Page 167 of Walking in Darkness

My partner.

My Nol.

My wife.

The one who’d saved me. The one I knew with every part ofmyself.

My soul’s destination.

She was war-torn. Clothes shredded. Hair matted and clumped, blood smeared all over her striking, beautiful face.

But it would always be those eyes that got me. The palest gray eyes that speared all the way through flesh and bone to what was written in the deepest parts of me. This woman who’d always seen.

Sorrow lanced across her sharp brow, though there was so much more in her expression.

Freedom.

Deliverance.

Exoneration.

The chains that had bound us for so long were gone. The fear that had hunted us extinguished.

And the hope—the hope that she’d held had been found.

Fulfilled in the truth that we saw—people wandering around, confused yet whole; rays of sunlight beaming across the sky, warming the bitter cold that had frozen everything over.

Moisture filled her eyes as she stared over at me. So much emotion clogged her spirit that I could tell she didn’t know if she wanted to shout with joy or drop to her knees and weep.

Because with the triumph had come tragedy.

With the victory had come misery.

Reaching out, I set my hand on her cheek and brushed the pad of my thumb beneath the hollow of her eye. My head barely bobbed. The slightest moment that promised that I got it. That I understood.

Understood that there was still a burden in the fulfillment of her purpose.

Dani choked on a sniffle, her voice a raspy moan that infiltrated the car. “How could we just leave them there?”

Josephine had refused to leave Ellis’s side. Had refused to come with us. Had demanded we go.

We respected her enough to give in to that request, even though it had torn every single one of us apart.

“Because she needed to be there with him. Alone. To seek whatever peace she could find.” Timothy’s words were soft, issued with encouragement and his own sorrow.

We were reeling with the truth that this was the only time the two of them ever had. That they hadn’t gotten the chance to know each other outside the battles we’d forever fought in Faydor. Their only meeting in the flesh had been this—their souls drawn together for the shortest amount of time.

But I think we also knew Ellis’s heart. Knew he would have gladly sacrificed himself. Hell, he’d been sacrificing himself all along.

“I’m going to get us a couple rooms. I’ll be right back,” I finally said, knowing we needed to rest.

Heal.

Actually fully breathe for the first time in weeks.

Aria brushed her fingers down my arm in a silent agreement, and I clicked open the door and stepped out into the chill, though the howl of the wind had ceased. I glanced at my reflection in the window of the car.

I was covered in blood. My clothes saturated and my hair matted in thick clumps. Face streaked and stained red even though I’d wiped it with a towel Dani had had in the trunk.