Page 34 of Walking in Darkness

The decor was a bit dated, but the room was clean.

“Movin’ up in the world.” Another grunt from Pax as he dropped his duffel to the floor before he slipped inside and did his routine check.

“All clear, Princess,” he said when he returned, and he swung the door open wide and grabbed his bag and took mine from me. He turned and dumped them both onto the foot of the bed.

I stepped inside and carefully turned the two locks on the door.

I may have wanted to draw Ambrose here, but I wanted to do it on my terms.

I just wasn’t entirely sure how to make that happen. It was like he was right there, dancing along the fringes, taunting and provoking. Lording over those he had under his control.

It was that control I needed to shatter.

The heater under the window pumped, and a tremor rolled through me as the cold clashed with the heat.

“It’s warm in here, at least,” Pax mumbled as he unzipped his duffel and pulled out his toiletry bag. He kept his attention down as he dug around, and there was something in his demeanor that was off.

Unsettled.

Not that we weren’t always on edge. But I could feel it. The strain that pulled right beneath the surface.

I’d felt it grow with every mile we’d traveled today.

“What’s wrong?” I asked his back, my chest stretching tight in worry.

It wasn’t as if there weren’t a million things that werewrong.

But this was new.

Something that had emerged in the aftermath of what we’d seen and learned earlier today.

Pax hesitated, clearly not wanting to let me in.

“If there’s something going on, you need to let me know. You can’t keep me in the dark. There’s enough of it already, isn’t there?”

On a sigh, Pax stopped riffling through his bag and his head drooped between his shoulders.

“About out of money. I’m going to have to hunt. Track down some fuckin’ monster who has plenty of it for all the wrong reasons and relieve him of it. That, and relieve the world of his burden.”

He stayed that way for the longest time before he slowly turned to me.

Ferocity fueled the lilt of his chin, white fire in the flames of his eyes, though there was the slightest smudge of guilt that underscored it. That part of him that believed he wasn’t good enough for me. That he was bad in some way. That he’d taint me.

“Then we go find him,” I told him.

Simply.

Because I also understood his calling. Why he did the things he did.

A gush of rejection puffed out of him, and he let go of a caustic laugh. “Absolutely fuckin’ not. There is noweto it.”

The words were shards, scorn directed at himself.

I lifted my own chin in challenge. “I thought you said we were in this together?”

In a flash, Pax crossed the room, and he had my face framed in his hands before I could process the movement.

“You think I would ever want to subject you to that, Aria? What you have to witness is bad enough—the barbarity both here and in Faydor. But for you to see it coming from my own hands?” His facepinched in disgust. “When it isn’t done to protect you? When it’s done out of my own selfishness?”