Page 6 of Walking in Darkness

“I could feel you,” I whispered. “I could feel your panic from wherever I’d gone. Calling out for me.”

“I hate this. Hate that I don’t know how to put an end to this,” he murmured through the kiss. “But we’re going to.”

Severity scored through him when he peeled himself away. White flames burned in the depths of those pale, pale eyes, his white hair a disaster from his toiling on the bed. His chest bare and heaving, his ashen flesh covered in the miseries he’d witnessed in his life.

The man fierce, potent volatility.

His hands were back to gripping my face. “I promise you, Aria. He will not get to you. I will do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen, whoever this fucker is.” Speculation pinched his brow. “Is he ... Kreed?”

My soul shivered.

Kreed was a monster we only knew from the teachings that had been passed through our Laven family.

Kreed had once lived in harmony with Valeen, our highest one. He had betrayed her in an attempt to dethrone her from her great power. When he failed, their worlds were split in two, and he now ruled over the Kruen he had created. Forever seeking destruction. Bringing calamity on the world.

I could feel the frown pull across my brow. “I don’t think so.”

My mind spun through everything Ambrose had said. Through what he might have revealed in his ambiguous confessions. Through what I had felt.

A vague memory hinted at the edges of my mind. Somehow, it felt as if I should know him ...

I fully turned my attention to Pax, speaking around the aching of my throat. “I think he’s human, like us, but has gained some sort of power. He said ...”

I closed my eyes as I pictured him.

What had roiled in his expression.

His hatred.

His greed.

“You remember I told you that he said he has been destroying Valients for twenty generations, and he promised he would put an end to our kind. It was like ... he had to. Like whatever he has become hinges on it.”

Apprehension rolled through Pax, though vehemence lined his features, the words like a mandate when he issued them.

As if he’d come to the same resolution at the exact moment as me. “And you are the only one who can stop him.”

Uncertainty meshed with the verity that pulsed through my being. My nod was frantic when I realized the emotion I was trying to put my finger on. “I could almost taste his desperation when he realized I could fight him there. Could taste his fear. He was afraid of me, Pax. He was afraid of me. Which means he is not unstoppable.”

I gasped the last sentence.

Hope rising up with the words.

Pax’s fingers sifted through my hair, his palm on my cheek as his tone dipped to adoration. “No, Aria, he isn’t unstoppable. Because of you. Valient.”

I still didn’t fully understand what that meant. Why or how I’d been chosen.

But I knew, right then, that I would accept it. Take it for all it was and stop this monster, because I somehow knew that was exactly what I was meant to do.

“I’m terrified, Pax,” I said, though my chest glowed with determination. I rushed to add, “But I won’t let that fear stand in my way this time. This time I won’t run. This time I will fight.”

Chapter Two

Aria

It was strange to look at my family and suddenly view them in an entirely different light.

When everything changed in what felt like the passing of a single moment and nothing that any of us had known remained the same.