A/N - I hope everyone had a lovely holiday! This chapter is a little shorter than previous ones, but I wanted to keep the EPOV separate. There will not be as long of a wait for the BPOV.
Huge thanks and hugs to TwiliteAddict for her fabulous beta work and valuable insight!
Ginormous kisses and butt pinches to Gasaway Alley for the final gloss of shiny goodness to this chapter! I love watching this woman re-work phrases with effortless brilliance.
The moment Bella's celestial form disappeared from the In Between, her physical body, tucked beside me so intimately in our icy fortress, also vanished. The space her body had taken up was emptied; draining my soul and filling it's place with dread. Why would her physical body disappear also?
Where was she? Where did she go?
I stared fixedly in cold shock at the point in the sky where she was last seen. I could feel myself shutting down as the minutes passed in the black void of her absence. I paced with impatience, and pleaded in prayer to any god I thought might listen to send her back to me. The cold, answering silence stirred my panic, thickening my veins with worry, clogging my conscience with the insanity of uncertainty. I glared at the sky until I thought twin black holes would burn into the ozone and kept telling myself - I had to be patient. Unfortunately, patience was never one of my virtues.
She would come back.
She has to come back.
Never had I felt more alone, and yet, I was not the only one experiencing the mind-boggling mystery of Bella's sudden disappearance. I turned my attentions back to the physical plane, but my family's reaction to her absence was not the most comforting of distractions. Rose was the first to notice her missing.
"Emmett! Carlisle! Bella's gone!" Frantically, she started beating and scratching against our casket with desperate force.
"We have to break the ice! Help me get Edward out! EDWARD!" she screamed.
The tomb of ice stood strong as the entire room reverberated, shaking from the aftershocks of her violent efforts to get me out. Even if she succeeded, I wondered if I would want to be sprung from my magical prison without my mate.
Definitely not. I would stay in this frozen box, my soul in limbo, until her return.
Carlisle and Emmett tried to pry Rose away, but she vehemently held her ground, becoming incensed when she realized no one else was taking Bella's disappearance as seriously as she was. Emmett crouched down and looked intensely into her eyes, his hands gripped her arms tightly, shaking her frenzied form slightly
"Rose, doll baby, this isn't helping. That casket is made up of things we have no business tearing apart."
"But she's...and he's...without her!" she choked back her horror, fueled by the utter helplessness of the situation at hand.
"I know, Rose. I know. It's messed right the hell up, honey, but all we can do is wait." He sounded positively pained.
Of all the members of my family who waited patiently beside us, Emmett was a constant presence. He would read to us or talk quietly about the goings on in the house. He took great delight in gossiping like an old hen about Tanya's overly dramatic fits over the wolves presence. In an attempt for peace, Leah and Jacob holed up in a cabin at the farthest most reach of the compound. Their feelings were certainly not hurt, and last Em heard, they had been "honeymooning it up" in grand style. This of course naturally progressed to me desperately trying to ignore his colorful musings on whether or not the wolves practiced "doggy style" in its literal connotation.
Rose had been as solid a presence as Em, clicking in and out, murmuring low to her mate, bringing him more books or magazines to look at. She never once tried to pull him away from his watchful post. She deeply respected his dedication to see us through to our reawakening. That deep respect was the only thing calming her now. Her hands relaxed, dropping to her sides in quiet concurrence, whispered apologies her only response.
"Let's go get the dogs, shall we?" Em toned low to Rose, wrapping his large hand over hers and tugging her from the room. "I'll send Jasper in, Carlisle."
In all the years I had known Carlisle, I had never known him to be at a loss on what to do. Carlisle had always been the one we could come to with a problem, knowing we would leave with it solved. In his quiet, non-judgmental way, he gave his counsel backed by sound wisdom and over four centuries of experience.
However, he had never experienced anything like this.
Jasper entered a moment later and stood over our impermeable chrysalis. "Carlisle, something just isn't right. I can't feel a thing from either of them now. Bella is nothing but empty space and Edward is...static. It's like he's in... shock."
"Maybe Rose had reason to panic. Should we try to break him out?"
Alice interrupted Jasper's reply by rushing into the room. I braced myself for the onslaught of pain the multitude of visions caused my precog sibling, but it became clear she was no longer in agony when so near to...
A sickening thought then oiled its way across my conscience. Was Alice not feeling any pain simply because Bella wasn't physically here, or was it because she was...I couldn't even form the black conclusion; was my Bella...dead?
From the In Between to the physical plane and back again like somea type of existential yo-yo, I anxiously searched for some sign of Bella.
"Bella! Where are you?" I screamed at the empty sky of the In Between. Silence mocked me, bands of panic tightened painfully across my chest, squeezing a moan of desperation from my throat.
Alice's thoughts interrupted my grief; Edward, she's on her way back. I don't know how I know, but I do, and the pain is gone Edward. It's gone!
I dared to hope.
"It's time. Stand back everyone," Alice announced as the ice began to crackle and snap. Fissures branched like hundreds and hundreds of tiny lightning bolts across the expanse of our encasement.
A brilliant flash of light seared my line of vision and the In Between disappeared. I had the strangest sensation of falling backwards before I became aware of Bella, solidly and inexplicably back in my arms. Hot relief flooded my system as feeling her against me washed through my body like a strong wine. The casket was completely shattered, leaving us lying on the floor, littered and layered in thousands of rapidly disappearing sparkly shards of ice. My clothing went from being frozen solid to my body to the fire damaged reams of fabric left of the Volturi cloak I had stolen. Using the cloak to cover Bella's naked form, I hugged her gently and looked down.
My Bella was a vision! A miracle conceived in fire, baptized in ice.
Her supernal beauty stole every breath I would ever fake. Her mortal body once consumed and burned beyond recognition from the Phoenix fire, now left me scarcely able to believe the marvel of her otherworldly physical transformation. Hair of the deepest mahogany fell in thick, shiny lengths to the tops of her thighs, modestly curtaining her nude form from prying eyes. Pearl skin shone like a halogen moon in contrast to her dark tresses. Even her musculature was more defined, honed for power. She was a goddess. Changed, yes, but still my Bella. Her eyelashes fluttered. I braced myself for the loss of her beautiful brown eyes.
Her eyes were gold!
Wide as saucers, they scanned around the room quickly before focusing solely on me. Fanned by her thick, dark eyelashes, their brilliance was only enhanced. Truly the richest shade I had ever seen, and I'd been looking into the golden eyes of my family for almost a century now, even Carlisle's paled in comparison. I barely registered the gasps and low whispers of our family surrounding us.
Was the strange eye color the only unique physicality of her hybrid nature? How else was she different?
I pushed into her mind to ask her silently if she was okay...and hit a wall.
Our telepathic line of connection was broken!
I tried again, pushing everyone's excited mental broadcasting away so I could concentrate on Bella's mental voice. I harvested only silence. Had her shields been reinforced? Was this the reason Alice could be in her presence without losing her mind with the onslaught of visions they produced? If keeping me locked out was the trade-off for Alice to be without pain when around us, I could find a way to deal with the loss.
I tried to keep my overprotective, feral curiosity regarding her recent whereabouts on a leash, securing the chain with the knowledge I would find a private moment to talk to her about who plucked her out of the sky and what transpired.
The relentless buzz of my family's unvoiced reactions flooded my mind., as Bella and I stood up. Esme came to us immediately holding a long silk robe in emerald green for Bella to put on.
Thank God, thank God she's back! Our prayers are answered!
I can't see anything of their future at all, yet my pain is gone, what did she do? My, my, my, look at those eyes.
Extraordinary. Her hybrid nature must turn her blood into something completely different, the irises are saturated with...what exactly?
I reckon someone oughta cover her bits up before Edward's anxiety taps me out – it's bad enough without a peep show taking place - Oh thank God, Esme's here with a robe. Whoa Nelly! Are those tatted wings on her back? Edward is going to frea...too late.
TATTOO? There's a tattoo?
Gathering my wits about me, I took the robe offered by Esme, and moved quickly to cover Bella. She was no doubt feeling the intense scrutiny of many eyes staring at her. I gave her a reassuring smile, trying to calmly absorb the changes evident in my love's physical appearance.
Oh!
I looked around her milk-white shoulders, drinking in the brand-like tattoo Jasper had remarked upon, the ruse of breathing forgotten. Wings, drawn and painted so lifelike in their appearance, I expected them to unfurl before my very eyes and take up the entire room with their span. Folded, they ran from the top of her shoulder blades with the tips brushing the back of her calves. Vibrant reds, oranges and yellows made them look as if they were wings of fire. I recalled the flaming Phoenix she'd transformed into before she destroyed the Volturi. Was this a permanent mark of her ability to change into the Phoenix? I shuddered at the thought of her transforming into that war-bird ever again, considering the toll it took on her mortal body. Would her new form be able to withstand it better?
"Edward? Is everything...am I...?" Her voice was butter soft, melting around the edges as her apprehension began to kindle.
Swallowing my own butterflies, I replied, "You are absolute perfection Isabella."
Eyes narrowing, she pinned me with a level stare. "You are not telling me everything. There's something different..."
With a speed I should have been expecting, she flew to the closest mirror, I closed in quickly behind her. Everyone else was still as stone in the background, the air thick with tension, concern for Bella the most prevalent. Placing my hands on her shoulders, we faced her reflection in the glass together,
"Your eyes are a brilliant shade of gold, and there is a...tattoo on your back..."