Just wanted to drop a note to let you all know that I've published a sequel, Symbiosis. Thank you to everyone who read this and stuck with me over the years.
xoxo, adlyb
Symbiosis Preview:
After, when they are lying tangled together, Klaus murmurs a secret into the skin of her neck.
"I almost gave you up."
Elena shifts against him. Her fingers twine with his, and her toes flex against his calf. She wishes she could look at his face, but he keeps it buried against her throat.
"You mean you meant to let me die in the sacrifice."
"No."
She waits for him to offer her more. She's used to waiting a long time with him, for the things that she wants (and the things that she doesn't).
"Your witch friend… Bonnie." He says the name with great emphasis—like he feels compelled to name her for who she was, not just what she was. "She explained to me what was happening to you, when you were… experiencing the others."
He does not elaborate on what was happening to her—she senses that the technical explanation is not the point of this, and besides, she can always ask him later (no explanation he can provide for her will ever compare to the actual experience of living inside the minds of women long, long dead).
Instead, he tells her something else, something worse, in its own way. "She told me that if I let it alone, if I refused to right the magic, then you—you, Elena—would be consumed. Overtaken. All signs indicated it very likely would have been Tatia who would have emerged as the dominant personality, and you would have been… gone. Smothered like a flame under a glass."
The implication hangs between them. He was ready to let it happen.