“I have faced many tests in the long years I have existed, Adalasia, but I did not believe I would be able to pass that one.” Again, he fell silent, the vicious torture playing through his mind. His body shuddered.
“You held out,” she soothed.
“For you,” he said softly. “I repeated my vows to you over and over. They couldn’t hear them, but—” He broke off and rubbed his temples. He didn’t like telling her, but she was his lifemate. His forced his gaze to meet hers. “I may have gone a little insane in that place, ewal emninumam. It is a very real possibility. I think it best if you examine my mind.”
Adalasia shifted positions so that she was on her knees in front of him. “I have been in your mind, Sandu. There is no hint of insanity. The things you saw were part reality and part illusion. You are an ancient. You know what the realm of shadows is like even better than I do. I learned from the guardians and Luiz. The demons crept in and took over, promising the vampires waiting there a portal out of the realm to this one if they could capture you or me. That was a lie, a huge deceit, yet the undead believed them. The shadow realm is a place that mixes everyone up.”
He knew she was trying to reassure him, but he needed her to understand and even see what he was concerned about. “Something else heard my vows, Adalasia. I spoke the ancient tongue. I repeated my oath to stay strong for our people, to stay strong to keep the demon inside, staying strong for her—only her. I became aware, after a time, that I was not the only one repeating those vows. There was another voice, a male voice, speaking in the ancient language. He recited the vows with me.”
He rubbed the pad of his thumb back and forth over her knuckles, willing her to believe him. In the ensuing silence, he could hear the sound of water in the distance. Cave crickets talked to one another.
“Do you believe there is another Carpathian male trapped in the Cave of Fire?” Adalasia didn’t flinch away from looking at him.
His brows drew together. “I do not know where he was. Only that he could hear me and I could hear him. I caught glimpses of a gate at times beyond the flames. The demons were lined up, watching, waiting, as if the expectation was I would break and something huge was going to happen.”
“What did the gate look like, Sandu?” she asked, her gaze never leaving his face.
She believed him. The relief was tremendous. Nearly overwhelming. Sandu scrubbed his free hand over his face, refusing to relinquish his hold on her.
“Look into my memories,” he invited. “I want you to see and hear what I did.”
“First describe the gate. I don’t want to take a chance on imposing what I might think into the visual of your memories.”
He wasn’t certain what she meant, but he was willing to tell her what he thought he’d seen beyond the towers of flames because Adalasia was so receptive.
“The gate was massive, consisting of two doors. Very thick, they were constructed of ancient wood, and I could see that the two gates would swing naturally outward toward the flames if they opened. There was a mark burned into the gates that sat over the center and was embedded onto both to make it one symbol.”
Adalasia nodded her head, and her free hand moved up to cover her heart. She pressed her palm there tight, hard, her eyes on his. “Could you make out the emblem at all?”
Sandu wanted to show her the image. It was difficult to describe. “A woman above a mountain, facing forward, but she is also facing to the east and west as well, as if she is watching everything. One guardian to the east holds a skull. The one to the west holds a flame. She holds a serpent in one hand and a dagger in the other. In front of her is a ceremonial chalice pouring blood into another chalice. I did not get all of this at once, Adalasia. I got this in small glimpses over a long period of time.”
“You are describing the goddess card,” Adalasia said.
There was no judgment in her voice at all, but he immediately doubted what he had seen—and heard. “It was illusion, then. My memory playing tricks.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t think it was, Sandu,” she denied.
He tightened his fingers around hers. “Why?” He didn’t want it to be an illusion. He was so certain, and that certainty made him feel as if he were fragmented, on the verge of insanity. On the other hand, if he hadn’t been hallucinating, if it wasn’t an illusion, what exactly was trapped behind that gate? He feared he knew, and that might be even worse than being on the verge of insanity.