Candles flickered around the room, the windows shuttered hours before to prevent the sun from entering. In a chair a few feet from the bed, Max sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his hair hanging in limp strands around his face, and his clothes still holding the dampness of the storm. He hadn’t moved, and neither had his eyes. His stare was blank, yet his mind was not.

Max had never been so gutted before, so literally hollowed out that the beats of his heart echoed in the emptiness of his own being. He couldn’t fault Yannick, couldn’t condemn him for saving Bennett’s life, because it was a life Max hadn’t realized he held so dearly until that moment. Bennett was alive and would be for centuries to come, yet a promise had been broken, and a relationship he prized may very well have been destroyed.

Max took a slow breath, wiping the wetness from his cheeks. Was this what it felt like to have a child? Max softly smiled. Their ages were almost identical, and now they always would be. Max’s spine straightened when he noticed Bennett’s breathing had changed. She was waking up, and Max swallowed hard.

The fog in Bennett’s mind wasn’t white. It was brown, a thick, gooey brown that seemed to invade her senses. She could taste it in her mouth and feel it in every breath she took, and her brain was heavy with it. She could hear a thumping, a repetitive beat, slow and strong, and then another, not in time with the first. What was it? What kind of dream consisted of noises such as this? Why did her head ache so? Why did she feel weak…yet strong?

Bennett dragged herself out of the murkiness, and opening her eyes, her forehead wrinkled when she saw her surroundings. The room wasn’t familiar, and there was something odd about it. Only the dim flames of candles provided light, yet where she expected to see shadows, there were none. Bennett cleared her throat, and pushing herself into a sitting position, she noticed Max sitting across the way. His brow was plowed with lines, deep shadowy lines that ran from one side to the other like a field ready to receive seeds, and his glassy eyes held nothing but despair. He looked as if someone he’d loved…had died.

Bennett drew back her head ever so slightly, the pounding in her ears becoming all too familiar. It was the sound of her heart, and like a drum, it hammered in her head, mirrored by another belonging to the man sitting in the chair. A lump formed in Bennett’s throat, and searching her mind, it took but a moment to find the answers she sought.