Page 58 of Walking in Darkness

“You bastard,” I spat, unable to hold the spite back when I knew he was responsible for the deaths in our family. For every Laven who had been lost this week.

A thrill ran through his features, and he cocked his head to the side, his voice condescending. “Have you enjoyed my handiwork, little Valient? I wondered when you would notice. When you’d see that I meant it when I told you I was going to end you all.”

He came forward then, the pavement below me rumbling with each step he took, thunder that rolled like a dark storm possessing the ground and sky.

“Every last one of you, and there is nothing you can do about it. This has been coming for a long, long time.”

I lifted my chin, nerves clattering as I tried to stand my ground.

To hold on to hope when I was surrounded by sickness.

The disgusting presence of the man who’d grabbed me salivating with evil from behind me and the culmination of it in front of me.

“Since the day Abigail died?” I said it as a challenge. I wanted to set him off-kilter and make him stumble.

He only grinned. “Ah, you have been doing your research, I see. She was such a sweet little thing.” He tsked like it was a shame. “Talented and beautiful. I loved her with everything I had. Your Nol will do that to you, though, won’t they?”

It was me who stumbled. Me who was set off-kilter at his words.

Was that what he was saying?

That he was a ... Laven?

But how ... how had he ended up like this?

I gulped around the thickness that nearly closed off my throat.

“You’re a Laven.”

But his eyes ... they weren’t gray.

His laughter was menacing as he began to circle me as if I were prey. I followed the path, trying to keep him in my line of sight.

All while my mind shouted for Pax. For him to feel me. Find me.

“Iwasa Laven,” Ambrose hissed before his voice turned mollifying again as he continued.

“It’s true what Valeen says ... Your Nol is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness. I was supposed to take over my father’s printing shop, but I didn’t care. When I was seventeen, I traveled from Chicago to South Carolina to find her. She was the only thing I cared about in that horrible life I’d been sentenced to.”

He kept moving, his voice drifting between malice and awe. “God, she was breathtaking. I was enthralled. I would have given anything just to be by her side. The smallest reprieve from a lifetime of torment. The voices? The burns? Those eyes? As if what we’d been given was supposed to be some gift?”

His scoff was discordant.

Jarring.

“I hated it and would have done anything to be rid of it. I would have given anything to be normal and go to sleep and dream at night. But Abigail ... she embraced it. Her whole purpose was what happenedonce she went to sleep. And then one day she woke up changed ... and she took on that purpose during the day. AValient.”

He snarled it as if she had committed a sin.

“No regard to anything else but giving herself to the pathetic, weak creatures of this earth, as if they deserved her time and care. As if they should have something better than what Kreed had planned for them.”

His jealousy twisted around him, a tornado that spun as fast as the clouds overhead.

“She was pathetic, just like the rest. So it was easy when Kreed made me the offer.”

A soft puff of air slipped from his nose. “Did you know if a Laven doesn’t sleep for a week, he’s brought before Kreed? Its soul so weakened by not returning to Tearsith that he now owns it. I wished I’d have known sooner so I could have been brought before Kreed earlier. It turned out, all I had to do was kill her in his name. Take one Valient’s life, and mine would go on forever. I’d be removed from the burden that Laven were given. Given a true gift ... one where I ruled the night. There was really no option.”

He said it casually. Easily.