Red hair was in her line of sight, blurred through new tears. Red hair and narrow green eyes, too close to her. That was when Elena felt Stefan remember that there was anything other than Elena in the world.
His face changed. He didn’t snarl or stick out his chin. The change was an entire alteration, but it centered around his eyes, which became deadly hard while everything else became sharp and fierce.
“If you touch her again, you vicious bitch, I will rip out your throat,” Stefan said, and each word was like a chip of ice-cold iron dropped onto the floor.
Elena’s tears stopped with the shock of it. Stefan didn’t talk that way to women.
Even Damon didn’t — hadn’t. But the words were still echoing in the sudden silence of the cathedral-like room. People were backing away.
Idola was backing away too, but her lip was curled. “Do you think that because we are Guardians that we cannot harm you—?” she was beginning, when Stefan’s voice cut through hers cleanly.
“I think that because you are ‘Guardians’ you can kill sanctimoniously and get away with it,” Stefan said, and his lip made a far more compelling — and frightening — line of scorn than Idola’s had. “You would have killed Elena if Sage hadn’t stopped you. Damn you,” he added softly, but with such utter conviction that Idola took another step backward. “Yes, you’d better rally all your little friends around,” he added. “I might just decide to kill you anyway. I killed my own brother, as I’m sure you realize.”
“But surely — that was only after taking a mortal blow yourself.” Susurre was between the two of them, trying to intercede.
Stefan shrugged. He looked at her with the same contempt as he had the other ruler. “I still had the use of my arm,” he said deliberately. “I could have decided to drop my sword, or to merely wound him. Instead I chose to put a blade straight through his heart.” He showed his teeth in a distinctly unfriendly smile. “And now I don’t even need a weapon.”
“Stefan,” Elena managed at last to whisper.
“I know. She’s weaker than I am and you don’t want to see me kill her. That’s why she’s still alive, love. It’s the only reason.” As Elena lifted half-frightened eyes to him, Stefan added in a voice only she could hear, Of course, there are some things about me you don’t know, Elena. Things I’d hoped you’d never have to see. Knowing you — loving you — made me almost forget about them.
Stefan’s voice in her head woke something inside Elena. She lifted her head and looked at the blurry mass of Guardians around them. She saw strawberry-blond curls suspended in midair. Bonnie. Bonnie fighting. Doing it weakly, but only because a pair of the fair Guardians and another pair of dark ones were holding her in the air, one to each limb. As Elena stared at her she seemed to regain energy and fought harder. And Elena could hear… something. It was faint and far away, but it almost sounded like…her name. Like her name spoken by whispering branches or the whirring of passing bicycle wheels. lay…nah…eee…lay…
Elena reached inwardly for the sound. She tried desperately to grasp whatever came after, but nothing happened. She tried a trick she would have found easy yesterday — channeling Power to the center of her telepathy. It didn’t work. She tried her telepathy.
Bonnie! Can you hear me?
There wasn’t even the slightest change in the smaller girl’s expression.
Elena had lost her link to Bonnie.
She watched as Bonnie realized the same thing, watched the fight go out of the small body. Bonnie’s face, upturned in blank despair, was indescribably sad, and somehow indescribably pure and beautiful, all at once.
That will never happen to us, Stefan’s voice in her mind told her fiercely. Never!
I give you my No! Elena thought back, superstitiously terrified of a jinx. If Stefan swore, something might happen — she might have to become a vampire or a spirit — to ensure that he didn’t break his word.
He stopped, and Elena knew that he had heard her. And somehow this knowledge, that Stefan had heard a single word from her, stilled her. She knew he wasn’t spying. He’d heard because she’d sent the thought to him. She wasn’t alone.
She might be ordinary again; they might have taken her wings and most of the Power of her blood, but she wasn’t alone. She leaned toward him, her forehead against Stefan’s chin.
“No one is alone.” She’d told Damon that. Damon Salvatore, a being who no longer existed. But who still called forth from her one more word, one final cry. His name.
Damon!
He’d died four dimensions away. But she could feel Stefan backing her, amplifying her transmission, sending it like one last beacon through the multitude of worlds that separated them from his cold and lifeless body.
Damon!
There wasn’t the slightest glimmer of an answer. Of course not. Elena was making a fool of herself.
Suddenly something stronger than grief, stronger than self-pity, even stronger than guilt, took hold of her. Damon wouldn’t have wanted her to be carried out of this hall — even by Stefan. Especially by Stefan. He would have wanted her to show no sign of weakness to these women who’d shorn her and humiliated her.
Yes. That was Stefan. Her love, but not her lover, willing to love her chastely from now until the end of her days….
The end…of her days?
Elena was suddenly glad that she couldn’t project to strangers telepathically and that Stefan had set shields around them when he’d taken her into his arms. She turned to Ryannen, who was watching…warily, but still with business in her eyes.
“I’d like to go now, if you don’t mind,” she said, picking up her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder with a gesture as arrogant as she could make it. There was a bolt of agony as the weight of the strap hit the place from which most of her wings had sprung, but she kept her face contemptuous and indifferent.
Bonnie, back on the ground since she wasn’t fighting any longer, followed Elena’s lead. Stefan had left his backpack in the Gatehouse, but he gently cupped a hand around Elena’s elbow, not guiding her, but showing that he was there for her.
Sage’s wings folded back into themselves and were gone.
“You understand that for the return of these treasures which are ours by right but which we were barred from retrieving — you will be granted your requests with the exception of the imposs—”
“I understand,” Elena said flatly, just as Stefan said, much more brusquely, “She understands. Just do it, will you?”
“It is already being organized.” Ryannen’s eyes, dark blue splashed with gold, met Elena’s with a look not entirely unsympathetic.
“The best thing,” Sussure added hastily, “would be for us to put you to sleep and send you to your — your old, new dwellings. By the time you awaken, all will have been accomplished.”
Elena forced her face not to change. “Send me to Maple Street?” she asked, looking at Ryannen. “Aunt Judith’s house?”
“In your sleep, yes.”
“I don’t want to be asleep.” Elena moved even closer to Stefan. “Don’t let them put me to sleep!”
“No one’s going to do anything to you that you don’t want,” Stefan said, and his voice was like the edge of a razor. Sage rumbled his support, and Bonnie stared at the fair woman hard.
Ryannen bowed her head.
Elena woke up.
It was dark, and she’d been asleep. She couldn’t remember exactly how she’d fallen asleep, but she knew she wasn’t on the palanquin, and she knew she wasn’t in a sleeping bag.
Stefan? Bonnie? Damon? she thought automatically, but there was something odd about her telepathy. It felt almost as if it were confined to her own head.
Was she in Stefan’s room? It must be pitch-black outside, since she couldn’t even see the outline of the trapdoor that led to the widow’s walk.
“Stefan?” she whispered, while various bits of information pooled in her mind.
