Chapter Thirty-Six Aria

Chapter Thirty-Six

Aria

After we left the park, we headed west with no real destination in mind. The scenery blurred as we traveled, nothing but dashed rows of crops in the rambling fields and a terrain that had turned barren with sparsely dotted trees.

Tiny towns passed by in a blip.

I barely noticed anything at all since I’d been lost to turmoil and determination and a looming sense of doom.

I could feel it. Rising all around. As if each end of the Earth had gathered to see through my demise while the good was fighting to keep me here.

My mind had been tossed into a brand-new chaos that defied the logic we had found.

Fear slithered in with it, and the heaviness sitting on my chest was so close to suffocating that I felt it with every jagged inhale.

The visions of my family.

My mother’s desperation and the vacancy in my father’s voice.

My love for them called me back. Urged me to return. I had to find a way to protect them and also to destroy this Ghorl. Protect myself. Fight it the way I’d promised.

All while the information we’d gleaned from Maria Lewis confounded it all.

There had been more like me, and each time, they’d been hunted. I did my best to remain hopeful beneath the weight of it, but it was difficult to cling to that when all the evidence ripped it away.

Night had fallen, and our headlights cut across the gravel lot in front of the tiny motel Pax pulled into. We were somewhere in Texas, and we’d stopped to eat about two hours before, thankfully, for once, without incident.

Here, the area was desolate, the town barely more than a sporadic gathering of houses, a gas station, and a small convenience store across the road from the motel. The motel itself was two stories, with exterior doors facing out to the road. There were five units on each level, and only three cars were parked in the lot.

The office was a small jut-out on the far end, and an old vacancy light flashed, though the first two letters had burned out.

Pax stopped in front of it.

Tension bound. So thick we inhaled it as if it were poison that coated our lungs. There was something in the air here. Pax blew out through the heavy strain. “Maybe we should keep moving.”

“No. You’re exhausted. We should rest, and we need to get back to Tearsith to see if anyone found anything last night.”

He wavered before he nodded. “Yeah. You’re right.” Then he glanced around, peering into the nothingness that surrounded us to ensure it was clear.

When he was satisfied, he murmured, “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.”

He hopped out, leaving the car running and locking the doors behind him the way he always did before he strode to the glass lobby door and swung it open. It was bright inside, and his hair struck like white flashes of lightning as he moved to the counter.

Vicious and powerful.

God, he was beautiful. Beautiful in that dark, dangerous way that twisted my stomach in greed. Greed that made me want to push further into the boundaries that he believed were his duty to set.

He was in and out in less than ten minutes, and I watched as he strode back out the door.

White hair whipping in the wind, and that fierce, vicious face marred in his glory.

I wondered how anyone could look at him and see anything less than brutal perfection.

He slipped into the car and whipped a U-turn in the dirt lot and drove the short distance to park next to another car close to the stairway.

Immediately, he climbed out and went to the trunk to grab our things.

I followed, shuffling up to his side.

He glanced at me. “I don’t hear and feel anything off.”

I forced a grin, trying to find any lightness in the middle of a raging storm. “Now you’re hearing things?”

The harsh, stony angles of his face curled into the semblance of a smirk. “What, you think you’re the only one around here with extra powers, Princess?”

My stomach quivered. God, I loved when he was like this. When it almost felt like we might have a chance at normalcy. Love and a life.

“Powers? You’re talking like I possess some kind of magic,” I told him.

Pax reached out and brushed his calloused fingers along my jaw. Shivers flashed. “I think everything about you is magic, Aria. I think you radiate it.”

My teeth clamped down on my bottom lip, and my stupid heart leaped.

A guttural noise rumbled in Pax’s chest, and he used his thumb to free my lip, his steely gaze flicking between my mouth and my eyes. “Like I said, magic, the way you hypnotize me.”

We got stuck there for a moment before he exhaled and grabbed our bags from the trunk. He shut it and clicked the locks.

“Upstairs. Room 2B,” he muttered, and he ushered me up in front of him. His presence enclosed me from behind, his breaths salient in the cold air that clung to the night.

Unlocking the door, he flipped on the light. We paused in the doorway to take it in.

It was the dreariest, most run-down of all the rooms we’d stayed in, the walls covered in wood paneling and the carpet worn and coming up at the edges.

An old TV sat atop a battered dresser on the wall closest to us, and one small bed was pushed longways against the far wall to the left to allow room to get through to the bathroom at the back.

“Sorry, Princess, but apparently this is the best the motel has to offer,” Pax grunted as he shut and dead-bolted the lock behind us, a hint of amusement gliding from his words. “Lap of fuckin’ luxury.”

“As long as it’s warm, I don’t care.”

“Not sure you’re even going to get that,” he mumbled as he moved to the thermostat and cranked up the heat. “It’s cold as fuck in here.”

I sensed the true chill as he mentioned it, and dread slithered, and I got another sense that there was something different in the air.

I swallowed it down. “It will be fine once we get under the blankets.”

Pax’s fingers brushed my arm over the sleeve of my sweater. “It will be. I promise you.”

There was far more meaning to it than us speaking of the temperature.

“Do you need to use the restroom?” he asked when he stepped back and dumped our bags onto the floor.

“No, I’m fine right now.”

“Okay. I’m going to get cleaned up then.”

“I’ll be right here.”

“You’d better be.” Another smirk.

My stomach fluttered, that need I couldn’t tamp down fighting for a way to fly out.

His aura covered me as he angled by and went into the bathroom.

Blowing out the strain, I grabbed my bag and tossed it onto the bed so I could pull out a pair of leggings and a long-sleeved tee to sleep in. I changed quickly while Pax was in the bathroom, and once he finished, we changed places.

I used the restroom, washed my face, and brushed my teeth, feeling antsy and probably a little too eager when I stepped out.

He’d already flicked off the lamp, and only the smallest strains of light filtered in through the thin drapes that hung over the windows. The blips grew brighter with each flash of the vacancy sign.

Pax had made a makeshift pallet on the floor next to the bed, one composed of only a sheet and a pillow. He climbed down to lie on top of it.

“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.” It came out as a whisper from where I hovered at the edge of the room.

Lying on his back, he stared up at the ceiling, his words cut into fragments when he forced out, “I think it’s best if I do.”

Tension bound the dense air—the memory of our kiss. The way his weight had felt so perfect against me. I could feel the power that urged us back to the same space.

“You’ll get cold.”

Even in the dimness, I could see him pinch his eyes closed. “Please, Aria. It’s been a long day, and I’m already close to breaking.”

Vulnerability spilled from him. His truth. His struggle.

I hesitated. At war with everything I needed. At war with what was to come. At war with who we were supposed to be.

Finally giving in, I shuffled on bare feet to the small bed, stepping around him before I climbed onto the bumpy mattress and slid under the covers. I pulled them up to my chin.

“I can’t believe we ran into someone who knew what I was. Someone who was married to another Valient,” I said into the lapping night.

Silence pressed down. “Don’t think it was coincidence. I think she was meant to find us. To give you answers. To give you hope.”

He rolled onto his side, lifted his arm, and curled his palm over the side of my face. His thumb stroked so lightly as he affirmed, “You are magnificent, Aria, and this world can’t do without you.”

I wanted to stay just like that forever. With his hand on my face and his thumb caressing soothingly across my cheek.

But sleep called to me.

An unfound promise of peace.

Darkness enveloped and minutes passed, and Pax’s arm fell back to the ground as he twitched and shifted on the floor below me. Tension bound his muscles. An edge of violence firing through his nerves.

I waded there with him, in his anxiety, which thrashed through his insides before his breaths finally shifted.

They turned short and light as he fell away into a different existence.

I closed my eyes to follow him there, to meet him in Tearsith, to follow the call into Faydor.

I drifted. Floated and hovered on the cusp. Where the lights flickered and my spirit danced.

Only at the thud outside the door, my eyes flew back open.

Darkness swam through the room, and a vat of shadows played across the walls and crawled the ceiling. I sat up and angled my ear to listen.

I heard nothing, but I could feel it.

A whisper. A prodding. A call to my soul.

My heart panged erratically, and I shifted so I could peer down at Pax where he remained asleep. His jaw was clenched, and his hands were fisted in a fit of restless slumber.

I swallowed hard as I slipped out from under the covers. Careful not to disturb him, I stood and quietly padded to the window and pulled back the drape.

Night echoed back, the stillness only disturbed by the whipping of the wind that tossed through the sparse, leafless trees.

Only my gaze moved, drawn to the top of the stairs just to my left.

To the little girl clinging to the railing, with the palest gray eyes staring back.