Succession

by Albion19

Fourteenth in line for the Bennett coven throne Bonnie imagines a quiet but scholarly life but this is impossible following a family tragedy. In a society where arranged marriages between covens is common practise Bonnie deals with the mysterious Malachai Parker, who may be the root of all her troubles... Bonkai. AU.

6. Prison Worlds

Spring

A beautiful stain glass ceiling shines above, casting a rainbow of lights over her body. Is she in the mall? Bonnie closes her eyes, counts to five and then opens them again. The glass remains and the dark fog over her mind drifts slowly to the corners. She's still in the ballroom but it is empty and quiet. Bonnie bolts upright, looking around the room in panic. Where is everyone?

"Kai?" Bonnie says his name again louder, getting to her knees but no one answers her and no one comes running. Feeling very strange and disorientated Bonnie gets to her feet. The room had been full of people, many of whom had been lying prone on the ground. It had also been approaching night but the sun slanting through the windows is just rising.

"Hello? Is anyone here?" trying to keep calm Bonnie takes a step forward and almost slips over. Under her foot is a small thin piece of greenish metal. A cog. "The Greek ascendant," she whispers and sees that the entire floor is littered with pieces from the device. Bonnie reaches for the talisman still around her neck and presses her fingertips to it hesitantly. Magic thrums against her skin, now just an echo. The old ascendant had not sucked the magic from the bone completely. Bonnie looks at her hands, which had moments ago been searing with pain as the two artefacts burned. Her skin is unblemished and pain free.

"What's going on?" she says to herself and walks to the window, the hem of her dress swishing against the floor. The view is of the same grounds but at this time in the morning a mist rolls off the river and into the trees. She is about to turn away when she spots something different. Pink blossom lines branches and yellow tulips crowd the bottom of tress.

"It's spring?" Bonnie presses her hands against the window, half wondering if she has missed a year when the answer comes to her with a leaden certainty. Joshua Parker has successfully sent her to Kai's prison world.

"It's May 10th 1994…"

She does not know how long she stares out of the window, watching the fog grow even thicker, obscuring trees and hills but as a clock chimes the hour she turns and looks at the shattered pieces of the old ascendant. It's not the 1994 version, she's sure. Maybe it cannot travel to this place. She bends down, reaching for a piece put the talisman swings from her neck and she snatches it back with a gasp. She has no idea why the two had reacted so violently when they made contact but she has no desire to repeat it. The talisman and the ascendant are here because both had been in her hands when Joshua had cast his spell. If only she had dragged the asshole along with her…

"It's okay, Kai will come…" she whispers, staring at the floor and watches with a detached fascination as the metal innards of the device very slowly start to move and Kai's comment about them being magnetised proves true. She watches two tiny pieces move slowly towards each other and then click together. The rest of the pieces, which are scattered across the entire floor, will take hours to self-construct. She could put it together herself but she does not want to touch them.

She thinks about Atticus, whose chance to go through the device and seek answers lies scattered at her feet. Sighing, Bonnie looks at the open doorway but does not move. Panic is a low lying beast, waiting to rise up and circle her throat so she forces herself into action. For all she knows there could be someone here, she's been knocked out for hours and they might be searching for her. Rubbing her ribs with a grimace she leaves the ballroom, careful not to disturb the metal on the floor and proceeds to search through the palace.

Voice hoarse from calling out and her shoes long abandoned Bonnie pads barefoot along the west wing. She has been walking for hours but strangely she does not feel tired or even hungry. What does bother her is the total silence and emptiness and she talks aloud to herself. Hearing her voice is oddly comforting. Coming across a grand office with a TV and radio Bonnie switches it on and hears a clipped voice talking about the arrest of two married serial killers, Rosemary and Fred West, before she switches it off, waits a few minutes and switches it back on. Love is All Around by Wet, Wet, Wet plays and she hums along under her breath as she sits behind a large mahogany desk.

"Okay. So it looks like it's only me but Kai and my family know I'm here. They're coming…they're coming…" The last time she had seen Kai he had been fighting his father, both siphoning each other. He said no witch could kill another but Kai looked like he was trying very hard to break that rule. She stares at a folded piece of paper on the table but does not really see it. There is another silence behind the music and it is only when she realises that she has been unmoving and staring into space during the music does she take in a big gulp of shocked air. She had stopped breathing. Bonnie sits up, touching her chest but the pounding of her heart does not answer her fear, because she has no heartbeat. The peculiar sensation that has settled over her since waking now makes sense, though for reasons she cannot fathom.

"What the…?" she inhales and exhales deeply, feeling the way her lungs inflate but it feels unnecessary. "This is – this is crazy," swallowing she presses her fingertips to her wrist, feeling for a pulse, but finds nothing. Is she dead? Kai never mentioned this, in fact he made it clear that he could not die in the prison world.

The panic at her imprisonment and isolation crash against this body horror and Bonnie presses her forehead against the desk, crumbling the unread letter in her hands. Squeezing her eyes shut she focuses for a long time on the soothing voices coming from the radio, sinking into it and when she breathes out slowly she does not breathe in. How long can she last? The fear and panic grow less as she sinks further into the comfortable warmth of a dark trance…

–fuck she's not breathing!

–And she's got no pulse. Move out of the way!

Bonnie jumps to her feet and spins around wildly. "Kai?! Atticus?" she stares at the radio where she clearly heard their voices coming from. She falls on her knees, grabbing the machine and shakes it desperately. "I'm here! I'm here! Can you hear me?" Chest aching she presses her ear to the speaker and through the crackle of Whitney Houston she hears something else.

–it's back. What's wrong with…

–I don't…she won't wake…

"Kai! Please! I'm right here!" she yells as their voices fade away and the song returns. Tears falling down her face she hugs the radio to her chest, where her ribs thud with a dull ache, as if someone has been hitting them. Forcing herself to keep breathing Bonnie sits behind the desk, radio on her lap and cries.

---

Chambre de Chasse

After hours spent either in a listless stupor or manic activity Bonnie sits on the lip of a window in the ballroom and watches the floor. This was the last place she had been seen so this will be the first place someone will look for her. Resting by her knee is the radio, which is now playing Nightswimming by R.E.M. Nothing but music, news and the occasional static comes from the speaker.

Maybe I imagined it…she thinks and then says it out loud, looking at her reflection across the hall. "Maybe I'm imagining this whole thing. I fell down a hole, like Alice and she was dreaming so…" and she escaped Wonderland because she woke up. It could also explain her lack of a heartbeat and the need for air, though she has been diligently breathing, the phantom ache across her ribs still present. Moving the radio onto the floor she curls up on the window seat, watching the metal pieces on the floor whirling and clicking uselessly.

"Like someone putting a puzzle together with the wrong pieces…" she whispers, her eyes drooping closed. The drone of the radio, where a man is talking about Nelson Mandela fades away as she starts sinking into a familiar darkness.

–The pieces are repealing each other. They're all mixed up and we can't get close enough to fix it.

–They're trying to connect but it's taking too long. She seems to be okay now but I need to know what ascendant she went through.

–I know…

Bonnie keeps her eyes closed and does not move, scared that she might open them and scare the voices away. It sounds like Kai and Shane are speaking a few feet away, like they're in the very room. Maybe they are…she thinks and then sits up very slowly, her back pressed against the window and opens her eyes slowly, still in a calm trance, balanced between one world and the next. The bone talisman thumps with magic. She is alone but the voices carry on talking. They're standing by the door, invisible to her and she to them.

–The explosion caused serious damage, even if both ascendants are constructed again there's no telling if they're usable.

Bonnie stiffens at this voice because it belongs to Joshua Parker.

–We wouldn't be talking about this if you hadn't activated my ascendant in the first place, Kai growls.

–I had no other choice; it was her or all of us…

–she's still here Kai… Shane says softly and she barely hears Kai's angry retort because he's walking away, the sound of his boots retreating. Bonnie jumps off the window, the strange calm that helped her listen shaking as she desperately tries to follow. She reaches the marble staircase when she loses the sound of his footfalls and shouts.

"No! I'm here, I'm right next to you!" balling her fists she carries on walking, thinking of where Kai might go and so heads to his private rooms. During 1994 the suite is unoccupied and white sheets cover furniture like conspicuous, cubist ghosts. She closes her eyes and strains to listen but all she hears is the faint crackle of the radio still playing below. Wondering if she has gone mad in the span of a few lonely hours Bonnie opens another set of doors to a bedroom and with a heavy feeling she pulls the covers off the bed and furniture. As her reflection is revealed she looks at her dress and the lopsided tiara on her head before taking the dress off. She crawls into bed, now just in the golden camisole, thinking about changing the sheets but she's too drained to care. She had imagined a hopeful outcome and this had been it, hadn't it? Slipping into Kai's bed and waking up together as he promised, showing her around the grounds and cooking her breakfast. She had wanted it to be a fresh start.

"I thought you were the one who would disappear but it was me the whole time. Why didn't I consider that?"

Because Atticus is right, her own life has always been secondary to that of others, worth the risk if it meant someone else was spared. She was not someone who abandons loved ones; she sticks with them through thick and thin. Even without magic she would do the same. As a teenager she had almost died for her friends on many occasions and did so willingly. She thought that had changed after her grandmother almost paid the price she was willing to give but it hasn't, that drive is still there. Distancing herself from her friends had been for her own sake too. Despite what Kai had done she had been worried for him more than the possibility that she might be in danger.

"Is that crazy?" she whispers. Kai had confessed that he would risk his life and a thousand others for her. Would her friends do the same? Would her family? Not wanting to face the answer she turns on her side and stares at the empty pillow opposite. She closes her eyes again and imagines that Kai is just in the bathroom, getting ready to join her. As she falls asleep she can almost feel his body beside her, his hand on her hip and his lips on her cheek before she succumbs…

…Fingertips brush her temples, a light touch but something delves deeper, seeping into her mind and at first she resists, pushing the intrusion away but the presence becomes gentle and she relents. The touch moves to her cheek and Bonnie opens her eyes.

"…Kai?"

"Thank god it worked," he breathes beside her and roughly gathers her up in his arms and kisses her with a desperate passion. They are lying in the same bed and the room is dark.

"What? What's going on? Am I back?" she asks, pulling away to cup his face as she stares in bewilderment. He feels real. Kai shakes his head.

"This is a dream, we're sharing it. I've pulled you into my Chambre de Chasse... Bon where are you?"

"I'm still in the palace but it's 1994. It's weird here. I don't – I don't understand what's going on," she says and tears prick her eyes. Kai kisses her again as she sits up and he keeps her pressed to him.

"My father activated my ascendant to trap you because he thought the two devices were going to swallow up the palace and then everything else," he explains and he looks deeply angry. Bonnie nods in grudging acceptance and Kai laughs bitterly. "You agree?"

"You weren't holding them Kai. The power would have devoured me and everything in it's path. It was like the ascendant was trying to absorb the talisman but it put up a fight," more than a fight, for one frightening but glorious moment she had control over the power pouring around the room. "I couldn't stop it and it wouldn't let me go. He – he was right. He sucks but it was too dangerous to keep me there," she adds at his terrible expression, taking his face in her hands. "When are you coming to get me?"

"Bon…Don't you know?"

"What?"

"You didn't go anywhere. You're lying right next to me."

"What? I'm stuck in 1994. It's spring and there's no one else there."

"I know but physically you're still in 2016. Both ascendants activated at the same time and then exploded. I thought you had gone but when the light cleared you were on the floor but you wouldn't wake up. You've been unconscious since last night but you hadn't dreamed until now. I wasn't sure what world you were in."

"My body is with you?" she asks slowly and he nods. "But my mind…"

"Is in the 1994 prison world. I think a part of you got sent, like an astral projection. What the device did, it took a lot out of you. You – you almost died earlier," he says quietly and Bonnie nods as he draws her tightly to him.

"I guess this explains why I don't need to eat or breathe…but I'll keep on doing it because I think whatever happens here has an effect on my body," she guesses and he agrees. He sighs, stroking her hair and gazes at her with an intense conviction.

"I'm going to find a way to bring you back."

"Tried shaking me? You know I'm a heavy sleeper," she jokes but he does not smile.

"What do you think?"

"I woke up in the ballroom but I haven't dreamed until now. Maybe when I wake up from this I might come back to you?" her question goes unanswered, his face unsure and she leaves it. That would be too good to be true. Too easy. She smiles weakly. "I heard you and Shane talking, I was in this kind of trance, when my heart stopped I guess. You were on the radio."

"Cool, I'm famous," he smiles and kisses her mouth gently before he pulls back and looks downcast. "I almost killed my dad, I wanted to. Shane pulled me off him."

Bonnie winces, imagining how out of control Kai must have been, needing to lash out. She narrows her eyes. "What did you do to Atticus?"

"He'll heal," he shrugs, looking around the room. The furniture is out of focus and oddly flickering, the lights glowing dreamily. He called this place the Chambre de Chasse: a hunting room, which she knows is a mental playing field for witches. She has never used one, they always gave her the creeps but she thanks god that Kai is not averse, though she avoids thinking what he may have used his for in the past…

"This is the only way I can see you? In this place?"

"Only when you dream. If I could come to you I would but technically you're not really there so…" Kai trails off as Bonnie exhales a weary breath. Being separated between two worlds is an accident and should not have happened. The whole ordeal is utterly bizarre and focusing on that rather than the fear and panic gnawing at the pit of her stomach is preferable.

"Has this ever happened to anyone else?"

"Not that I know of. Shane is at the Archives seeing what he can dig up. I'm going to see those seers he's so keen on in the morning, maybe they'll have some answers."

Bonnie nods, trying to hide the pang of despair at the notion that he is going to leave. He sees the emotions flitting over her face and sits up against the headboard, bringing her against his chest. "I'll stay if you want?"

"No, they need you and I feel better knowing you're helping. I think I can hack not seeing you for a few hours, you did it for years so I'm not going to fall apart. You also have a coven to run," she jokes but his face is like thunderous stone.

"That coven sent you here when my father couldn't finish the job. If they come to me with anything that isn't a fucking apology and a way to get you back then they're even more stupid then I thought."

"Kai…don't do anything."

"Too late," he smiles but his eyes gleam with a dark violence. Bonnie shakes her head, picturing witches in some dark dungeon under the palace. As angry as he is they saved hundreds of people.

"I could have sucked all the magic and structure out of everything. Magic and nature, they're entwined, and that device and the place it's connected to could sap our world dry," she shudders. "You said that no witch can kill another but that thing could break through any binding given time."

"This wasn't your fault. It was just shitty luck that the two devices came into contact," he says, looking down at the talisman. It appears to have no adverse effect on him here. He frowns. "It better be an accident or next time I won't give your adviser a black eye, I'll remove it."

Bonnie scowls angrily, leaning off him. "This isn't his fault either. How could he know this would happen?"

"You're soft on him Bonnie, you just see this tweedy widower don't you? He might be human but he's got you deep under something," Kai accuses and his anger goes beyond jealousy. Bonnie gets out of the bed and he follows her quickly.

"You know if you got to know him you'd see he's a good guy. He reminds me of you sometimes."

"Why do you think I hate him?" he says, surprising her. "If we never met he's exactly the type of man you'd be with and you know it."

Bonnie shakes her head, arms crossing over her chest. "But I'm not with him and he's not interested in me like that," she says and immediately remembers the heat in Shane's gaze when he saw her in the dress. She pushes the memory away but a prickling, uncomfortable heat rises through her, turning to anger. "I'm glad that you're so concerned about another man rather than the fact your wife is trapped in some Twilight Zone. Why don't you leave if this is all you're here for?"

"Wait, wait, wait," he pulls her to him gently as she makes for the door. "I'm sorry. I'm panicky, which is really new for me and I don't know how to deal with it."

"You never panic?" she keeps her body side on to his, defensive.

"Only ever about myself so this is different. It's you," he smiles softly down at her, hands messaging her shoulders, turning her to face him and she breathes out. He lifts a hand to brush a curl of hair away from her face. "Members of your coven are still here, everyone else I told to get out…or they're in the hospital wing," he adds reluctantly.

"Were they badly injured?"

Kai opens his mouth, hesitates and Bonnie tilts her head. He sighs down at her. "The Greek ascendant drained magic from exactly thirteen witches and it hasn't stopped. They're gonna be sapped dry if we don't find a way to stop it."

"What?"

"It's like an IV is attached to them and their magic is disappearing drip by drip. It's happening slowly because the ascendants are now scattered over the ballroom, all mixed up together. We can't get close, it's crazy in there but when pieces fit together the more magic those witches lose. If they leave the palace…"

"They'll die…" she whispers and sits on the edge of the bed. They have to find a way to stop it. She regards Kai, who sits beside her and slumps over, elbows on his knees. "Are you okay?" she asks quietly.

"I'm fine and so are you. I thought your magic would be gone but the talisman around your neck is working overtime. I think it's protecting you."

Bonnie smiles, fingering the pendant that once belonged to her ancestor. Could it be Qetsiyah somehow? She is apparently long dead but her magic still flows through the talisman. An essence. Some believe that Silas is immortal and trapped in the world on the other side of the device. It only started acting wild once the bone talisman came into contact with it. What if Silas thought the person wearing the necklace was his wife? What if he wanted to drag her into his prison? Joshua Parker activing the 1994 ascendant may have just saved her life.

Kai gazes at her intently. "What are you thinking?"

"Can't guess?" Bonnie's mouth curls, head cocking so her hair brushes her thigh.

"I'm sustaining this place in our minds, little busy," he smiles softly and she allows herself the time to stare at his face. He looks so tired, his humour covering anger and fear. Once he may have been able to mask his every thought but now they flash like neon. She reaches over and takes his hand.

"You're keeping me here?"

He nods. "Both of us are anchored to the dream. See if you can find your totem," he urges playfully and Bonnie plays along, needing the distraction, and searches around the bedroom. He follows at her back, hand still in hers. The oak wardrobe is empty and so is the bathroom before she finds something hanging up on the outside of the wardrobe: a black gi and belt. It's the only thing aside from them that does not glow and flicker.

"Karate?"

"Look at the back," he orders and she turns the jacket and promptly bursts out laughing.

"Cobra Kai?"

"Yeah, like Karate Kid?"

"Of course you'd side with the bullies."

"Daniel was a pussy."

"Daniel won," she reminds him but he waves a dismissive hand and she hangs the gi back up. "Hmm, what's me..?" she moves to the vanity and sees amidst silk scarves and beaded necklaces something round shining. She pulls the fabric aside and finds a snow globe.

"Does it fit?" he asks as she lifts it into her hands and her heart squeezes. Inside the watery dome is a pair of pink ballerina slippers. She had told Kai and demonstrated that she used to dance semi-professionally. The object in her hands is an exact replica of a gift her father had once given her and it still sits in her old room. Tears in her eyes she tips it upside down and watches as flecks of plastic snow swoop.

"It's perfect. How did you know?"

"I asked your grandmother and she sent me a picture. She and your dad are on their way," he adds and Bonnie looks up from the swirling water to him.

"My dad is coming?" she had expected and hoped for her grandmother but knowing that her father is also coming makes the brave armour she had been clinging to crumble. Crying she sits back down on the bed, the snow globe in her lap.

"I spoke to Rudy, never really got the chance before. He's a scary dude. He – well he kinda hates me?" he laughs and Bonnie joins him. "It's a nice, normal kinda hate. I'm the bad man who's taken his little girl away."

Bonnie shakes her head, wiping her cheeks. "He doesn't like that I'm a witch and married to another. He blames it for mom leaving. She – she used to be the town witch, helping and helping like I used to. I guess she got sick of it one day…" she trails off, her resentment tinged with understanding. Bennett witches have an altruistic streak that can and has gotten them killed.

Kai rubs the back of her hand. "What if I was normal, would he like me then?"

"If you were human…he'd still hate you," she laughs and from under the globe she winds up a jack and sets the gift down on the vanity unit. Swan Lake plays faintly and she sighs.

"Hmm in some other world I would have swept ballerina Bonnie off her slippers."

"You think? And what would you be?"

"A gorgeous version of Gordon Ramsey," he says seriously and she laughs again, sitting back down. "I'd have a chain of elite restaurants; people have to wait months for a table. You'd come in one day to escape the press and rain and I'd be there. It's late and empty. You don't know it's me and I invite you back and make you the best sandwich you've ever had. You'll say that more than once."

"And then?"

"We'd talk and then fuck on a table while I lick cream off your body."

"Huh. I think I've seen this porno."

"Really? I thought I was being original," he looks crestfallen but his eyes are aflame with a frisky lust. He moves the tendrils of her hair away from her shoulder and neck and she tilts her head back, looking at the snow globe as he leans closer, his hand on her thigh.

"Will you stay with me while I fall asleep?" she asks quietly, looking at the pink slippers in the empty glass and Kai leans back and then gently tilts her face to him. His eyes flick from her eyes to her full lips before nodding.

"You can only leave the dream chamber once you smash the globe. It's the anchor. Another one," he adds dryly.

"Same with Cobra Kai?" she asks and he nods as they move back into the bed together. He is dressed in grey sweatpants and a white t-shirt and she presses her face against the soft cotton over his chest as they lie together. She knows with a cold surety that when the globe shatters she will wake alone so she intends to keep him with her for as long as possible.

"You can't stay in here forever, it messes with your head," he says as if reading her mind. "You know fun stuff like screwy perceptions of reality and never waking up."

"Hmm, like Inception."

"Huh? Oh, still haven't seen that. It's on my to-watch list."

"How long is your list now?"

"Four hundred and forty two and counting…and that's just the Simpsons," he enfolds her in his arms, their legs tangled together and he is right about the dangers of the chamber because this feels too real. She presses her ear to his chest and hears his heartbeat and feels the thud of her own. The dream is more real than the prison world she is trapped in. There she feels like a ghost.

"The Greek Ascendant is here too. A projection like me I guess. It's trying to reassemble but it's taking a long time. What happens if it does?"

"There? I don't know. Is the ballroom wild like mine is?"

She shakes her head. "It's the most powerful thing in the prison world. Maybe…"

"What?"

"Maybe I can channel it?"

Kai looks down at her, brow furrowed. "You think that's going to work? Last night it channelled us. It was like a siphoning black hole."

"I know" she says tiredly, thinking of her dreams and even further back to her coming of age display. Kai had made her sun go supernova and collapse. Had that been a hint, a ripple of things to come? Pushing aside these unanswerable questions she moves until she is lying on top of him, his arms around her back. "I'm just saying I'm not going to be waiting to be rescued. There's magic here, even if it's just an echo, it's still a lot. If I don't do something I'll – I'll…" she can't finish. Kai looks at her with empathy.

"I know…Okay, put it together but don't let that thing near it," he says, tapping the talisman and Bonnie nods.

She sighs and gazes down at him. "I still can't believe this has happened. I wish my body got sent too, at least you'd be able to get me out."

"Ah…" he winces and she lifts her eyebrows, waiting for him to carry on. He reaches for her left hand and rubs his thumb along the gold ring he had given her. "You and this ring act as my anchor. If you're in the real world and you call me, I come to you…"

"But not if I'm in retro hell?"

He nods. "I can get there but I wouldn't be able to leave if you're still there too. You'd tug me back. Does that make sense?"

She nods, placing her hands against his shoulders. "So I would need my own anchor."

"Luckily only a part of you is there so maybe a tether isn't needed. Or…" his eyes flicker as he thinks, unfocused and Bonnie comes to the answer as he does.

"My body is the anchor!"

"Right, because it's just your consciousness that needs to be reeled back in. When I wake up I'll make you an anchor anyway, just to be safe," he smiles and exhales in relief. "I think this will work."

"But how do I pull myself back?"

They stare at each other in silence, no answers coming until Kai shrugs. "We'll figure it out."

Bonnie smiles weakly and leans her head down until her mouth is above his, barely touching. The corner of her lips curl as he exhales a breath, a moan. Kai runs his hands down her back, the soft fabric of her dark golden camisole crinkling in his hands. He pouts a little.

"This would be the perfect opportunity to rip that sexy dress off you with no actual damage."

"Hmm but what if the dress in the real world bares the effects of your caveman hands?"

He looks offended and lifts his hands off her ass. "Caveman? These hands are made for tinkling ivories, knives and Bonnie Bennett," he demonstrates by tapping his fingers quick and lightly along her bare back, making her shudder and then gasp as he reaches down and strokes the back of her knee gently over and over and she closes her eye at the wonderful sensation. Did he know that was an erogenous zone for her? His hands have stroked and caressed every inch of her so he must.

"Kai…should we be doing this?"

"Yes? Why not?" he slides his hands under the camisole, palming her ass. "Back in the real world we're asleep."

"I know…" she breathes heavily, which she knows in an affectation but then so is the arousal pooling between her legs. "The last time we had sex was -"

"A thousand years ago? Another world?" he grins, rubbing his nose against hers and then relents, growing serious. "Do you want to? Is it too soon? Weird?"

"It's something…" she smirks, knowing it is a distraction, a comfort, but one she desperately needs. "You promise no one can get to my body?" she asks and he stops, even the lust cools as he cups her face.

"No one. You're thinking about my coven?"

"Your dad. He used the ascendant on me for the safety of everyone but we both know he just hit two birds with one stone. If something happens to me in the real world…" there's no point creating a tether for her mind if there's no body to get back to.

"You are safe, I've put layer after layer of wards around you and the room. It's practically a spider's web, trapping anyone uninvited. No one but me touches you," he says firmly, repeating what he had told her earlier but for very different reasons. "My dad is in a wheelchair. I fucked him up pretty good."

The rage that lies under his detached tone is white hot. Bonnie remembers what she saw in the ballroom. "He's a siphoner, I saw it, felt it," she whispers and his face flinches, his jaw clenching hard.

"I never suspected, no one did. Hypocritical, self-loathing asshole kept that a secret from everyone. The coven is running around like chickens, don't know which person to actually take orders from: the dirty siphoner or the other dirty siphoner?" he snorts, looking bitterly up at the bed canopy.

Bonnie rubs his chest as he turns his face to her. "If your speech at dinner was true and you really do have my coven's back…they'll have yours," she says and Kai nods, inhaling before he smiles, his index finger brushing along her nose.

"Still haven't answered me."

"About what?"

"Can I rip your dress off?"

Her lips quirk. "This isn't a dress."

Kai growls and before she can say anything else he rolls her over, straddling her and proceeds to demonstrate that ripping a thin camisole off her body is just as thrilling as a multi thousand dollar dress. He makes her keep the tiara on.

---

An eldritch world.

Days pass and each night he joins her. Waking up in the same room, the same bed but alone is distressing and disorientating so Kai refurbishes his dream chamber to a room she has only glimpsed once through a mirror. His bedroom in Portland is large, shelves lined with books, DVDS and countless CDs. All are empty in this make believe and she hopes that one day she can pursue at her leisure.

Her nights are his but the rest of the day she wanders through the empty palace, following Kai's instructions as she searches one morning for a cloaked library. It is meant to house manuscripts about astral projection that might help her. The Gemini, witches who are probably the most skilled at concealment, have lost entire buildings over the years because of their penchant for not sharing the location of these places. The library is apparently not lost but Bonnie has spent hours repeating the same two words and the only things to materialise are a locked vault and a chest full of real phoenix feathers.

"Phasmatos Oculix …and nothing, wow," she sighs, slumping against a wall. She is in the east wing, where Kai says it should be but maybe he is wrong. Buttoning her cardigan Bonnie opens a random door and walks into a bedroom, a four poster taking up most of the space. She had raided wardrobes for clothes that fit her and found a bedroom in the west wing that once belonged to a Booth, judging from the photographs around the room. During 1994 Joshua Parker was the coven leader but the palace was occupied by the Booth-Parker's, who she views as something like regents. Kai might be the leader but if he goes back to America she has no doubt the rest of England will continue to think of the Booth's as the leading family of the Gemini.

"If he goes…" she murmurs, tugging on white sheets covering tables. Sighing she walks through the room and out, which leads her to the other side of the wing. It is the first time she has ventured to this part of the palace. At first she sees nothing wrong with the view, for days the mist that has rolled off the river has grown dense, to the point that it is starting to encroach on the palace. Sometimes she sees nothing but a whirling dull whiteness. Other times the skies are blue. She takes a second look as something drifts down and settles against the windowpanes. England during May is chilly but cold enough for snow? Pressing her fingertips against the freezing glass she looks up from the melting snowflake and her eyes widen. Snow blankets the grounds, weighing down tree branches and dusting the freezing the lake.

"…What?" Bonnie closes her eyes tight, counts to five and then opens them. Winter covers the park, the fog gone with falling snow in its place. Confused and wondering yet again if she is starting to lose her mind Bonnie races back into the bedroom and out to the other side of the wing, running to a window.

Daffodils droop in the dense mist and the sun is a glowing glob of light in a foggy sky. No snow. Bonnie backs away, shaking her head and steeling her nerve she makes her way down to the grounds. Finding a servant's entrance Bonnie stands on the threshold, coldness enveloping her body, making her cross her arms over her chest. The snow is compact and when she steps in it she leaves a footprint.

"It's real…"

---

After an hour of skirting the edge of the palace grounds she summarises that the entire west wing is spring and the end of the east wing and grounds is winter. The year becomes apparent when she stumbles across the infirmary with instruments dated clearly from the turn of the century. Taking a gas lamp with her to remind herself that she is not imagining things Bonnie sits in the ballroom, which is unchanged. However the ascendant is slowly coming together. Too slowly. The strange gas lamp by her knee Bonnie leans over and with a hesitant hand she touches a part of the device. Magic surges over her fingers, making her gasp and snatch her hand back.

"You're not really here. Your corporal form is in the real world, like mine…but we still have magic," she stares at the device, watching parts of it shudder, and sits crossed legged. Where magic resides is a topic as contested as the notion of where the soul sits. She is not really here physically, though she can interact with her surroundings, but magic is still an integral part of her. She can cast spells and they have an effect.

"But it's not strong, it's a shadow…" she and device are in the same predicament, they need to be reunited with their corporal forms to access their full power. Shadows without a body. Fingering the talisman Bonnie leans over and daringly she pushes two pieces closer and they connect with a satisfying click. She looks up and a woman in a long green dress and waist length dark hair stares at her with a matching expression of shock. Bonnie snatches her hand back as the woman gasps and just before she disappears Bonnie sees something metallic tumbling out of her grasp.

---

"She was real Kai!"

"Back up. You're saying one side of the building is 1994 and the other..?"

"Is 1903. I know it sounds crazy but I swear it's true," she leans on the edge of his desk as Kai sits up in bed. She had found a journal in the infirmary, the date written in it.

"I believe you. Once, I think it was 1998, my dad got really sick, like sick enough to croak. The prison world started acting weird and one day I woke up to a foot of snow covering the car I was sleeping in. This was in Florida. He got better and it was spring time for Kai and America," he singsongs but his mocking smile is tight. Since she entered the chamber Kai has been suspiciously quiet until now, his gaze heavy with unsaid words. Bonnie moves to sit on the edge of the bed, cocking her head.

"Is everything okay?"

"What if we try a kick?" he asks and the question is so strange she bypasses the fact he had not answered her.

"What?"

"I asked Liv about that movie you mentioned, Inception. She said that when the characters were stuck deep in dreams the only way to bring them back was to physically jolt their real bodies."

"I'm not dreaming. I mean this is a dream…" Bonnie laughs, confused but he understands. "Seeing as I haven't jolted awake I take it you're taking good care of me?"

He smiles and the tension lessens. He leans over and pulls her to him and she settles back against his chest. "It's just a theory but I could float you above the bed and then let you fall. The shock might do something."

She shrugs, agreeing. They have found no help in the Archives or with the seers yet and taking a cue from a movie, though odd, can't hurt. Kai kisses the top of her head, arms around her body. She thinks back to the barely concealed agitation on his face since she got to the chamber and brushes her fingers lightly up and down his arm.

"How's your father?"

He huffs a laugh, arms tightening around her. "Still alive. He's pretending like the fight never happened but everyone saw, everyone knows…he wants to quarantine the ballroom," he adds and Bonnie turns in his arms. Is this what has been troubling him?

"Well that's a good thing right? You said it's unstable?"

Kai shakes his head, nostrils flaring. "He wants to seal it off for good. The ascendants are merging."

"What?" her mouth falls open.

"Both devices are almost exactly the same and different parts are clicking together. Every time it happens the magic swells. No one can get close enough to stop it, not even witches from the Armoury, and any magic we send it just eats. I have to get you out before it fully merges because when it does I don't know what will happen to you or the world you're in."

He gazes at her with worry and her stomach is flipping over. "Maybe – maybe that's why I can see another time period and that woman? You said your dad was dying when you saw snow in Florida but you're okay, aren't you?"

He nods, sighing and getting to his knees he draws her up into his arms. "Who do you think she was?"

"I don't know. She was there for a second, I didn't get a good look at her but I'm certain she was holding an ascendant." Bonnie grips the talisman in her hand, already planning on finding a way to see the woman again.

"Your immediate family is arriving soon, I'll have to go, got more questions to answer that I've already said a hundred times," he says irritably but Bonnie's heart jumps with excitement, paying little attention to what he added.

"Can my family come here?"

"You grandmother says she's got her own version. This is ours," he says and kisses her softly, cupping her face. "Your coven is doing everything they can to help…and so are mine, finally," he adds and Bonnie.

"Really?"

"Yeah after they realised they had been lied to for decades by my dad they've started to turn to me. I'm still a freaky siphoner but I never hid that from them. They want to stop the ascendants merging more than getting you out but they also know what will happen if they hinder that rescue in any way. Locking the council up really put a fire under their asses."

Her eyes widen and she leans back. "You really have imprisoned them?!"

"Yes. Those who have seen the error of their idiotic ways are free. The others are stubborn assholes and they can rot. They have done nothing but undermine me and generally make my life a hell. I'm tired of playing nice, that's not who I am, not with people like that," he shakes his head, deathly serious and she keeps silent, knowing that nothing she can say will change his mind. He is a leader and she sees now he is one to fear but with a coven like his it's the only way to keep order. Sounds exhausting.

"So…anything else?"

Kai smiles, relaxing. He pulls them back so she is resting against his chest again, caught between his legs. "Elena got in contact. They haven't done the unlinking ritual yet, she and Klaus found out Elijah was going to risk his life and they stopped him so now they're trying to find another Original they can play genuine pig with. Apparently their long lost father is entombed somewhere and he has one other sire, some vampire in Monroe. So if she lives it's safe to unlink the rest of them."

Bonnie nods, only half listening, because Kai's hand has slipped under her night gown. His fingers circle slowly between her thighs as he speaks. He acts like he is not, muttering mundane things in her ear as he fingers her while his left hand slides up and down her hip. Bonnie groans, letting her head fall back against his shoulder before she grinds her ass into his groin, making his voice hitch.

"She's – she's going to come see you in a few days. I begged her to invite Elijah, I kinda love him," he breathes, hand gripping her thigh, pulling it back. Bonnie closes her eyes, nodding but when he starts talking about the history of vampires entering the palace she reaches back and covers his mouth. He sucks on her fingers and she moans loudly, her hips bucking and unable to stand it any longer he pushes her onto her hands and knees, flipping the nightgown over her hips. He enters her in in one hard thrust and she laughs as the overly padded mattress bounces and rocks with their wild movements.

"We – we have to stop doing this here," Kai groans, hands on her hips as he hammers into her.

"Why?"

"Because it'll be so much better when you get out and we haven't touched."

"Delayed gratification? Oh god, please keep doing that," she pleads, gripping the sheets as he grinds his cock, magic brushing her clit delicately, driving her mad.

"When – when I saw you in the mall that first time I didn't touch another woman until I married you. Waiting for you was so fucking worth it."

"The honeymoon? You waited all those years?"

Kai slows, pulling out and rolls her over and then rests his weight on his forearms. He kisses her gently, brushing her hair back as he moves inside again with slow, gentle strokes. "I'm patient but I have no intention of waiting that long to really be with you again. I will be with you, one way or another," his promise is deep and dark and he seals it with a kiss that is just as intense, a kiss that sucks all the questions and doubts away. Afterwards, sated and wrapped up in strong arms she sighs with regret as he points at his totem keeping him anchored to the dream and sets it on fire. At the same time she flicks her hand at the snow globe on the bedside table and tips it over the edge. They always agree to leave the chamber at the same time.

Bonnie wakes up but Kai and the snow globe are gone. She peers at the newspaper she keeps by the bedside and seeing the date she nods with a weary disappointment and rolls back over. An Inception kick does not work because no matter the oddness of her existence this world is not a dream. There's nothing to wake up from.

---

More days pass but with no eclipse overhead she loses track of how many and after awhile Kai avoids telling her. Her grandmother had pulled Bonnie into her own chamber many times since her arrival, which was a perfect representation of her kitchen back in Mystic Falls.

"Nothing like this has happened before but we're all working hard to find a way to free you," she had said with a smile but it was strained. With some coaxing she tells Bonnie the truth, a truth that Kai had no heart to tell. Bonnie blinks when Sheila stops talking, the warm coffee mug between her hands forgotten.

"The Armoury are investigating what happened?"

Sheila nodded. "With so many high ranking witches struck down they have to. They want to take the device, lock it away."

"Well that's a good thing, right?"

Her grandmother slowly shakes her head and then takes Bonnie's hands. "They agree with Joshua Parker, they don't want to risk it assembling. They want to find a way to remove the pieces from the palace."

Bonnie blinks, breathing becoming shallow. "But if they do that I might not be able to return."

"They're aware," Sheila says, eyes flinty. "Bonnie…they suspect that you attacked the witches."

"What?!"

"You were holding the devices, one of which targeted exactly thirteen witches from different covens. They think it was deliberate."

"But – but it wasn't!" Bonnie stares at her grams open mouthed, appalled.

"I know and I told them that, along with every coven leader in attendance. No one believes you had anything to do with it but…"

"They have to investigate every possibility," Bonnie concludes, shaking her head. "Do they think I had something to do with my family disappearing too?" she half jokes and a composed mask settles over her grandmother's face, hiding the flash of rage there. Bonnie sits up right, eyes blazing. "They do!?"

"Bonnie they have nothing. You have a concrete alibi, you were at Whitmore. You didn't do anything but we both know who did."

Joshua Parker.

Bonnie sits back, trying to calm herself. It must look suspect, she concedes. Thirteen witches stood between her and the coven throne and they all got knocked aside so her path was clear. Both incidents involve the Greek ascendant. Do they know that?

"Kai is dealing with them. Atticus thinks he's found a spell that might work to bring your consciousness back to your body but we won't know unless the 1994 ascendant is complete. The pieces, they're fusing and the thirteen witches who were hurt are growing weak."

"There has to be a way without harming anyone…"

The question goes unanswered until that night when Kai paces the floor of his dreamscape apartment. They had argued fiercely about him keeping the Armoury investigation from her, Kai not wanting to burden her with the truth when she had so much to deal with. He had been quick to inform her that he has gladly thrown his father to the wolves, the real culprit, and the suspicions about her innocence have been diverted, for now. If Joshua Parker can wriggle out of it remains to be seen. Either way her coven and Kai have denied all accusations against her vehemently.

"The Greek ascendant is sucking all the magic from the witches in the infirmary. What if I act as a conduit?"

Bonnie blinks at his sudden question. "What?"

"I siphon the magic it's taking, stop it absorbing. Maybe we'd have a chance to dampen it, put it together and get you back."

His eyes are alight with the idea and hope ignites in her stomach, even as she shakes her head. "Thirteen witches? Can you manage that much?"

"It'll be fine."

"Kai."

"I can handle it," he says and sits beside her, staring into her eyes but Bonnie is not convinced. The last time he gorged on so much magic he completely lost control. Though she can't blame magic for those crimes…

"Well I won't be able to handle it if something bad happens. What about other siphoners?"

"What?" he leans back, jaw clenching like he had not even thought of the idea.

"If you can find others, ask them to help then maybe it won't just fall on you."

"Other siphoners?"

"Yeah, think about it. If they absorb the magic temporally, act as a conduit, then they could all be safely moved out of the palace and away from the device. They'd be saving lives with a power that your coven has hated for generations. Think of the good it could do," she smiles, imagining it and Kai stares at her in silence before he starts to slowly nod.

"Okay, I'll look into it," he says but he does not seem convinced. Bonnie stands, inhaling and looks at the snow globe on the nightstand.

"I want to piece my shadow ascendant together. I think if I do I can see that woman again," she had tried but so far she had been unsuccessful at glimpsing her. Maybe she had been a ghost? Kai comes to her side and gazes at her deeply, opens his mouth but then shuts it. Bonnie smiles, cocking her head.

"What?"

"I found something, part of a spell. I had to improvise but if things go south…"

"I don't want anything to happen to those witches." So many, including Luka Martin. He had just become leader of his coven, a whole rich life ahead of him...

Kai's mouth snarls. "I don't care about them. You think I wouldn't sacrifice them in a heartbeat for you?"

"I don't want to hear this," she crosses her arms over her chest, looking away in anger.

"It's true. The device is the only way to get you back but it almost killed you. Putting the shadow version together…" he trails off, inhaling deeply. "I wish there was another way to get you back."

"What else can we do? Do you want me to be stuck here alone forever?"

"Not alone. The spell I found, I think I can use it to project my mind to you," he speaks softly, hands on her arms and Bonnie shakes her head slowly.

"But you'd be like me."

"I'm not leaving you there alone, only ever seeing you in dreams. I wake up and it kills me to see you lying next to me but you're empty. If you can't come back to me then I'm going to you."

"No, you're not." She tugs herself out of his grasp, face set and angry. "Knowing that you're free, that you're fighting for me is my tether to the real world, do you understand? You give me hope and you want to cut it? What about what I want?"

"I don't deserve this fate."

"I don't but you sharing it would be worse. It means you're giving up. If you are then what hope do I have?"

"I love you," he says quietly, meaning every word and she smiles softly.

"I know you do, I know and I think - I think I could too," she admits fragilely and he inhales another deep breath, eyes fixed on hers. "We've only just begun but if you strand yourself with me then it's over. I want to live with you in the real world, I want to be with people, my friends and family…I want my life back."

He nods, looking down. He snorts softly. "I'm a selfish asshole. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise…just don't give up," she stresses and he looks up and his expression is fiercely loving. He leans down and kisses her roughly, hands tangling in her hair and she returns the kiss just as intensely.

---

Shadows

Days bleed together, the disorientation she feels reflected back at her through the windows of the palace. She had taken the fog to be part of 1994 but as it creeps closer to the building she sees her mistake. Dark shapes materialise, ancient oak and ash that replace the manicured hedges of the maze and rectangular, manmade lake. The fog, like the snow, is from another time, another world.

Which one is answered the day Bonnie successfully resembles the Greek ascendant. She had done so with a manic energy, frightened that with each piece she would be dissolved into fibres of magic but her desperation to get out outweighs her fear. If Kai snaps and traps his mind with her…She needs magic, more magic then she has.

Kai has been searching the world for siphoners, ordering the Gemini members to collect and present them to him. He had told her with an ill-disguised disgust that most of them had not practised magic for years, instead shunning that dry and empty part of them in favour of a normal, ordinary existence. His disgust had not been from their refusal to embrace their heritage but rather each and every one had been convinced since birth to do so. What use is a siphoner in a world that hates you for being a literal drain? Better to hide and forget, better to live a decent, human life.

He was met with resistance, in some cases violent, and he had been hedgy about how he managed to convince thirteen of them but Bonnie knows that each of those siphoners are now gauged on magic and Kai, who has been keeping hold of his control by fingertips, would drown them in magic if it meant she was released. Today the thirteen sick witches would be moved from the palace, if they are successful in siphoning their magic away from the ascendant.

"Thirteen witches…" Bonnie murmurs as she places two wheels together but they push against each other and she discards them. The correct pieces click together like magnets but repel the parts that do not fit. Her family had been thirteen when they linked together to destroy the Greek ascendant. It may be a coincidence, the witches at the ball had been struck at random. All from different high covens. Hers and Kai's had been spared…another suspicion in the mind of the Armoury.

"Thirteen, thirteen, thirteen," whispering repeatedly she slots a cog onto place with a satisfying click. A circle of witches is a powerful thing and with that number they can do amazing and terrible feats of magic. That is why a circle is meant to be monitored and agreed by the Summit of covens. Her coven's attempt at destroying the ascendant had been kept a secret, though Joshua Parker had heard whispers and investigated. It angers her and Kai to know that his father and Ernestine Bennett had exactly the same fears and desire: they had not wanted the ascendant destroyed but hidden. Hidden by who would have been the rub but no one would have died.

"If they had just been open and talked then none of this would have happened…" she shakes her head, looking at the window as fog swirls around it. If her family had not formed a circle and disappeared then she and Kai would have never been married. He would be married to Lucy and Bonnie would be back in Mystic Falls instead of stuck in this twilight world, only catching glimpses of her husband in dreams. If Joshua Parker is right the marriage between her and Kai would be forfeit if her cousin returns. What if she stays in this world and Lucy returns? What would Kai do?

"He'd come here, he'd trap himself with me," that idea is preferable to the first one that immediately came to mind. He said that the Gemini coven can make accidents happen to their enemies and no one would suspect. Her cousin would not last a week.

Casting this dark thought aside Bonnie looks down and gasps. The Greek ascendant sits complete in the palm of her hand; she had not even felt it. Moving as if a wild beast sits perfectly still in her hand Bonnie reaches for the talisman lying against her chest, careful not to let them touch. Gripping the bone she inhales and then whispers the spell to active the device.

After a long, tense pause the metal contraption begins to whirl and spin, the wheels and cogs moving. Magic washes over her, not the consuming kind that ripped her in half and left her mind to be sucked into the 1994 prison world like a leaf down a storm drain. The talisman burns against her hand, magic pumping through it. Bonnie looks up and stops breathing. The woman she had glimpsed stands clearly before her, watching silently. She is a few years older than herself, with long hair and tan skin. She is stunning and her brown eyes are bright and fiercely intelligent. Behind her the ballroom is gone. Instead Bonnie can see a rocky, dark wall and fire. All is out of focus except the woman and the ascendant clearly grasped in her hand, a replica of the one held in her own.

"…Hi?" Bonnie says, her mouth dry and the woman cocks her head in confusion and begins speaking in a language that Bonnie does not recognise at first. She catches a few words and realises that the woman is speaking Greek. Ancient Greek. Bonnie tries a few words and the woman's eyes widen in excitement before she lifts a hand for silence and turns to speak to someone Bonnie cannot see. The woman mutters something, eyes closed and as she finishes the spell Bonnie feels a pleasant tingle, like someone is blowing air softly into the shell of her ears.

"…I should be able to comprehend you now," the woman says, her Mediterranean accent thick and Bonnie nods vigorously.

"Yes! I can understand you. Who – who are you?"

"My name is Cassia. Who are you? When are you?" she asks excitedly, taking in Bonnie's appearance from tiptoes to the top of her head. She is dressed in jeans, chucks and a blue and white tie-die t-shirt.

"I'm – I'm Bonnie Bennett. I'm a witch. The year is…complicated but I come from 2016. The future," she adds, looking at the woman's floor length cotton dress.

Cassia inhales sharply and then a huge grin breaks over her face. She reaches behind her and begins slapping the back of her hand against the chest of someone Bonnie can only vaguely see.

"It worked! It worked!"

Her excitement is strangely adorable but Bonnie is confused. "What worked? Are – are you in a prison world too?"

Cassia frowns and slowly shakes her head, not understanding. "You have my device, I can feel it is the same one. You also carry my talisman," she points at her neck and Bonnie realises the woman is wearing one too. Again an exact copy.

Her stomach flips over but the woman carries on speaking. "I was successful this time because you hold my items. There has to be a point of contact, something to join us together through the years," she muses with a scientist's scrutiny but Bonnie barely hears.

"Are you Qetsiyah?"

"I am, though I go by Cassia," she smiles, eyes narrowing. "You know of me?"

"I…I'm one of your descendants," she says and Qetsiyah – Cassia – smiles again, looking back again at the person who Bonnie can only make out faintly. Someone tall, a man.

"Our children endure for millennia. Another connection," she says and turns back to Bonnie, who suspects with a sick feeling who the man is and with this realisation the truth of what is happening finally hits her. She has not just glimpsed into another prison world, she is conversing with a witch who lived two thousand years ago.

"Is this time travel?" Hadn't Kai said this offhandedly, the awesome power that her ancestor and his had mastered?

"Of a sorts. My husband and I created the device to observe times long past and what might be. We had only been successful in capturing moments, entire worlds that endure but repeat from sunset to sunrise. Only those days when we used the devices. This – this is a miracle," she shudders out a breath, success and pride written over her face.

"So the other worlds, they were a mistake? There's more than one?"

"Yes. An unforeseen side effect but now I see maybe I was wrong. You reside in one now?" she paces back and forth, like a panther. Power radiates off the woman and Bonnie remembers the stories about the witch that children are told to scare them, morality tales about the danger of disregarding boundaries. This woman cursed them all because she had been scorned…

"I'm in a world but – but only half here," she says and explains as best she can about her mind being separated from her body but Cassia interrupts, nodding.

"That is how I am here. I only ever send a part of myself through the nexus device, to send my body too would be dangerous."

Bonnie steps closer, eyes alight. "How do you send your mind back?"

"Don't you know?"

"No," she shakes her head, gripping the talisman and device tightly. Her ancestor smiles at her with pity.

"You must free your mind from the world you are in. Your body, the magic within it, will strive to reel it back."

"But how?"

"You must die," she says softly and then watches Bonnie's face carefully. "Close to death your mind and body will reunite like two drops of water."

Bonnie stares at the witch but her mind is focused on memories. The first day she had been here she had heard Kai and Shane, as if they were right beside her but not since that day had she felt anything similar. She had almost died, her heart had stopped…

"Die here? But – but I'm just a projection."

"Your mind will make it real, become adrift in the void, and your body will act accordingly to rescue you."

The Void? "But what if my mind does not come back?" the image of her consciousness lost on the wind like a balloon, being blown further and further away makes her feel nauseous.

"You have to fight to return," she shrugs, as if this is normal for her, nothing of consequence. Bonnie frowns heavily.

"I have to leave soon. This world is bleeding at the seams, they all are. I didn't choose to come here, the device that you're holding; in the future it becomes unstable. It's devouring magic. Can't you feel how powerful it is compared to yours?"

Cassia shakes her head in confusion, looking at the device in her hand which looks new and not oozing with magic like the one in the real world. She turns to the man beside her, speaking quietly. Bonnie tries to make him out but she just has an impression of a strong body and hears nothing.

"Is that Silas?"

Cassia looks back, distracted. "Yes. She knows of you husband…yes your renowned glory cast its light even into the murk of the future," she rolls her eyes, laughing and Bonnie looks between the two figures. Whatever time they inhabit it is clear the couple are not enemies yet.

"You're married?"

"Yes, recently. I am also with child or do you know that too?" she asks with a mischievous glint and Bonnie looks at the slight curve to the woman's stomach. Cassia places her hand there. "Twins."

Bonnie nods and gives the clearly happy woman a struggling smile. "Congratulations. I suppose it runs in the family?"

At this Qetsiyah's smile drops like a brick and something dark shutters her eyes. She cocks her head and lowers her hand. "For everyone's sake let us hope that is the only thing emulated," she fingers the talisman, scraping her nails down it. Shane had told her it was made from the bone of a witch who wronged her.

"He made that for you? A gift?"

"Not a gift, a promise. Vows should be kept at all cost and when they are not…a price must be paid. His brother, his twin, learned that the hard way. He broke a promise, betrayed me as no woman should have to endure and his magic was taken in turn, along with his life. Now my husband is twice as strong, our coven without equal."

The merge. It seems it had not been done as a quest for power but as a tool of revenge. She had wondered what wrong had made Silas kill his own twin and curve out his breast bone but now looking at the broken but furious look on the woman's face Bonnie can guess. Silas takes her hand, whispering something and she leans back against him. How can these two become enemies? Splitting their coven in two and inciting war in the process? The love on her face is fierce and pure, the kind that would topple empires but Silas…he is unknown, a betrayer like his dead twin. He will betray his wife, his children and coven. If Kai made her a promise would he break it?

No, he'd die before that…

Cassia tilts her head at the anguished look on Bonnie's face. "You are so troubled…Fear not, you will be free, I promise. Are you married?"

Bonnie nods stiffly. "He's the Gemini leader, like Silas. It was arranged."

"Gemini?" she asks and Bonnie laughs tiredly.

"Sorry, guess you haven't settled on a name yet…" she looks at the window and sees the sun is almost setting. Kai will be expecting her soon, to tell her if the attempt to free the thirteen witches is successful. Thirteen, the number rings faintly though her mind again.

"I must go soon, speaking with you over such a distance is draining. But there is so much that I wish to know. You are married to a leader? The same position and coven as my husband?" she asks and looks back, speaking with Silas and she smiles. "Gemini. He loves the name, he thanks you for the suggestion."

"He – he's welcome?" This is bizarre, so very bizarre. "You're using your power to connect to me? Can I do the same?"

"Not with the type of magic you wield," she states simply and Bonnie recalls the legends that Silas and Qetsiyah used a rare and dark form of magic. Thirteen.

"Thirteen sacrifices," Bonnie blurts out, the number finally making sense. She shocks the witch momentarily before a crafty look comes over her face.

"What do you know if it?"

"Something – something happened to my family, my coven. Thirteen witches went missing, they used the ascendant in your hand and I think ended up in another world. A dangerous place filled with monsters. They – they may be dead," Bonnie explains and Cassia's eyebrow lift but she says nothing so Bonnie carries on. "Thirteen other witches, each from a different coven, were attacked by the same device, their magic siphoned."

"Siphoned?"

"It consumes magic, like some witches do," Bonnie explains but again Cassia looks mystified and Bonnie realises that no siphoners exist for this woman yet. She looks at the pregnant stomach and wonders. "It seems a big conscience. Thirteen."

"The number to create a circle, of course, but this sounds like a sacrifice. Not a full triangle, yet," she adds thoughtfully and it's Bonnie's turn to look confused and Cassia explains. "From what you have explained two sacrifices have been made, using two groups of magic. A third of another thirteen would create a nexus of rare and powerful magic that only I and my beloved wield. It is pure, sprung from death and controlled by a witch's focus and will. It is the power of divinity," she says with a sweet smile that makes Bonnie wants to throw up. It's the kind of smile a queen would wear standing on the heaped bones of her enemies. Sated and content with bloody victory.

"Dark magic."

"No. It is power, a thing that wants to be used, a thing born out of death but holds the embers of life. Many have tried to harness it's might but most are consumed. You must have a complete iron will but also a hungry heart, always seeking and creating, always expressing your desire for something more…but you must restore balance for the blood spilt. That is where others failed, you must wield it to appease nature, not overthrow. How do you think we are even conversing now or hold that device in your hand?"

"Why are you telling me this?"

Qetsiyah smiles and shrugs. "You're the one you asked about thirteen…and maybe I see a heart once like mine. It can withstand much."

Bonnie looks down, the bone hot in her other hand. "So – so using this to travel in time was a way to restore balance?"

"To right a wrong, yes but I think somethings nature will not yield," she says with a bitter resignation, tapping the bone before she sighs. She does look exhausted. "Three sacrifices of magic will render the user of the nexus point transformed forever."

"They'll be able to use the device as it was intended?" the thought that someone has been orchestrating these sacrifices to use the device, the nexus point as Qetsiyah calls it, sends a chill through Bonnie. What witch is it and why? These questions whirling around her head Bonnie realises with a shock that Qetsiyah and the cave beyond is starting to fade, ghostlike. As the witch moves Bonnie realises that she knows exactly where the cave is, a hole in the floor suddenly visible.

"You – you should stay away from that place," she says and Qetsiyah turns to her.

"Why?"

"The hole, it – it looks dangerous."

"It is. It is a gap in the world, a way to another place perhaps. That is why we have been studying it, built a home on this island."

"You should seal it off and walk away," Bonnie says significantly, eyes flicking to the curved stomach and Cassia stops and looks at her intensely.

"Why? What do you know?"

"Just – just look after your children, your coven. I know you're happy now, you're in love but…"

"But? Is there a reason I should not be in love?" she asks sharply, eyes blazing and Bonnie wishes she had kept her mouth shut. Silas still hovers behind and Bonnie can feel him staring at her just as fiercely. That asshole will one day betray Qetsiyah, will be unfaithful…But in return she will kill his bastard children in retaliation. Because of this war will be fought which will almost destroy her coven and take them generations to rebuild. The Travellers, that's what they use to be called.

"I – I can't say. I shouldn't have said anything, forget it, please?" she begs but the idea, the suspicion has already been cast in her ancestor's mind like a disease. She mutters something behind her and after a hesitating moment Silas leaves the cave.

Oh god, what have I done? Have I just made it happen? These thoughts bleating through her head she watches as Cassia, such an unassuming name for one of the most powerful witches in history, turns back to her.

"You will tell me more."

"I can't."

"You shall or I will drag you from that world and into mine. Do you doubt I have the power?" she asks dangerously and Bonnie is on alert at once. Behind Cassia the fire flares high and the witch looks back. "Amara, easy girl," she says gently and whoever had stoked the flames calms, the view out of focus as the rest of the cave. She looks back at Bonnie. She is tired but once rested Bonnie has no doubt the woman would punch a hole in reality to get more answers from her. The witch is dangerous, why had she forgotten this? Vampires walk the earth because of the immortality potion she creates and passes down to her followers. Bonnie's own coven.

"Listen, whatever I tell you will likely just make a future happen that should not. Trust me you are better off not knowing."

"You know this future so it has happened. It is the past for you. If it is something to avoid then tell me how," she says reasonably and Bonnie feels stuck. If she was on a path towards catastrophe wouldn't she wants something to point her towards a better one? But how can she make infidelity right? The dye may have already been cast.

"I – I'll tell you one thing if you tell me how you can send yourself into the worlds as a projection. The spell you use."

Cassia smiles, a sharp but amused stretch of her lips. "Fine." She rattles the spell off and then repeats it thrice more. Bonnie murmurs it, trying to remember and then looks steadily at Cassia.

"One day you're going to be angry, so angry that you'll lose your mind. Someone will betray you but you won't kill them, you'll just make them suffer. Everyone will suffer and we're still feeling the effects of that hurt thousands of years later. You make it so covens have to marry people they do not know or love…I don't think there's anything I can tell you that will change that from happening. I suppose I can only ask you to take a moment when the hurt and rage subsides to think about me, where I am and where you are and…forgive."

"Forgive? Who?"

"That's for you to decide. You're not the only one hurting, your curse touches everyone," she whispers, fingering the bone talisman and Qetsiyah looks down at her own. "You will be wronged but what you do in retaliation is beyond forgiveness…it would take years to amend, if at all…but maybe that's what will free you and us." Don't they say that her spirit still watches from the Other Side, angry and hurting?

"What are you saying?"

"Reconcile with those you've wronged."

"So you are suggesting that to reach a happy future my husband must forgive me and I him for a wrongdoing that has yet to occur?" she asks shrewdly. Bonnie had only alluded to Silas but Qetsiyah has put it together. Bonnie opens her mouth and closes it. Incredulous impatience radiates off the witch. She wants to know everything and looks like she will crack open Bonnie's head to get it. She takes a step forward and Bonnie backs up.

"Don't come any closer," she says warily but the ancient witch keeps moving, throwing out a hand but Bonnie runs. Both are just projections but Bonnie knows that her ancestor could drag her mind through time and into another world if she set her own mind to it. So she runs from the palace, scattering pieces of the ascendant in her wake in an effort to sever the link. Qetsiyah does not run, she materialises from one spot to another but as the last piece tumbles to the grass Bonnie looks behind and Qetsiyah vanishes. And so does the palace. Where the once grand and massive building stood now towering trees sway in the mist.

"No…" Bonnie stops, oak and ash surrounding her. The land is wild and uncultivated, the leaves touched with autumn and they crackle under her foot as she walks through the mist. The Gemini palace is completely gone, not even the neat gardens remain. She is no longer in 1994 or even 1903 but an age much, much older.

---

Triangles

Trying to keep her panic under control she retraces her steps and collects the scattered pieces of the ascendant, fixing them back together. However as she does the talisman around her neck throbs and Bonnie hesitates, even as the Gemini palace begins to emerge very faintly though the fog. Maybe putting the pieces together will pave a way for Qetsiyah to return? Bonnie looks down at the talisman and then takes it off and places it in her pocket. It is a tether to the witch, maybe more than the device. Bonnie reassembles the ascendant but the witch and the palace do not appear, just a ghost like glimpse of windows through the mist that disappear when she gets close.

Tired and depressed Bonnie slumps against a tree overlooking the obscured Thames. At least she's still in the same place. She closes her eyes, willing herself to sleep but a creak of a branch sends her jerking upright.

Am I really getting spooked by the threat of an old witch? I'm a witch for god's sake…Grouchy she closes her eyes and evens her breathing, concentrating on the air passing through her nose and into her lungs until her mind drifts into a dark chamber and the waiting owner…

"Kai?" Bonnie looks around the dream room, Kai's apartment in Portland, but finds it empty. Getting out of bed she walks out of the bedroom and sees him sitting in an armchair overlooking the Pacific. Panic and fear that had been clawing at her disappear as she quickly goes to him and he stands, enfolding her against his chest. Bonnie begins telling him what had happened, her words rushed and breathless and he looks down at her face with a frown but says nothing until she tells him about the palace disappearing.

"I'm still in London but it's before the palace was built. I think thousands of years before," she says and he nods grimly.

"I think you're seeing the world that the Greek device is truly attached to. Just a projection, like you…" he sighs and sits down in the armchair, bringing her down with him. He had listened to her quietly but now that she has stopped she focuses on him, noting his drawn face and eyes that can barely look at her.

"What's wrong?"

"While you were dealing with the Blair Witch I was having my own fun," he says and rubs his face and finally looks her in the eye and Bonnie knows.

"The siphoning didn't work, did it?"

"It started to and we almost had them out but then the ballroom started…warping in and out of reality. One moment it was there and the next there was…nothing," he inhales, gaze unfocused and Bonnie wonders if that happened when she had assembled her version of the ascendant. She suspects it did and her heart clenches.

"What happened?"

"The ballroom is stable now, no magic running wild but contained to the device. All pieces are completely fused," he trails his fingers down her back gently. "I thought when the room disappeared I'd never see you again. I was more upset about that then…" he trails off, catching her gaze for a moment before looking out of the window. He holds her tight.

"Then what? Are – are the witches okay?"

"They're all dead," he whispers, looking at her finally and Bonnie inhales a sharp pained breath, shaking her head in denial.

"No. You said no one can die in the palace."

"They couldn't, until now. My family put layers of protection spells over the place, years and years worth, but the device just peeled them off like it was nothing. I think a siphoner could sap those spells away but the effort would take years. It did it in ten minutes."

Bonnie gazes at him in appalled silence until she finds her voice. "Luka Martin was one of them. Oh my god…" she had often ignored Luka, finding his interest in her irksome but he had been kind, a good man and now he was dead. She thinks of his mother and father, who were already dealing with the absence of their daughter. Greta, who has now lost a twin. They never got time to reconcile.

"This is my fault," she says and stands up, tears in her eyes and Kai stands with her, shaking his head. "I assembled the ascendant and even as a projection it was enough to make the one in the real world access their magic. It killed them."

"Yes it killed them not you. I don't think you putting it together in the prison world made a difference. Once it fused it attacked, like it knew. This wasn't your fault."

Bonnie says nothing, listening to him contradicting himself to ease her quilt. He had feared what would happen if she assembled the shadow device, not for fear of the witches' lives but her own. He draws her stiff body back into his arms. She may never know if she is to blame but one thing she knows for certain.

"Qetsiyah now suspects Silas and that will lead to war. Prison worlds exist because of it. If I had just kept my mouth shut…"

Kai looks down at her with an angry expression. "Again that's not your fault. If she's as clever and scary as you say then she would have found out without you."

But she cannot accept it. "I made it happen and nothing you're about to say will make me reconsider," she says harshly and he says nothing, just clenches his jaw. Bonnie presses her forehead against his chest, twining her arms around his back. She feels limp. She stays like for a long time, until her tears stop, soaking into his shirt. "I'm guessing the Summit has been called?" So many witches dead from so many covens would constitute an emergency. The Armoury must be working overtime.

Kai nods as she looks up at him. "Yeah, it's being held in London. Family members are coming to collect their dead. I've got wives and children coming who didn't even know that their loved ones were witches so finding a way to break that to them will be…interesting," he smiles briefly and drops it, gaze haunted.

Bonnie frowns. "Why wouldn't their families know they were witches?"

Kai blinks rapidly and his mouth parts before he grips her arms. "Sorry I thought you understood. Thirteen witches were siphoned to death but thirteen siphoners were connected to them when it happened. I told you what happens when two siphoning powers come into contact. The weaker…"

"Implodes. The siphoners are dead too," she whispers and he nods sadly before directing her towards a couch. She sits weakly beside him, trying to process the scope. "Those poor people, they just wanted to help."

Kai makes a strangled noise and she looks at him. He rubs his forehead with his thumb, looking deeply guilty. "No, most of them didn't want to help but they were the most powerful I could find. They – they agreed mostly for two reasons: money and to be left alone. I agreed but I know if they flat out refused I'd chain them to those witches and force feed them…" he stares at her with a desperate need that makes her breath catch.

"But you didn't."

"What good is my conscience now? They're dead. I think my coven would be content to just dump them in a big hole on the grounds, they're nothing to them…" his mouth snarls in disgust. "I'll speak to their families personally, I'll provide for them, if they'll accept," he looks into the distance but Bonnie barely hears and they fall into a heavy silence. She finally lifts a hand and taps her index finger against the pad of her left thumb.

"Bennett coven. Thirteen witches sacrificed."

"Possibly yeah," he answers, frowning slightly but she carries on, tapping the next finger.

"Thirteen witches from thirteen high covens that make up the summit, excluding ours."

"Right…"

"And thirteen witches from the Gemini."

Kai snorts. "That claim will be contested but yeah, thirteen Gemini siphoners. What are you thinking?"

Bonnie leans forward and a pen and paper appear on the coffee table. She draws three small spirals. "Qetsiyah said that the power that she and Silas use was possible through sacrifices, a ritual that gave them access to the type of power that makes it possible to create immortality. They got it wrong sometimes, they were experimenting, but that magic made it possible."

"You're thinking they sacrificed 39 witches to get that power?" he asks and Bonnie shrugs, pointing at each of the circles she had drawn and then using the pen she links the symbolic sacrifices together, creating a triangle.

"She said it all converges into a nexus point," she draws a small star in the middle and Kai nods when she leans back.

"The ascendant. So you think someone is making sure these accidents happen, to get this magic? Who?"

"I don't know but they have succeeded. The nexus point must be waiting now," Bonnie says and Kai's eyes gleam.

"No one has touched the ascendant, especially as it's fused with my one. They're still considering sealing the room," he says but takes her hand at her look of worry. "I won't let that happen."

"No witch can touch it Kai, not even you."

He pouts a little. "Not even together? We'd be unstoppable," his eyes gloss over with hunger at the idea but at the look on her face he laughs hoarsely. "I'm joking. Once you're back if you want to seal the room into another dimension then we'll do that. Though you agreeing with my dad again gives me the creeps."

His father had not been charged yet but told not to leave the palace, effectively under house arrest. Armoury witches shadow him day and night. Kai finds the whole thing delightful.

"We'll seal it together." Bonnie smiles and cocks her head. "I can get out," she confides softly and he goes still, eyes narrowing.

"What?"

"She told me how to but…well it doesn't matter how but I can do it," she nods with determination even as he continues to gaze at her carefully.

"How?"

"It doesn't matter."

"How, Bonnie?"

"I…I heard you before, do you remember? It was like you were right next to me. I almost died and I was almost free, almost back to you but I didn't know it. That's how I get back."

"…By dying? What?" he snarls, drawing back but she keeps hold of him.

"I know this will work, you have to trust me."

"I don't trust her. She's a special type of crazy! You think she was telling you the truth? She could have been lying."

"She wasn't," she responds confidently, her mind hiccupping a little in doubt but she feels sure that her ancestor had been truthful. "My mind dies here and it'll be pulled right back to the real world. I think you might need to move my body so it's in the gardens, it might make the process easier."

"Process? God you're really gonna do it aren't you?" he utters, his features drawn with fear but his eyes ignite with fury.

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Yeah, I do. If you're so sure this will work then you won't mind me coming along for the ride," he says, standing and Bonnie blinks.

"What do you mean?"

"We'll wake up in the grass together. Or are you thinking about flinging yourself into the river?"

"This isn't a joke. If you send yourself here, even as a projection, you have to touch the ascendant." What might that do to him? It just killed scores of witches like it was nothing.

"I'll be fine." He waves a dismissive hand, searching through the apartment for something and she stands.

Bonnie grabs his arm, swinging him around to her. "I'll be fine Kai. Please, it's not worth it," she pleads and all the dismissal and lightness vanishes in a blink. He pulls her to him, his teeth bared.

"You're worth everything to me. You're not doing this alone," he says and then leans down to kiss her fiercely. Bonnie struggles as she sees his hand reaching out but not for his totem but hers. He picks up the snow globe and Bonnie fights him for it, breaking the kiss.

"You don't have to do this!"

"Where exactly are you right now?" he demands, snow globe in his hands. He threatens to drop it and she gasps. If he smashes it she will awaken and she will not be able to stop him. "Where are you?!"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I've died alone and I won't let you go through that. You blamed yourself for what happened but you wouldn't be facing this choice now if it wasn't for me. If Luke had lived you and I would never be. I can't change that but I can be with you when you need me. Tell me where you are?"

Bonnie gazes at his fierce face, at eyes that flame with a love that borders on madness but through it all his conviction is rocksteady. Her life is worth more than his and always will. He will prove that to the end, if she lets him.

"…I'm on the hill overlooking the Thames. The place we watched the sunset on your birthday."

He nods, exhaling. "Don't move," he says, kissing her forehead and then she hears the impact of the snow globe shattering on the floor and the water splashing her feet and legs makes her gasp and look down.

---

Dewy grass tickles her feet as Bonnie jerks awake. The fog that had been obscuring the river is gone and the tree above her is heavy with pink blossom. A warm spring day.

"Well May 10th, 1994 sucks in every country," a voice says and she spins around to find Kai leaning against a tree. "But at least one thing makes up for it," he grins and despite the anger and fear that he was now trapped along with her Bonnie leaps into his arms, kissing him feverishly. Clinging to each other they sinks down to the grass, not letting go. They remain this way until the sun begins to sink towards the horizon. They speak softly, serious and after a tight hug they come to an agreement. They will eat, watch the sunset and fall asleep and when they wake…

"Are you okay? The ascendant didn't do anything to you?"

"Nope. I think it's full. Oh man I would've loved it if it tried to siphon me and I made it barf. Ha, imagine?" he says with a wicked contemplation as Bonnie grimaces lightly. The berries they had eaten had been bitter and stained their fingers and mouths red. If she was in her real body she would not have kept them down but here…Kai grows serious, gazing at her gently before he lies down and she rests her head on his chest. His fingers stroke through her hair lazily. Her own fingers idly play over his chest, above his heart.

"You never said who my anchor is?"

"Oh, it's your dad. He's waiting for you back at the palace. So is Elena and Caroline, she arrived this morning," he says and Bonnie smiles, warmth thumping in her chest. When they return her loved ones will be there waiting. All of them.

Bonnie looks at Kai as his blinks sleepily and she knows the fruit is starting to work. She only feels comfortably heavy, no pain. "I want to tell you something when I wake up but if something doesn't go right I…" She trails off when she realises his eyes are closed. She smiles, lowering her head back down and whispers the words before a comforting darkness settles over the buttery light of the setting sun…

---

She drifts in the dark, without weight or form but the elusive spark that burns in her mind flickers. She could float in this oblivion forever, content to be cast this way and that like a leaf but something disrupts the peace. It nags, tugging like something caught on a nail and will not let her go.

There was a place she had to be, a person she had to meet…the dark rolls back and a shape takes form, something round and old and she can see others like it, like beads along a string. It shines like a gold sun. A world, a world brimming with magic, so much that it can hardly contain it. It's drowning…Figures swarm over the land in packs, a multitude that soak up magic like sponges. They try but there is just too much. They want more, the thirteen offerings are dead.

What are they…? The thought is faint but inquisitive. They flash and glow in the dark like magma, these monsters but how can monsters look so innocent? They're just children, children who have been thrown down a dark hole and stuck in time. They were taken, their absence barely leaving a hole in the heart. They are forgotten. Truth stabs through her like a hundreds knives.

They took my children…but these are not mine. These are something else. Those hungry minds whirl with heretic notions, ancient and cruel. They can feel her, a seed of magic in the void and they would pluck her out and present her at harvest to the sleeping emperor.

Silas is more stone then flesh now, sitting on a throne. Still handsome and so familiar… Another throne is carved beside his but it sits empty. Waiting. He does not move but his blood runs with immortality like a vibrant disease and in his hand... the cure. He does not speak but he will once the empress is by his side again. Mother and father.

Bonnie gets close, too close and she is tugged back violently and the handsome sleeping king and the heretics are gone. She has to find someone…no she has to save someone and she does not have much time left. Who is it?

Me. She has to save herself. She must. Winding the thread that tugs her through the dark between worlds she pulls herself along, inch by inch and the effort is like dragging a world on her back. She has to give a man something, something precious and delicate, something that can grow and thrive if she gives it room in her heart…

Just give it form, give it shape. Take a breath and speak.

---

"…I love you."

Bonnie lifts her head, inhaling a breath and looks at the swollen river rolling below. Blissful peace settles over her mind like mist but she recalls something, a truth that drifts away like a dream until she only has a faint nagging certainty that it was something important. It dissolves, forgotten… Bonnie looks up at the tree they lie under and she begins to grin and laugh with delight. The blossom is gone because spring has past. It's summer time in London. They are free.

"Kai. Look, we're back," she looks down and frowns. He sleeps below her, head turned to the side as before but his breathing comes in long, shallow drags. Bonnie rubs his chest, calling his name. He had once been unsure that he could return from the prison world because Bonnie was his anchor but he came anyway. However she is free and he should follow.

Panic tearing through her control Bonnie rubs the gold band on her left hand, not knowing if it will work but she pours all her fear, desperation and magic into it. With a cry of his name she slaps her hands against his chest angrily.

"Wake up!" Bonnie grips his shoulders and with a lurch she realises that he has stopped breathing. "No, please. No, you said it was fine. Please," she begs, gripping the talisman and then notices the ascendant in his hand. It is changed, merged and warped into a larger device. Desperate she grabs it and begins chanting, drawing on a power that begins as a trickle but then suddenly unleashes a torrent.

"What?" one guttural word is all she gets out before magic like she had never imagined roars through her body and mind, stripping her empty before filling her up, replacing the blocked magic she had been channelling her whole life with something else. It is not dark, Qetsiyah had been right, but it is not light either.

Eyes white and blind she gasps into the summer sky, one hand clawing at his chest. Black veins crawl up her arms, flowing through her blood like ichor and she gives an ecstatic moan, teeth snapping in ecstasy, body and mind riding a current of pure power. All thought but one flounder in that rush and it is the thing that Bonnie Bennett clings to.

Live.

Everything else sacrificed to the thing in her hand, to the world beyond, is dead, even her poor cousin but she will not be next and neither will he. Her love for him is a fragile, shy thing growing in the middle of that inferno but it remains untouched. She can smoother it, rip it out and leave a hole and it would be easy because it is so new, so delicate but covered with thorns. It would hurt. It is tied with a thin but unbreakable cord to something growing in him. His love has no end or beginning, it grows so deep and wild that trying to pull it up would only break her and smothering it would burn her. Any attempts are futile, he will love her until nothing is left but that monument. He keeps it with a tender and confused regard as careful as her own.

He loves me more…the thought is soft and true and she would feel ashamed but the thought is gone in a moment. Death flows into her, rushing through her veins and she could blissfully take more in but nature demands a balance and so she gives it. The ascendant, now white hot and whirling, offers a life from a multitude and she picks at random, a speck in a crowd, a one in a trillion. Life and death converge, a gentle kiss, and then part ways.

Kai gasps, sucking in precious air and his heart beats wildly, blood pumping through his body which shakes and shudders below her. Trembling with power she looks down and Kai's eyes widen, growing bigger and bigger and he looks frightened. Has she ever seen him look truly scared? Of her? She bends down, touching his face with hands that start to fade back to normal.

"It's me. I love you, as fragile and defensive as it is. I do love you…"

He sighs, a very soft smile on his mouth but his eyes are still wide and stark. "Bonnie…what did you do?" he asks, trying to sit up and Bonnie frowns, leaning back and looks down at the cooling device in her hand. She lets it tumble to the grass.

"I don't know…I feel strange," she confesses and as the power that had been flowing through her subsides it takes her strength with it. With a look of fear and confusion she opens her mouth to speak but sways, Kai reaching for her as she faints.

---

Expression

She sleeps for days and awakens to find her friends and family sitting around her. Silence settles over the room, no one moving or saying a word until Bonnie sucks in a breath and then bursts into tears. Her father gathers her up in his arms, his deep voice soothing. She had not heard his voice for such a long time that the sound of it makes her cry harder, clutching at his shoulders as if she will never let go.

"I really missed you. I love you."

"I love you too. I will always love you…and I'll always be here when you need me," he pulls back and wipes the tears from her face with the back of his fingers. He smiles, green eyes gleaming wet. "When you're feeling better your room back home is waiting for you," he says and with a shuddering relief Bonnie realises she wants nothing more than to slip into her old bed, clutching Miss Cuddles and think about nothing. Rudy stands reluctantly but she does not get much time to breathe when she is tackled by a tumbling cascade of long brown hair and blonde curls.

"Bonnie! We thought you'd never wake up!"

"Well you know she's a heavy sleeper Caroline. Remember when she almost missed our SATs?"

"A month is Bonnie's personal best. Maybe you can go in a record book?"

Bonnie smiles, brushing hair away from her face and looks up at her two best friends. "You're both hilarious." She grins, laughing and their beaming faces grow soft.

"We were really worried. When Kai contacted us we thought…it doesn't matter now because you're okay!" Caroline adds enthusiastically, hiding her fear and Bonnie says nothing. She sits up, hugging her friends and then whispers.

"So, what do you think?"

"Of Kai? I wanted to rip his head off for kidnapping you but he says it was actually the other way around? He talks more than I do. I think I annoy him a little? He teases us mercilessly doesn't he Elena? But then he made us the best food I have ever tasted and baked these little cupcakes with my name on it and sang to you while you were asleep. I was spying on him so don't tell him I saw that," Caroline rattles off, casting a suspicious look back. Kai is not in the room. Bonnie turns to Elena.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Don't worry about me, honestly. I'm just happy that you're awake and in one piece," she smiles, giving her a hug but Bonnie knows Elena is withholding something painful. Before she would have intuitions about these feelings but this is something that she can see. A halo of sickly green ripples around her friend's head. Apprehension. Fear. She can almost smell it.

She looks away and focuses on their faces. "Will you come back home with me?"

"Home? Of course," Caroline nods and then Bonnie looks at Elena sharply. That halo flares.

"Is Klaus still after you?"

Elena licks her lips and pushes her hair behind her ear. "Yes but he's agreed to work with Elijah. They've found another Original to test the unlinking spell on. They'll need my blood but I'm only working with Elijah. He's the only one I trust."

Bonnie nods and with a swoop of shock she can feel the Original vampire a floor below. He has the same strange magic keeping him undead and ticking as Caroline does.

"The Gemini don't usually let vampires into their buildings."

"I know and I wouldn't be able to enter but Kai gave his express permission. He owns this place," Caroline says with awe and some jealously and looks at Bonnie with wide eyes. "You really are like royalty Bonnie, I never really got that until I came here."

"I don't feel like it," now she feels like nothing she can name. Not a human, not even a witch as she knows it. She is…more. As her friends sit back she lets her senses spread a little, through the floors and like a magnet she find the nexus point, the ascendant. It vibrates slightly and waves of subtle magic pulse from it. It is asleep, like a purring cat but as she concentrates she can hear it too. It sings. How has she never heard it before?

"Bonnie? Earth to Bonnie," Elena says and the witch shakes her head and looks at her friend. Elena Gilbert, the human of the group but even that is wrong. Magic runs through her blood as surely as it does Caroline, collecting in her womb, waiting to be shaped and born again. Doppelgänger. Grimacing she closes her eyes, overwhelmed and worry spikes through her friends. It's pungent.

"I think my granddaughter need some time to…settle," Sheila Bennett says and Bonnie reaches out for her. Taking her hand she feels the well-worn and powerful magic lapping against her skin and she wonders if this is what it feels like for Kai. There is no hunger, it is just there, a constant presence like the sea below a bridge. It hurts to pull her hand away but the feel of it, so familiar and not, is too much. The power in her is slumbering but it is so alien, so completely different from what she once used it makes her shake. What happens when it wakes?

What is wrong with me? Where is Kai?

…I'm down stairs, Kai responds into her mind and she feels his surprise. I thought you'd want time with your family. Do you need me?

…Not yet. Deal with the families of the dead, she thinks with a business like tone and feels his squirm of unease. He had not told her he was dealing with the siphoners relatives. He didn't need to, she can feel their grief filling the palace like gas. Bonnie tries to focus and looks at her grandmother, who has been witching her in silent worry. Bonnie tries to smile.

"I'm okay."

"No you're not. When you're ready to talk I'll be here. I'm proud of you child," she says and leans over to kiss Bonnie's brows. Bonnie inhales the honey like scent of her grandmother, the woman who practically raised her and tries not to cry.

"I'm home. I'm really home."

"Yes you are and it'll always be there waiting for you. Now I have to get ready for the damn Summit meeting," she says and Bonnie gasps, but her grandmother holds up a hand. "I'll deal with it. You need to settle, like I said."

Not get better, not rest or anything else. Settle.

"Settle into what?"

"When you figure that out tell me," she answers cagily and for the thousandth time Bonnie feels that her grandmother knows more than she says. She is tempted to extend that awareness that spools out from her but a stab of guilt makes her stop. She won't do that to her grams.

"I'm gonna get dressed, stretch my legs and make something to eat," Bonnie says and after another kiss Sheila leaves. Bonnie groans, arching her back on the bed and the magic in her seems to do the same. It has rested and would also like to stretch.

Of course it does, it's me…Bonnie ignores this thought and gets dressed, picking out a lavender sundress that hangs below her knees. The weather is hot and the grounds bask in sunshine. Smiling she leaves her room and then almost knocks a man down.

"Sorry," Atticus gasps, reaching out a hand to stop her falling. At the contact she flinches, expecting to feel another cascade of sensations but she feels nothing. He is human, just an ordinary human with a fading yellow bruise over his right eye. Kai's work. Bonnie sighs and does not let go of his arm.

"Hey stranger."

"Boss," he smiles but his eyes rove over her features as if he has not seen her in a long time and she knows with a flash that he has not. Kai has kept him away from her, made him look day and night for a way to bring her back. He would have done it gladly but still his gaze drinks her in.

"…You shouldn't look at me like that," she says softly, gently and she thinks that he will cast his eyes to the floor, look embarrassed but he does none of those things. His lips curl a little and his green eyes, usually soft, are penetrating.

"Sorry I just haven't seen you for awhile…how do you feel?" he asks lightly and Bonnie wants to lie but it will not come. She still grips his arm, getting blessedly nothing from him. Just ordinary sensations. Air in and out, blood pumping and brain firing. Normal. Everything she is not.

"I feel…different. I saved Kai, I think he was dead and I saved him. I did something."

"What?" he asks softly, eyes unblinking and she could get hypnotised by that look.

"I saved him with strange magic. It shouldn't have been possible…but I did it."

"You love him," he says as softly as before and there is no jealousy or bitterness there. Just stating a fact. "When you realise how much someone means to you…there's nothing you won't do. You'll be surprised the things you can accomplish."

"Even humans?"

"Even dopey humans," he says and they laugh and Bonnie feels Kai approaching even before she sees him. He pauses, hearing them. Shane inhales, smiling and then leans down to kiss her cheek. "You're going to be okay Bonnie. I think you'll do just fine."

"Thank you…" she senses Kai leaving and her heart thumps. She squeezes her adviser's hands and leaves him in the hallway, going after her husband. She keeps her distance as she follows him through the gardens and to the tree they woke up under.

"Kinda feel like you're avoiding me," she says as he looks at the river, hands in his pockets.

"…I haven't left your side until this morning," he says quietly as she comes to a stop beside him. "The human families of the siphoners came and no one would face them or answer their questions. They were… grief stricken, angry and bewildered and most refused the monthly instalments but some took it. They're just average, normal people and I ruined their lives," he sighs sadly, shaking his head and finally looks at her.

"You didn't know what would happen and in the end it was their choice. Looking out for those families when no one else will is a good thing. Compassion, it's what makes a great leader," she says but he doesn't seem to hear her. He makes a groaning noise, lifting his hand and it hovers by her cheek. Bonnie blinks.

"It's stronger."

"What?"

"The magic just underneath," he whispers and lowers his hands to hover them above her own. Red-orange light spills over her skin and she gasps. His magic is detectable but different to her grandmother's. His power is penetrating, wanting to consume everything but this gentle brush stirs the magic under her skin like a lover's caress.

"You can feel it? I don't understand what it is," she admits as he lowers his hands and balls them into fists. He appears to be fighting with himself, like he wants to grab her and never let go. This explains his distance.

"That power saved my life and every single person in my coven."

Bonnie opens her mouth but no words come out. Had she even thought about the price of Kai's death and who else would have to pay it? She sacrificed an unknown life for Kai but in return she had actually saved thousands, including her own. She had forced Kai's death into her body and cast it like an arrow at someone in another world, another time…

"I'm scared," she whispers and he wraps her up in his arms. "I don't understand what it is."

"I think you do. That triangle, Bon. The sacrifices. All three points connected."

"But that's dark magic, I can't use that," she says, shaking her head and Kai smiles softly down at her but it is hollow.

"I've felt it before. When I merged with Jo her eyes went utterly white and her veins looked like they were filed with ink. I looked the same. It's the same magic used during the Merge ritual but only for a moment. When I won and woke up it was gone. Seeing you like that…" he trails off and she realises that fear must have been because the last time he saw those eerie eyes it was just before his sister died.

"It's magic born from death. They all died, people I knew, for this? It's not right."

"It saved us, saved everyone. Is that dark?"

"But the cost. Some innocent person –"

Kai cuts her off, gripping her arms. "Fuck the cost. I'm glad they're dead, whoever they were," he says harshly but his expression softens at the scathing look on her face. "I know you're scared, so am I. It's unlike any magic in use and I doubt anyone else has fully accessed it for a very long time. We have to keep it a secret Bonnie."

"From who?"

"Everyone. If they find out what you can do, they'll never stop wanting to use you. The Armoury will do worse," he says seriously and Bonnie nods. He is right, the covens would never leave her in peace if they realise she can practise sacrificial magic. And it would not stop with witches either…

Bonnie inhales a deep breath and holds it, nodding firmly and then releases it. "Okay. Only you, me and Atticus knows."

"What a god damn surprise."

"Kai…" she sighs tiredly and leans against him, burying her face against his shoulder. "I wanna go home," she says, voice muffled.

"Mystic Falls?"

She nods, lifting her face and gazes into his eyes. "I missed you."

"You saw me every night," he smiles, nudging her and she shakes her head.

"It wasn't real," she says and he nods, serious. They could have wasted their lives away in dreams and that was no way to live. "You risked your life to save mine, so I wouldn't face the end alone," she whispers and he does not smile smugly or joke. Instead he cups her face and stares at her deeply

"Always."

---

The Phoenix

Months pass, filled with more funerals and memorials services than Bonnie could bare. Every solemn mourner, every account of the good times the dead once brought to the life of the living made her want to scream and weep. They had no idea that their lives had been taken to unleash the magic now pulsing inside her. It knew it was close to the dead that gave it life, she could feel it's appreciation. Kai stopped her going to any more after she almost lost control at Luka Martin's wake, making the flowers around the room wither and then burst into bloom repeatedly. Greta was now the grudging coven leader and she had stared at Bonnie as if she knew, while everyone else had been softly awed. It seems the witch made a choice between what she loved and responsibility, something they have in common.

Bonnie tries to settle into herself. It is hard, the magic flowing through her veins more capricious and wild then any magic she has experienced before. Sometimes it lies sluggish within her, like a beast too bored to move. Fickle, the thing now within her is fickle and it takes a force of iron will to master it. But it has only been a few months and whenever it slips from her grasp and runs wild she blames it on her wandering mind. That is when the power is most dangerous, when daydreams and imagination roam…

Once she imagined that she was no longer coven leader, the title now official and heavy with responsibilities. She pictured taking the heavy gold necklace and crown off and instead became a different Bonnie. Not a scholar or teacher but a dancer. She pictured herself on stage, the auditorium dark and her lone form picked out by a beam of light. She danced and danced, pouring all her frustrations and fear into it, her barely concealed excitement at the power she now wields and she had curtsied as roses fell. The roses had made her frown because she had not envisioned it, or the clap from the audience.

"Kai? What – what are you doing here? Is this a dream?" she asked as her husband sat in one of the chairs in the front row. He was in a high collared black coat, the one she loved. He grinned from ear to ear.

"I was in Portland, briefing Armoury witches on a situation in the Shanghai Tunnels when I felt this tug in my gut and suddenly I'm sitting here watching you dance. You're awesome by the way."

Bonnie smiled, ducking her chin and gave him a slow spin on the tips of her toes. He whistled like guy in a strip club and when she came closer he slid a fifty dollar bill into the ribbons around her leg. She called him an asshole and laughed, still half convinced the whole thing was a bizarre dream. She ran off the stage, Kai pursuing, and reached a fire exit and burst out onto a bustling and very real New York street. Not a dream…

Half an hour later they sit in a quiet café in the Mall, his mid length back coat covering her grey, sequined tutu and black leotard. Her feet are bare, the shoes resting under the table. She sips on coffee and sighs. They had ordered it with rum and she was getting comfortably drunk. She had stopped shaking a few minutes before but the surreal event stays with her. She had made a fantasy come to life and not even realised it. She could will anything into being, if she poured enough passion into it.

"Sure we can't go back? I've never fucked a proper ballerina before," he muses and she gives him a heavy lidded look over her coffee cup.

"And never will," she says and he laughs, sipping on his drink. His eyes sparkle at her and she cannot look away. They had not seen each other for some time, both of them busy with running their covens. The Armoury trial that convicted his father of involuntary manslaughter took up most of Kai's time but he had attended to it without fail. He had once expressed fears that accusations aimed at the Gemini would end with her dead but the retribution had never materialized. It seems the Gemini were just as angry at Joshua Parker as Kai was. Not that he inadvertently played a part in killing thirteen Bennett witches but that he lied to them about his ability…

He is now in an Armoury prison and like all prisoners denied any form of magic. He had gone to his fate with only one acknowledgement of guilt, showing no anger or fear. How Kai got his father to personally hand himself in she does not know and he will not tell her. Bonnie believed Joshua was telling the truth about it being an accident and his sentence reflects that. He will be released in a short span of years but ex-communicated from the coven he once led. Kai's crime had come to light in the investigation but no charges laid down, the length of his isolated imprisonment seen as justice served. The suspicion against Bonnie had also been dropped but she sometimes catches sight of the shadowy clad witches from time to time…

Kai visits his father like clockwork and Bonnie does not know if he does it to prove a point or for the satisfaction at seeing Joshua reduced so low. Bonnie had never gone. For the Gemini siphoners and thirteen other witches who died no punishment was laid down, the Armoury declaring it an accident. Bonnie wishes she could let it go, there was no one to accuse but the device that took their life and magic. The melded ascendant is now heavily guarded deep in the Armoury vault. It will never see the light of day again.

…I could probably grab it without anyone noticing if I think about it hard enough…

"Bon? Bonster?"

"Hmm?" she looks at Kai, who smiles faintly at her and shakes her head. "Sorry. What did you say?"

"The phoenix exploded while we were in England. The ash is shifting and they think she'll emerge today. Wanna look?"

Bonnie agrees and follows Kai barefoot from the café, thinking about getting some shoes but the earth feels good between her toes. They weave a little, comfortably tipsy. It is late, most of the shoppers gone and shop owners closing up for the night. Leading her through the trees they come to the huge metal cage, it's perch empty. Below is a pile of ash, grey at first glance but as she peers closer she sees an iridescent sheen coating the dusty substance. More ash line the bars of the cage.

"How bad would the destruction be if this wasn't here?" she asks, curling her fingers around a bar and Kai grins.

"They'd be nothing left of this place and we'd be ash shadows on a wall. I want one," he sighs with longing and Bonnie laughs.

"But they weren't always caged and I never heard of them destroying places."

"This one is very, very old. I suppose it must be dangerous otherwise it wouldn't be in there," he finishes and looks at the cage with a muted expression and Bonnie doesn't have to read his mind to know what he is thinking.

"We're not breaking a baby phoenix out Kai."

"What? I didn't say anything," he retorts and looks back at the cage, a faint smile tugging his lips. Bonnie looks down and then gasps as the ash starts to shift. They both become very still, holding their breath as more ash falls but the hairless and blind bird she imagined does not appear. Instead an egg pokes through the cinders, it's smooth shell black and speckled with gold whirls.

"I didn't know they hatched?" she whispers, not knowing why and Kai opens his mouth to answer when the ash gives another shake and another egg appears. This one is a shimmering silver-white.

"Twins?" Kai whispers and Bonnie shrugs. She heard once that a phoenix had combusted in a Chinese village during the 17th century and had produced a nest of birds. All reborn from the remains of the same phoenix. That phoenix was said to be ancient. Maybe it is the same one…

"This is incredible," she says with an awed smile and looks at Kai. He stares at the eggs like he is stopping himself from reaching in. Bonnie narrows her eyes. "You can't take them."

"They won't notice if one is missing," he hisses and Bonnie cocks her head at him, pursing her lips. He is drunk. So is she, otherwise she would not be weighing up the pros and cons of getting caught.

"We'll get arrested."

He waves a hand, eyes aflame with the idea. "What coven do you think gave the hotel, the Clare witches, the bird in the first place? She comes from Greece, she's said to be thousands of years old. She's practically family!" he urges, gripping the bars and Bonnie looks around. Anyone trying to steal so much as a feather would set off an alarm.

"Kai! Where would you keep it?"

"I don't know, the family house?"

"It's wooden."

"Oh yeah…" he hums and then gives her a grin and Bonnie bursts into laughter. God she has missed this, the reminder of the fun they had in Greece. Still laughing they watch as the black egg topples and rolls down the ash bank and rests a few feet away from them. Kai gives her a wide eyed look and motions desperately at the egg with his arms. Look, he gestures, it wants to be adopted!

"I'm not going to prison because of you," she says and drags him from the cage and he fights the entire way, trying to persuade her and she almost gives in. The cage is built for one so the other egg will pass into private hands, never to be seen again. His coven could bid for it but apparently since selling the bird centuries before they have been unable to reclaim it back and stopped trying.

"Come on! You know some witch will spend a bijillion dollars for that egg and then just crack it and fry it for breakfast? They think they'll achieve immortality."

"Will they?"

"No, they'll just burn slowly from the inside out. Do you want that sunny-side up egg on your conscious?"

Bonnie says nothing, trying to keep from laughing as they pass witches cleaning up tables. They have stayed at the Menagerie hotel once since she return, the clear glass overhead now repaired. She felt sheepish about going in but they treat them no different, better even. Kai had tipped everyone very, very well. As they reach the check in desk Bonnie brushes her fingers over the pocket of Kai's coat she wears and feels a bulge. Frowning she slips her hand into the pocket and her fingertips touch something smooth and conical. Something warm. It is as light as a feather.

"Oh god…" Bonnie grips the egg with her fingers, the heat seeping into her hand. It does not burn but it is hot.

"What?"

"We can't stay here."

"Why not?" he asks, looking a little concerned but when she motions at the pocket of his coat the look of concern vanishes. An hysterical laugh barks from him and Bonnie knows if people were not looking at them he would be spinning on the spot with glee.

"Oh god it's Christmas. Thank you Santa."

"This wasn't Santa," she moans and is about to turn but Kai stops her. He pulls her into his arms, his mouth by her ear. A man holding his wife, nothing strange.

"Stay. They'll never suspect anything if we act normal. We're here for a room and breakfast in bed. That's what we're gonna do. Instead of stealing towels and soaps we're taking something else, something they won't miss cause they don't know its there. It's not even stealing."

His voice is silky in her ear and Bonnie looks at him, her heart racing like mad. "Finders keepers? This can't be happening. We're acting like kids. Bad kids."

"Fun isn't it? Okay, grown up leader faces on Bon," he says and then taking her hand he approaches the desk, the staff behind smiling as if they had just walked in and hadn't been whispering for the last five minutes. Ten minutes later they watch the door close to their private suite and only after Bonnie is sure the man is gone does she laugh. Kai sweeps her into his arms, hugging her in victory and then settles her back down. He rubs his hands excitedly, gleeful as she brings the phoenix egg out of the pocket.

The dark shell reflects their grinning faces and the colourful lanterns lining the walls. Cupped in her hands Kai traces a finger down it, closing his eyes and keeping them closed he hovers his hands over the egg. The egg is the length of his hands. Shifting orange light plays softly over the surface and Kai releases a shuddering breath. It sounds like the noise he makes when they touch each other now.

"So much power in there," he opens his eyes and glances at her. "What can you feel?"

"She's curled up inside, asleep. She's…dreaming," Bonnie strokes the shell and after taking off Kai's coat she places it gently in the folds of fabric. It sits in this soft nest and they get on their knees to watch as it shifts slightly and tiny ripples of light flash along the shell, the swirls of gold glinting. Bonnie thinks how they would look to anyone watching, both on their knees, both talking softly and laughing but not too loudly. Anyone watching would not expect to find a strange black egg nestled on top of a trunk at the end of the bed. They'd expect a crib.

"What – what is she called?" she had never inquired.

"Amara. It means immortal," Kai whispers and looks at her as she studies the whirls of gold over the egg. The name sounds familiar but she cannot place it. "Bonnie?"

"Yeah?"

"Whatever happens next just know that I want to be with you," he says and the tone of his words, the finality, makes her stomach drop and despite the warmth waving off the egg she goes cold.

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see," he looks at her chest for a moment, where a bone talisman used to hang. It is now back with Atticus as she has no need of it anymore and having any kind of tether to Qetsiyah makes her uncomfortable.

Bonnie cocks her head at Kai but he does not elaborate and when she opens her mouth to ask he leans forward and kisses her. The question, the egg and even the strange magic pumping through her heart are forgotten as he stands and picks her up. Wrapping her arms and legs around him they kiss as he lowers Bonnie down onto the bed. He remains on his knees, looking at her from under his brows.

Bonnie, still in her tutu and tights, rubs her silken legs together sensually and gazes at him with her own predatory expression. She motions with a hand and the black ballet slippers they forgot under the table appear by her side. She runs the dove grey ribbons through her fingers, enjoying the smooth sensation and then looks back at him. His eyes flick between the ribbons, her face and then her wrists.

Bonnie smiles and as the first ribbon is wrapped tightly around her ankle the magic inside her purrs and writhes. Magic that would like to consume ever wild drop stirs within him. She can taste it on his skin and the force behind his kiss. He can and will bear what she cannot contain.

---

a.n:

*phew* longest chapter yet. One more chapter to go!

Please review? Thank you!