39. Callie

We raced back towards the statue and panic clutched at my soul. I looked about desperately, trying to seek Montana among the ruins of the island. As I glanced towards the statue, a flutter of white caught my eye and my breath stilled in my throat as I spotted her falling from the crown high above us.

My mouth parted in a desperate scream as Montana plunged from the top of the statue. She tumbled over and over, plummeting towards the ground at a tremendous pace.

My heart seized in my chest, my lungs collapsed and I was caught in this endless, eternal moment of pain as her life sped to an unavoidable end.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t understand what was happening. How had she gotten up there? Why would she have put herself in that position?

She hit the ground and I felt the impact deep within my bones, a scream tearing from my lungs.

I tried to run to her but Magnar caught my arm, holding me back with a fearful look in his eyes. I wrenched my arm out of his grasp and sprinted towards my twin. My other half. The one love I had in this world which was as constant as the turning of the Earth. She couldn’t be gone. There was no me without her. Like there was no day without night. We were one and the same. We weren’t always together but we were never apart.

I closed the distance between us but Erik got there first.

He reached for her hand but I shoved him aside, my enhanced muscles knocking him away from her.

“Don’t you touch her,” I snarled as I dropped down beside my twin.

She looked so peaceful. Like she was sleeping. Except that there was blood pooling beneath her, soaking through my dress as I pressed my forehead to hers.

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I begged her to come back to me, panic seizing me at the reality I was faced with.

I dragged her into my arms, her body limp but still so warm. She couldn’t be gone. She just couldn’t.

I could feel the gods drawing closer to us, their immense power brushing up against the bubble of safety the ring hid us in. They’d lost sight of all of us and I could tell it confused and enraged them in equal measures. Was this the gods’ punishment for wearing my mother’s ring? Did they throw my sister from that statue? I could feel their realisation and fury brimming around us as they desperately tried to find a way around the ring’s power, but they were thwarted.

I released a scream filled with all the horror of my grief and forced my will into the ring, throwing them away from us and casting them aside. The deities disappeared back into whatever realm of pain and torment they called home and we were left alone at last. Safe from them and their twisted games, at least for now.

Erik crawled closer and I glared at him. This was more than the gods’ doing, it was his fault. Whatever had driven her up there, it had started with him. When he stole her from me, or even before that when his family created the Realms. None of it would have happened without him.

“Please,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion as he stared at her body. “I have to...I need to-.”

I glared at him, clutching her closer to me. My heart pounded as I refused to release her and the most wonderful sensation brushed over my cheek.

I gasped, shifting my grip on her as I pressed my ear to her chest and hope blossomed deep within the pit of my stomach.

“She’s alive,” I whispered, so faintly that I wasn’t sure anyone heard me.

I wanted to believe it so badly that I wasn’t sure I could trust my own senses, but I was almost convinced I could hear her heart still beating softly, the faintest flutter of breath dancing between her lips. Or could I? I wanted it so desperately that I didn’t even know. Maybe it was the aching pounding of my own heart that I could hear. She was so pale, so empty of all the things that had filled her with life. How could she have survived that fall? Tears prickled my eyes as a sob caught in my throat.

Erik met my gaze as he tilted his head to listen too, and his eyes widened with hope.

“I can save her,” he said firmly, reaching for her again.

My heart leapt at the prospect and I almost smiled before I realised what he meant.

I shook my head, unable to accept that option. “She’ll still be dead. She needs to live.”

But I could feel the blood pooling beneath me, I could see the twisted positions of her limbs. She couldn’t survive this. At least not as she was. But how could I agree to her becoming one of them? We’d hated them our entire lives. They were everything we feared and despised. Would she even still be herself if she was one of them? Would she want to live on if she was caged in their form?

I expected the slayers to object but they stayed silent, leaving this impossible decision to me.

“We don’t have long,” Erik pleaded and all of the protests I wanted to voice fell away.

I couldn’t live in a world without her. If this was the only way, I had to take it, even if she ended up hating me for it.

I pressed a kiss to my sister’s cheek, whispering a final goodbye to the human girl who I loved more than life itself as the vampire pulled her from my arms.

I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing. But in that moment, it was the only choice I could make. Because a life without her wasn’t one I could accept.

“I love you, Monty. I’m so sorry.”