Page 122 of Walking in Darkness

Intent.

Vivid.

Stark and hard and so utterly soft.

His voice was gravel when he spoke. “I was told since I was a child that my Nol was only meant for me in one way: as a partner in a war I’d been picked to fight. But I should have known all along that she was meant for so much more than that. That she was everything that ever meant anything to me.”

He swallowed hard, and his thick throat bobbed. “She was the light that burned inside me. A beacon. My only destination. And when I found you, Aria ... when I saw you for the first time standing in front of me, you rearranged everything I’d thought I’d known. Every part of me. You brought me to life in an instant, when I’d long accepted that the only thing my meager days would encompass were gore and violence and death.”

Tears blurred Aria’s eyes, and her chest expanded as her Nol laid himself bare in front of their entire Laven family.

“And then you showed me that I had it all wrong. You showed me there was so much more to live for, and the one thing I was made to do was live this life with you. For you. So yes, I accept you as my wife both here and on Earth. Through every storm and sunrise. In the chaos and the peace. In all of eternity.”

A deep fervency swathed them all as their family watched, rapt.

The energy she and Pax shared wound and glowed.

Ellis cleared the coarseness from his voice before he again lifted his chin and said, “Then it is my great honor to declare you husband and wife. In every way.”

Pax didn’t wait to find out if Ellis would tell him to kiss her. His arms were already around her and a hand was already twisting up in her hair, holding tight as he possessed her mouth in a mind-bending kiss.

One that trembled the ground beneath her feet and rocked her to her soul.

Commanding.

Proclaiming.

A vow that he sealed.

One that could not be undone.

She felt branded by it. Uplifted and taken.

Whole in every way she could imagine. The hollowness and vacancies and loneliness that had wept inside her for so many years had been completely obliterated.

Lights flickered and flashed behind her eyes, a blinding warmth that surged through the clearing.

And she wondered if the others felt it, too, as a chorus of soft gasps echoed around them, before there were shouts and claps cheering them on as everyone began to stand.

A gathering of hearts.

The hearts they were fighting for, only she knew that number was far greater than the small group that had come to shower them with love and well-wishes.

Aria and Pax finally parted, though their spirits remained tied, their gazes entrenched in the truth that vibrated between them.

Forever.

Forever.

“Now we must descend. Our work is far from over,” Ellis said, breaking into the rapture. Pax and Aria gave him their assent.

He was right ... they had much work to do.

They had all of existence to save.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Pax—Faydor