Page 19 of Walking in Darkness

He was a friend.

Family.

“No.” It wheezed out of Aria on a bottled sob.

Margarethe, Nathan’s Nol, stood from where she’d been surrounded by ten or so of their family members.

Dani, Aria’s closest friend, the one who’d been her mentor when she’d prepared to descend into Faydor for the first time, kept an arm around her waist to support her.

Tears blurred Margarethe’s eyes, and Dani curled her closer to keep her upright as she swayed to the side and struggled to form words.

“He didn’t come for three nights. I became concerned, and I ...” Margarethe hesitated as if she were afraid of admitting a mortal sin. “I knew his last name and where he lived, so I searched for him. I found a news article. He ...”

She faltered before she choked around the confession. “He fell down the stairs at his house and broke his neck. His sister found him the next morning.”

“Oh my God,” Aria gasped around a clutch of sorrow.

But she knew that sorrow wasn’t close to the magnitude of what Margarethe was experiencing right then. She could sense it.

A shattering of spirit.

A cleaving of hearts.

As if an actual piece of the woman had been carved from her being.

“I’m so sorry, Margarethe,” Aria wheezed.

Dani met Aria’s gaze. The two friends shared a moment’s grief between them.

Margarethe squeezed her eyes closed, and a torrent of tears fell down her face before she shook her head in anger. “It ... it doesn’t make any sense. He was strong. A force. Completely stable. There was no reason ...”

Death always seemed impossible. A vague threat in the distance before it reached you.

“You’re going to be okay,” Dani murmured, though the words broke. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Oh God, where is William?” Claire suddenly cried out from the edge of the crowd. As if she’d been trying to keep it bottled since she arrived. She turned in a circle, as if coaxing her Nol to step from the boundaries and into Tearsith. “He didn’t come last night ... and he still isn’t here.”

Ellis’s Nol, Josephine, ambled over to Claire. Her spine was hunched with age, her limbs spindly and thin. She reached for the Laven, and she peered up at her as she took her hand. “Oh, Claire, do not be troubled. He must have had a change in his human life. He’ll come. You must not worry.”

Though Aria heard the quaver in Josephine’s voice, could feel the unease ripple through the entirety of their family.

As if each of them felt that something was off.

Trepidation slithered through Aria, and Pax’s palm twitched against hers, as if he had the same sense. The feeling that an axis had shifted.

Their entire Laven family gathered around Margarethe, their heads bowed as they surrounded her to offer their support.

No doubt, each of them wished for a way to bear some of it for her. To hold her up when she dropped to her knees and wailed. All while they clung to their own Nols a little tighter.

“No. Why? Oh, Valeen, why?” she wept toward the placid heavens.

Dani got down on her knees to console Margarethe the best that she could, and her Nol, Timothy, joined her.

Ellis moved forward, touching Margarethe’s bowed head. Promising that Nathan was at eternal peace, that he could now rest and his duty had been served, though it did little to quiet the sobs that racked the woman.

When Ellis finally stood and turned in their direction, his features were piteous. They only dimmed in worry when he stepped toward them and Aria whispered, “I need to speak with you.”

He ushered Aria and Pax away from the group, and the three of them gathered beneath the gnarled, twisted branches of the great tree.