Page 162 of Walking in Darkness

Buildings had been completely obliterated.

Everything rubble.

But it was the bodies strewn from end to end that clutched me in grief. They were littered across the park and out on the crumbling streets.

Laven wept where they stood over their Nols or begged on their knees at their bodies.

And it became a grief I could not bear when I kept moving, in slow motion, as I turned all the way around to where Pax should have stood.

But instead, he was on the ground, those pale, pale eyes wide and unseeing, a deep gouge in his chest where he’d been struck by a Ghorl.

Chapter Forty-Six

Aria

“Pax!” His name cleaved from my mouth on a plea, and I dropped to my knees at his side.

“Pax. No, no, no,” I begged. My hands shook uncontrollably as they fluttered out to touch him. To feel him. To find him.

He couldn’t leave me.

Please, don’t leave me. Don’t.

“Pax. Please.” It was garbled. Incoherent.

I managed to get my trembling fingers to his neck, and I fumbled as I searched for a pulse. A frenzy grew inside me when I couldn’t find one, and I pressed harder.

Searching.

Desperate.

A thousand pounds weighed down on my chest. The pain so brutal I couldn’t breathe. I wheezed, the air jerking in and out of my failing lungs as I searched the other side, begging and begging, “Pax, please, look at me. You have to look at me. Please.”

Dani was suddenly there, on her knees on the other side of him. “Oh God, Aria,” she choked.

I pleaded, desperation scraping up my ravaged throat, “Pax, please, look at me!”

Her pink hair got in my line of sight as she leaned over him, and she tipped it so her ear was to his chest, watching and listening for anything.

For any movement.

For a breath.

For a heartbeat.

She remained there for too long.

Doing nothing.

“Dani, hurry, we have to help him.”

She sat back on her heels. Anguish pulsed through her features, and she slowly shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Aria.”

I shook mine back.

Frantically.

Refusing what she was trying to say.