Broken Visions

Chapter 26

I try not to think about what Alex showed me, but it’s difficult. All this time, he’d been the one that freed me. It was amazing and yet at the same time, heartbreaking.

After we leave the vision, we go back to the house, landing in the living room quietly. I refuse to let go of his hand, even when he walks over to the sofa and flops down. He doesn’t seem to mind though, sketching his fingers lightly across my knuckles as he stares out fingers entangled together.

“I want you to be careful when you do this,” he says. “When you go into the mapping ball. And prepare yourself for the worst case scenario.”

“I will,” I promise him. “And I promise I won’t alter any visions unless I think it’s the right thing to do.” I pause. “I’m hoping, though, if I do, it’ll realign everything else and maybe things won’t be so out of whack.”

He looks up at me. “You mean with the section of time your father reset?” he asks and I nod. He contemplates something. “Maybe you should put that one back too, just so everything is back to the way it was.”

I shake my head swiftly, my hand tightening on his. “No way.”

“Gemma, I—”

“I won’t do it,” I cut him off, maintaining his gaze. “I won’t do anything where you die. And besides, if I change my father’s vision that stuff might never happen anyway.”

We both grow silent, realizing that if I change it, what we have right now might be lost.

“Be careful,” he says in a hoarse whisper, cupping the back of my head. “Please, just don’t do anything that’ll hurt yourself.”

I nod and then he kisses me, in a way he’s never kissed me before. Slow and sensual, with meaning behind it, flooding me with tingles and butterflies and causing my pulse to throb under my flesh. It’s like he’s saying good-bye to whatever we have now, in case it disappears. I wish the kiss could go on forever, life would be so easy if it could, but it ends, way too soon in my opinion.

“Should we wake everyone up?” I ask Alex as I lean forward and collect the mapping ball from the coffee table.

“That’s up to you,” he says, drawing a line up and down the back of my neck.

It sounds like a simple question, yet it’s not. To say good-bye is painful and will probably upset everyone, but what I might end up doing in the mapping ball could potentially erase everything we have and I might not even know who they are in the end.

“I’m going to be an optimist for once.” I cup the crystal ball in my hand and it illuminates vibrantly. “And not say good-bye so I can tell myself that this is all going to work out…. This will all be fine.”

It has to be. I have a mom upstairs, branded by the mark of evil, a beautiful vampire friend, who is so sad my heart breaks for him, a witch friend who is afraid to show who she really is, and a gorgeous guy I feel so much for yet if those emotions get too strong, we could die. But hopefully, I have the power to remove the pain and give them a future without death, loneliness, and despair.

So squaring my shoulders, I walk to the middle of the living room. I open my hand and let the Purple Flame erupt from my palm. Alex’s eyes light up with worry and I can sense a panicked protest coming.

“Don’t worry.” I give him a small smile. “This is what I was made to do.”

And with those last words, I place the mapping ball in my hand into the Purple Flame. It flashes, shaking the walls and the floor as the light ripples around the room. My whole body flares up into flames and then I’m being tugged inside the ball.