Page 111 of Walking in Darkness

His eyes squeezed closed for a beat. “I know,” he ground out.

“They’re coming for us.” My response was haggard.

Pax warred in the middle of it before he rushed out, “Yes. But Valeen is here, too. At least, some part of her is.” He hesitated before he tightened his hold on my face. “Because Jill is here, Aria.”

In confusion, I rocked back an inch. “What do you mean?”

“The nurse who helped you escape. She was here. In Portland. She kept having dreams that she had to come here. That her purpose with you wasn’t over. And she saved you. She’s the one who patched you up. Gave you blood after you’d lost so much.”

“Oh my God.”

It was a whisper.

Awe.

A blooming of hope in the middle of my faith that kept getting trampled.

Pax threaded our fingers together and lifted them between us. “There’s a reason, Aria. Something we’re supposed to do. We just have to keep you safe until we can see it through.”

“It was different last night,” I told him.

Words started to fly out as the memories came flooding back.

“With you all there. When I expelled the energy the first time, I was drained ... exhausted beyond my boundaries ... but when Dani wrapped her arm around my waist to support me, a flicker of the energy returned. We already knew that happened when you touched me. Believed it would be the same for all Nols. But, Pax ...”

I gulped as the realization came battering into me. “When all four of us were standing together. It was powerful. Extremely. There’s no chance that bolt of energy would have come out of me if all of you hadn’t been right there. With me. Touching me.”

It was the contact.

It was the contact.

Awareness careened, a frenzy that blistered through my insides and sank into my spirit.

Bolting upright, I tossed off the blanket and sheet that covered us, and I started to tear the bandage free from my abdomen.

“Aria, what the hell are you doing?” Pax flew up to sitting, scrambling to stop me.

“No, Pax. Don’t. Just listen. Look.”

I could tell he didn’t want to give in. That he worried I was delusional.

Fevered.

I was, but not in the way he was thinking.

He relented, and I grimaced as I peeled the bandage away to expose the wound.

A wound that was still there. The skin puckered and red and inflamed. But it was healed in a way it shouldn’t be. The skin that had been sutured was closed. Not just by the stitches, but by the mending of the flesh.

Beyond the fathomable.

“How is this possible?” Pax muttered, aghast as he looked at the laceration.

“Because it was a lie to keep us weak.”

A lie we’d been fed.

One I was sure Ambrose had created. Because he knew ... He knew the power Abigail had possessed when they’d been together.