Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
So silent I could choke on it.
My chest arched against the suffocating weight, and my mind whisked to Pax in his car outside, parked on the street, my spirit reaching out to discern where he was.
Drifting.
I didn’t know how I could feel it, but I could. I could sense him as he floated.
The man was caught between sleep and awake, hovering in that shimmery plane of nothingness. I swore that I felt the moment he slammed into Tearsith one second later.
He was asleep, which meant he would immediately descend.
A shiver rolled the length of my body as I forced myself to move forward, through the swaths of gloom that crawled across the floor. The only sound was the faintest swish of the soles of my shoes as I moved across the carpet.
Still, everything screamed. The walls and the ceilings and the toxic air.
The disturbance flailed the closer I got to the opening to the kitchen, and the barest sound breached the atmosphere.
A whine.
A moan.
A plea.
Chills lifted the hairs on the back of my neck before they spread out and rushed, skimming just beneath the surface of my skin, and my pulse that had already been thready sped in frantic beats.
Erratic and out of control.
From where I was hidden at the side, I quickly stole a glance through the threshold and into the kitchen. It was lit by a single dull light above the dining table. Stillness echoed back, no sign of anyone around.
Inching through the opening, I kept my breaths as shallow as possible.
I flinched when my shoes made a squeak against the gray plank tiles, and I completely held the air in my lungs as I tiptoed deeper into the kitchen, moving between the island and the dining table that sat beneath the window.
My gaze swept from side to side, searching for any trace of my family.
Alarm scattered through my senses, and a whimper crawled my throat when I broached the far side of the island and my attention moved to the left.
My mother was there, sitting on the floor with her back tucked into the corner of the kitchen cabinets. Her hands and feet were bound, and a piece of duct tape covered her mouth.
Even though I’d known my father was being led by the Ghorl, I was pummeled with aggrieved disbelief that he could do this to her. After all the years of loving each other? How? How could it come to this?
Horror blew her eyes wide open when she saw me, and she thrashed like she was the one who thought she needed to save me.
She released an agonized wail against the barrier of the tape and fought to break her bindings.
Panic zapped through my nerves, and I started to rush for her, to beg her to stay quiet so I could get her out of there, only I froze when I felt the movement from behind.
In a flash, the temperature dropped by fifty degrees.
It was like standing in Faydor. In the freezing cold that sank all the way to the bone.
Sickness roiling in the pit of my stomach, I eased around, too terrified to breathe as I faced my father.
He was sitting on the floor on the opposite wall where he’d been hidden by the table. His feet were planted so casually on the floor, his demeanor one of careless nonaggression, though he spun the tip of a hunting knife against his knee.
He had on the same brown khakis he’d always worn, but his mind was so far gone that he didn’t seem to notice that blood saturated the material from where the knife had punctured his flesh.
And his eyes . . . they were as cold as the room.
He cocked his head to the side, slowly, though there was no missing the fact it was full of menace. He tsked. “You’ve been such a naughty girl, Aria—running away like that and making your mother worry about you.”
A sob slammed against the tape on my mother’s mouth, and she jerked her arms, trying to loosen the rope that bound her wrists.
It was so difficult to speak, but somehow, I found my voice. “Dad, you have to listen to me . . . The voices in your head are lying to you. You don’t have to hurt anyone. You don’t. You have to resist it. Find the love that you have for Mom. Your love for Brianna and Mitch and Keaton. Remember how you promised to always protect them. Remember.”
I begged it, praying to reach him, to touch on the place inside him that remained unblemished. Where his goodness was unmarred. I couldn’t believe that he’d fully succumbed. Couldn’t believe that there was nothing worth saving in this man who’d raised us.
Cared for us.
The memory of his deep laughter rolled through the back of my mind. His infectious energy as he’d wrestled with the boys and made them howl. His cheers for Brianna at her dance competitions. The way he’d run his hand down the back of my head when he dropped me off at school and promised that he loved me.