been robbed from him. The greatness that a man like him would never get to realize. The future we would have had if I hadn't been so stupid and blind before -

Damn it all. Damn it all.

Damn those rules that said we couldn't be together - the ones that I clung to like a shield that had blinded me to how he really felt. The ones that made me think that I couldn't be worthy of him. The rules that I beat myself with over the years whenever I thought that he could possibly hold some other feeling for me other than friendship.

My heart broke anew, the despair I was feeling wrapped around me, filling me and the air around me in an explosive white light.

And pain.

Physical pain in more than just my heart and soul. I could feel explosive pain searing my nerves all over. I could feel it in my head, my core, my hands, my fingers.

I closed my eyes tight and screamed in agony as a roaring wind gathered around me like a cocoon.

I thought my body would burst from the pain.

And then it stopped.

My energy drained all at once, I could feel it leaving every single one of my cells in my body.

I let the darkness take me.