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)
“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.” It came out as a whisper from where I hovered at the edge of the room.
Lying on his back, he stared up at the ceiling, his words cut into fragments when he forced out, “I think it’s best if I do.”
Tension bound the dense air—the memory of our kiss. The way his weight had felt so perfect against me. I could feel the power that urged us back to the same space.
“You’ll get cold.”
Even in the dimness, I could see him pinch his eyes closed. “Please, Aria. It’s been a long day, and I’m already close to breaking.”
Vulnerability spilled from him. His truth. His struggle.
I hesitated. At war with everything I needed. At war with what was to come. At war with who we were supposed to be.
Finally giving in, I shuffled on bare feet to the small bed, stepping around him before I climbed onto the bumpy mattress and slid under the covers. I pulled them up to my chin.
“I can’t believe we ran into someone who knew what I was. Someone who was married to another Valient,” I said into the lapping night.
Silence pressed down. “Don’t think it was coincidence. I think she was meant to find us. To give you answers. To give you hope.”
He rolled onto his side, lifted his arm, and curled his palm over the side of my face. His thumb stroked so lightly as he affirmed, “You are magnificent, Aria, and this world can’t do without you.”
I wanted to stay just like that forever. With his hand on my face and his thumb caressing soothingly across my cheek.
But sleep called to me.
An unfound promise of peace.
Darkness enveloped and minutes passed, and Pax’s arm fell back to the ground as he twitched and shifted on the floor below me. Tension bound his muscles. An edge of violence firing through his nerves.
I waded there with him, in his anxiety, which thrashed through his insides before his breaths finally shifted.
They turned short and light as he fell away into a different existence.
I closed my eyes to follow him there, to meet him in Tearsith, to follow the call into Faydor.
I drifted. Floated and hovered on the cusp. Where the lights flickered and my spirit danced.
Only at the thud outside the door, my eyes flew back open.
Darkness swam through the room, and a vat of shadows played across the walls and crawled the ceiling. I sat up and angled my ear to listen.
I heard nothing, but I could feel it.
A whisper. A prodding. A call to my soul.
My heart panged erratically, and I shifted so I could peer down at Pax where he remained asleep. His jaw was clenched, and his hands were fisted in a fit of restless slumber.
I swallowed hard as I slipped out from under the covers. Careful not to disturb him, I stood and quietly padded to the window and pulled back the drape.
Night echoed back, the stillness only disturbed by the whipping of the wind that tossed through the sparse, leafless trees.
Only my gaze moved, drawn to the top of the stairs just to my left.
To the little girl clinging to the railing, with the palest gray eyes staring back.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Aria
Aria peered back into the room where Pax lay in a fitful sleep. Her heart climbed to her throat, each beat so heavy that it clotted out the flow of air as she struggled to inhale. Time moved as if it both raced and had been set to slow.
Every molecule of her being trembled as she returned her attention out the window.
The little girl with eyes so pale they were nearly white remained, staring back at Aria as if she possessed a tether that ran directly to Aria’s soul.
A beacon.
The child was wearing only a pink-and-white nightgown—no shoes on her feet, and her blond hair whipped in the frozen wind that disturbed the slumbering night.
Never taking her eyes from Aria, she took a step down the staircase with one hand clinging to the railing.
She then took another and another as she began to descend into the nothingness below.
Panic surged through Aria, a blistering heat that burned through her veins. She didn’t know why, but she had to get to the little girl. Reach her. Stop . . . something.
Frantic, she looked back to where Pax slept.
The urge to call out to him was almost painful, though she found she couldn’t make any words form on her tongue. The knot in her throat blocked all sound. The words lodged, dead in her chest.
She turned back to the window. The little girl was nearly to the bottom. Dust blew through on a gust of wind, stirring the air into a darkened cloud. The road was barren, though at any time a car or truck could come barreling through.