Page 59 of Walking in Darkness

He circled me, coming closer with each rotation that he made around me.

“You should have heard the way she screamed inside that house when I set it afire.”

Pax,I begged in my mind. I could feel his confusion and fear blistering through the air. He was searching for me.

Ambrose angled his head to the side. “Just the way every Valient I’ve hunted down over the years has done. One given to this world each decade as if they might have the power to stop me. And you, little Valient ... you will be the last. Have you ever wondered why you were the last Laven in your family? Valeen has no power left to bring anyone into her fold. She gave everything she had remaining to you—creating the last Valient to stand. And it will be my pleasure finally bringing her vain attempt at stopping me to its end. You are the final one sustainingher, and once you’re gone, Valeen will finally have lost the very last of her pathetic, wilting strength. I’ve been waiting for more than a hundred years, and now, once I remove you, I will reign here. No longer in the darkness.”

His voice twisted and dipped, and my pulse careened as I tried to process everything he was saying.

“People will no longer fear what is in the shadows. They will fear what stands in front of them in the day.Me.They will bow at my feet. I have given my soul to Kreed, and he has offered me this reward. To rule both here and in Faydor. And there will be no Laven left to protect them from that. And you, little Valient, are that bridge. I will cross it when you come to your end.”

The second he said it, he grabbed me by the throat and threw me to the side.

I flew off my feet and slammed against the block wall. My head cracked against the concrete.

Pain ricocheted through my body, and the air was knocked from my lungs. Gasping, I attempted to orient myself, to hold on to the memory that I’d beaten him in that realm. That I’d gotten away.

He’d been afraid.

Energy throbbed within me. Convulsing and rough.

I grabbed hold of it, but I had no time to focus on amplifying it before Ambrose was on me again. Gripping me by the throat and squeezing with both hands. “And that end is now.”

Blackness clouded in at the edges of my sight, coming so fast I was unprepared.

Eyes bulging with pain, with the loss of oxygen, I tore at his wrists, but I was unable to budge him.

The other man danced around in the periphery, howling with deranged excitement.

And I thought that this was it. I really had met my end.

Except, in the middle of the desperation, the light within me suddenly glowed. Glowed so bright it was blinding. It built in a flash.

I struggled to harness it, to bring it to my hands and use it against the one man who would bring complete annihilation to the world.

I stopped clawing at his wrists and instead drove my fingertips into his sides.

He roared when the contact blew him back ten feet, as if my fingers were electric prods. The beast skidded on his feet, and it took him all of two seconds to right himself.

I didn’t have time to process the exhaustion that wanted to bring me to my knees before he was flying back for me, though he’d produced a knife. “You little bitch. Whore. You think you’re going to escape me the way you did in Baahg? It will not happen again.”

He slashed the knife in my direction, and I lifted my hands to protect my face. A yelp rolled through my throat when it nicked the tip of my pinkie.

But that energy boomed. Bounding within me and becoming something brand new. I fought him with it, grappling as he lashed and whipped the knife. I kicked, sending him flying backward again, much the same as I’d done in that realm he’d called Baahg. In the place where he currently ruled.

Ruled the Kruen.

The Ghorls.

In the place where he commanded that all Laven be extinguished.

I had to stop him.

A shout ripped out of me as I dove for him. I knocked him back to the ground. He whipped the hand with the knife across the air, barely missing my chin as I ducked before I grabbed him by the wrist with both hands.

I tried to jostle the knife loose, and he roared, tossing me off.

I tumbled across the pitted pavement behind the grocery store, groaning when I landed on my back. My eyes pinched shut from the jolt of pain that rocked through my body.