Chapter Forty-Seven Aria

I curled up against Pax beneath the plush covers, soaked in his warmth and swamped in his spirit. His breaths were long, and his gaze was unhurried as he continually gentled his fingers through my hair.

Our bodies were pressed together, our hearts in sync, our minds in time.

And he murmured, “Sleep.”

Aria took his hand where they stood at the boundary of Faydor.

Darkness wept, whispered, and called.

Pax squeezed her hand tight as he cast her a glance. One that promised they were in this together.

Forever he would fight by her side.

But it felt different that night—as if spirit and mind had been opened and a piece of her had been freed.

So they descended, fell through the crash of wicked voices, through the depraved and the iniquitous, an eternity that landed them in the searing cold.

The bare glow at the edge of Faydor was the only light to guide their way as they tracked over the hard, frozen ground. Their breaths were salient as they panted around the frigid air that filled their lungs.

Blood crashed through her veins as she searched through the perpetual night.

Their footsteps pounded in her ears as she and Pax ran headlong through the heavy vapor that snaked over the lifeless ground and curled around the wiry, leafless elms.

Lightning cracked across the low-hung canopy, a crackle of sin and perversion.

Hisses of iniquity filled their ears, the whispers of the Kruen casting their evils into any willing mind.

They slaughtered each as they passed. Fighting for the good. For the protection of those who had no idea of the battle that was fought for them each second of the night and every moment of the day.

They ran deeper, and their strength felt unmatched, brighter than it’d ever been.

The dread, the fear, the weakness that had once held her no longer existed. She didn’t know what the future would bring. If another Ghorl would manifest. Find her and hunt her. But she understood now that she did possess the strength. Understood this didn’t have to be a death sentence.

She knew her purpose, and she would seek that purpose with Pax at her side.

Fighting during the day for those who needed her most. Using this gift to its fullest and in every way, as she was sure she’d barely tapped into its power. While asleep, she would hunt with her Laven family. Remain steadfast in the call to extinguish as many Kruen as they could as they fought through the night.

Only she slowed when she felt the frisson charge through the ice-slicked air. It was a current that ran through her like the blade of a knife.

It stopped her in her tracks.

Pax shouted, “Do not falter, Aria, we have it,” his attention on binding the Kruen that thrashed in the distance ahead of him.

But Aria could not heed his voice.

She could only heed the hook she felt impaled in her chest.

She reached out, touching the disturbance in front of her.

A void that rippled like black water in the atmosphere.

A gateway.

Not unlike the one that drew them from Tearsith to Faydor.

Though this one was stronger, radiating a power she’d never felt before.

Confusion bound her, but she was compelled, unable to stop herself from moving forward.

She gasped as she was sucked through the darkness, wholly unprepared when she was suddenly tossed into a world on the other side.

Fear blanketed her spirit as she tried to figure out where she was. Where she had been taken. Her surroundings completely foreign.

It was quiet there.

Small and enclosed.

Too still.

Even colder than Faydor, though a bright orb of light hung at the horizon.

A shape was in the distance.

A man standing, facing away with his hands clasped behind his back.

A blond man.

Her stomach plummeted when he slowly turned around.

His smile was both placating and malicious as he stared across at her as if she were nothing more than an artifact to be studied.

It was the man from the diner. The one outside the fast-food restaurant. The same one who’d shared the little girl’s face in the frigid waters of the pond.

He grinned.

“I’ve ended your kind for twenty generations. Did you really think I’d stop with you? No, Aria. You must die like the rest.”