Page 50 of Walking in Darkness

A solemn understanding fell over them, and they all rose and began to pair off, though their voices were hushed as they each shared their contact information with those around them.

Aria wanted to get up and join them. Fight at their sides. But she didn’t have the strength to even get to her feet.

Affliction assaulted her as she watched them go. She felt aggrieved at the thought that she could have done this. That her love for her Nol might have caused this.

Those stolen moments.

Their kisses.

Their touches.

Had she been that selfish?

A moan bottled in her chest, and that sense was on her again. The whisper of that tinkling, melodic voice.

“Together. Wholly.”

It was a call that echoed through her middle.

Her family disappeared into the nothingness while Pax hugged Josephine, offering her his hope.

That voice whispered again, nudging in the deepest spot inside her. A call.

She had no choice but to heed it. To follow it.

Slowly, she rolled in the grass until she was on her stomach, then fought to bring herself to her hands and knees.

She gasped as she crawled in the direction she was led.

To the spring that rippled through the meadow.

The exhaustion was excruciating. Her joints felt as if they’d been pulled apart, her muscles sundered and riven.

She winced as she moved, grinding her molars against the agony of pressing her palms to the grass after they’d been completely scorched.

But she couldn’t resist the lure.

The innate need to get to the stream.

To listen.

To see.

“Aria,” the haunting voice whispered when she made it to the brook.

Barely able to keep herself propped up on one hand, she stirred the fingers of the other hand through the cool, placid water.

“Together. Wholly.” It was faint, nagging at the edge of her ear.

“Valeen?” she begged. Not for herself. For the others who had to be saved.

“Rise up, dear Valient.” The words wisped through the air just as the hint of a face passed through the rippling water. “You are the chosen. You must lead.”

“How? Show me how,” she implored, hand diving deeper into the water as if she could hold on to the vapor that whisked by.

“You hold the power inside you,” the voice intoned, drifting farther away. Farther away into the nothingness.

On a frustrated cry, Aria slumped forward, practically sliding into the stream as her hand frantically swished beneath the water. “Please. How?”