I should have known. It was Rose, after all. How was there any way I could have doubted that she'd defy the impossible and save me from every Strigoi's worst fear and highest hope?

The fire closed in on me. My coat was set alight, and I had no doubt that the rest of me would soon follow. As death beckoned me to the black gate, I couldn't help but let out a helpless scream. As many times as she'd come for me, as many times as I'd seen that steely resolve enter her eyes, as much pain as she'd put me through on the bridge, I'd never dreamed it would come to this. Never imagined I'd be faced with this. It was more terrifying than my most horrific fantasies, to be confronted with how mortal I really was, even now.

I screamed again as the flames began to eat away at my skin. But over my own cries, there were other screams. One that was easily identifiable to me. I'd heard it before, after all.

Roza.

Through the torment of the fire scorching me, a different agony slammed into my chest, this one very familiar. The stake crashed through flesh and grated against my ribs. The angle was clumsy; this was no guardian, and the pale, slender hand holding the stake confirmed that. Lissa. Trying to stake me? Why? She knew I was burning. I was already gone.

There was one other possibility. But I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't. There was no way they could have the information and training necessary to…

…save me.

Save me. Save me. They were going to do it, out of all the times she could have let me die; of all the mistakes she'd made, all the deaths she'd let me cause, of everything, it was all going to end here after all. But not nearly in the way I'd thought. With a jolt, I realized she'd been the one to break out Victor Dashkov. She was the only one capable of that, and the only reason she'd break him out was if he possessed something vital to her. Something capable of bringing me back. Of course. It was her. It was always her.

As I was realising this, Lissa's hand plunged again, driving the stake further into my chest with every attempt. Again, I let out a scream of pain. She stabbed me four times before it finally pierced my heart.

As pure white light exploded out from me, I swirled out of the real world and into something else: a cold, black place, filled with undulating shadows that clung and wisped over me and left glacial trails wherever they touched. I tried to shiver, but found I could not move. There was nothing here. Nothing that lived, or breathed. I was merely a consciousness in a world wherein I did not belong. An observer.

This, I realised, was what the magic truly did. It didn't force me back into life; it stripped away my body, straight down to my soul, and showed me what I was. Here, I couldn't lie to myself. Here, there was no way to escape the truth: I was caught between two worlds, and now I had to choose. A slide show of my life played somewhere in the shadows, adding a splash of color to the dark.

It all laid itself out before me. Every sweet moment of my childhood; every one of my first lies. Every time I'd done the right thing; every time I hadn't. Each joyous moment laughing with Ivan; the night I'd received word of his death. It progressed through my childhood, into my teens, my early twenties, and finally to the year I'd been twenty-four. Into the night I'd met Roza.

The memories that replayed then brought tears to my eyes. The first practice, the first kiss, our various fights, the day with Victor, when I'd saved her from Natalie, her fall from the bench, the look on her face in Spokane, my pride when she'd received the molnija marks, when she told me she was seeing ghosts, my pain at seeing her so consumed by darkness, and the night in the cabin…everything.

Choose, a tiny voice whispered that sounded suspiciously like her. Life or death. Spirit can only do so much, and your soul cannot remain here in this place. This is where you are now. Do you want your soul here? You must choose a world. Life or death.

I looked between the two gateways that had appeared. There was a gold one and a red one. The red one showed a swirling shadow, gentler than the ones here, and interspersed with beams of soft ruby light. Ivan emerged from the red gate, his face at peace. And from the gold gate, Roza appeared. Her hair, black in the nonexistent light, fell gently around her shoulders, but her eyes were tear-filled and desperate. Behind her a whirlwind churned, a mix of beautiful white light and black darkness, love and hatred. Life.

I chose.

It slammed into me in a rush of color and sound and light. The blinding whiteness that was in front of my eyes for an instant disappeared, shrieks of pain and cries from Roza piercing my ears. Then everything was silent, and I knew I had been saved.

There were slender arms wrapped around me. Without thinking, I curled into them and let myself cry. I didn't know whose arms cradled me and frankly I didn't care. I pictured Roza, and kept my eyes closed.

And yet I knew it wasn't her. Somewhere, I knew. But still I wept, both with the knowledge that she had come for me, she had flipped off reality and gone with her heart to save me, and with the realization that, inevitably, I would have to leave her.