Sunny: Mona Lisa Darkening

"Ow!" I mumbled. My tongue felt thick and heavy. As were my limbs as I tried to push his hands away. But it was enough to lift Dontaine's hands off my chest. No more jolts of electricity passing like a live current through me. But it still hurt! I looked down and saw that my skin was blistered red and was actually smoking!

The door flew open and people started pouring in — Rosemary, Chami, Aquila. Dontaine pulled the sheet over us a second before my brother, obviously pulled from sleep, rushed into the bedroom.

"What's happening? What's wrong?" Thaddeus demanded, his voice raised up over the others.

"She was dying. Her heart stopped beating," Dontaine said, his eyes still wild and sparkly.

"He jump-started it, I think," I mumbled weakly, my voice slurring. "S' tired."

"I'll get Hannah," Rosemary said, rushing out.

The only one in the room that I sensed was Dontaine, and I likely only felt his energy because he was so close to me and revved up so extraordinarily high. The others… utterly nothing. I wondered if it was the same in return, if they felt nothing from me. No presence.

In an amazingly short amount of time, Hannah was there, pushing her way through to me. I saw her but didn't feel her, and that inability to sense her was like having one of my arms or legs amputated.

"Hannah," I slurred, "am I still here?"

"Yes, child. You're still here." She glanced at the others. "Some privacy, please."

Everyone left the room but Dontaine. "I cannot leave her in case her heart stops again," he said stubbornly.

"Her heart stopped?" Hannah asked.

"It slowed and then it stopped and she wasn't breathing. I sent a surge of energy through her heart, and it started beating again."

Hannah turned back to me, her face, her voice, serene and gentle. "I'm just going to touch you and examine you, milady."

She placed her hands around my head. I felt her then, the dimmest, faintest presence. She ran her hands down my face, my neck and shoulders, inhaled sharply when she lowered the sheet and saw the red burn marks on my chest. She did a complete head-to-toe exam, and for once I wasn't bothered by being naked in front of her. Exhaustion and worry about what she was sensing… or not sensing… fretted me more than my modesty.

She covered me with the sheet again and turned to Dontaine. "Tell me everything that happened."

He did, elaborating in far more explicit detail than I liked.

Hannah turned her gaze back to me. "Yesterday, your body did not emit light during sex."

It wasn't really a question, but I nodded anyway. "Not for lack of pleasure," I said, speaking slowly. I found that if I spoke slowly enough, I didn't slur my words. "Felt my body try, though."

"Try what?" she asked.

"To match his light… but couldn't."

"You were tired afterward?"

"Slept for long time… didn't help… just as tired when woke up."

"And when you made love this morning?"

"Didn't glow."

"Did you feel your body try to match his light again?"

"Yes… but couldn't. What did you find… when you touched me?"

"Your aura, your energy, is dramatically less than it was two days ago when I last examined you," Hannah said. "In the week since you returned to us, you hadn't improved but neither had you worsened much."

"Much?" I whispered.

"Your energy was a tiny bit less each day. I didn't mention it because I was hoping you would stabilize."

Only this morning, I'd had the same thought and had felt sad at the thought that I might be like that for the rest of my life, as weak as a human. Now it seemed like a state of uncommon fitness compared to the condition I'd deteriorated into.

"I made her worse," Dontaine said grimly.

"Having sex… making love… made her worse," Hannah said gently. "It seems to have expended a great deal of her energy each time. She's no longer a closed, regenerating circuit. What energy she loses, she does not seem able to get back."

"Why didn't you tell us this sooner?" Dontaine asked, deeply anguished.

"I didn't know. She's been relatively stable up till now."

"Can you help her?"

"The energy she pulled from me last week — and it was quite a lot — didn't even make a dent then, and she was in far better condition than she is now. I, alone, cannot do much. We must take her to High Court, see if the other healers there can help her. Perhaps with several of us working on her, she might be able to regain some of her strength."

"Regain. Not heal her?" Dontaine asked.

"I do not know if that would be possible, but perhaps the other healers there have more knowledge than I."

"When do we leave?"

"Right away," Hannah said, rising. "I'll phone them, let them know we're coming."

There was a heavy, painful silence after she left.

" 'S okay… didn't know," I said, my words slurring as I rushed to reassure him.

"It's not okay!"

"If not you… then Amber."

"But it was me. Oh, Goddess. It was me!"

I reached for his hand clumsily. Felt a faint dim spark when I touched him. "You made me… feel beautiful."

Tears rolled down. "I'm sorry. So sorry."

"Me, too," I rasped as strength left me. as my heart slowed and stuttered. "That I wasted… so much time."

My vision faded.

Sound stretched out. receded from me as I was pulled back down into a tunnel of silence, into that void of nothingness.

Then sharp pain flashed through my chest, a lightning bolt of sizzling agony. Blurred images of Dontaine's face… silver eyes… other faces gathered around. Raised voices as I flowed in and out of consciousness. Words floating to me… She's dying … The plane … Too late … Hannah touching me, collapsing to the floor. My body straining for each breath, each laboring heartbeat.

My brother's voice, "Let me help. I have some healing ability." Rousing panic as I fought to speak, to mutter, "No!" Relief as I saw Chami hold him back — Thaddeus's protector, someone to look after him when I was gone.

But who will look after Dontaine? I wondered. Absolve him of a guilt that should not be his to bear? That I regretted the most.

I was dying, I realized vaguely, and found the process immensely painful. Not the physical aspects, though that was no picnic. More the mental anguish it caused the others, and how my death would hurt them, all of them — Amber, Gryphon, Halcyon. Dante — Nolan's son.

"Hannah?" I managed to whisper. A weak sound, one I barely heard myself.

"She's okay," Rosemary reassured me. "Just fainted."

The crowd around me shifted, parted, and I saw a face… two faces in the doorway that made me seriously wonder if I hadn't died already, passed into death without being aware of it. Either that or I was hallucinating. I blinked and saw them still — a gray gargoyle and a ghost I never expected to see again: Gordane carrying Mona Louisa in his arms, saying, "Let me through," and, "Do not touch me. Not unless you wish to be turned to stone."

Mona Louisa looked as bad as I felt — weak, faint, dying.

"You real?" I asked.

"Yes, we're real," Gordane said. He knelt next to me, Mona Louisa cradled in his arms.

"How… cross gate?"

"I brought her another way when she collapsed and continued to fade in substance, even with my continued touch. I knew that only you could help her."

Even in my confusion and disbelief, I saw how carefully Gordane held her, with a tenderness that was surprising. And how trustingly she lay in his massive arms, her fingers, so slim and fragile in comparison, delicately holding his thick wrist. Her eyes looked at me through half-closed lids.

"You're both dying," Gordane rumbled.

I wanted to argue that Mona Louisa was already technically dead, but didn't bother wasting my energy or breath.