Chapter Eight Aria

Chapter Eight

Aria

Voices carried over the stark-white floor of the cafeteria. I pushed a heap of something unrecognizable around on my tray, knowing I should eat and keep up my strength, but it felt impossible to lift the plastic spoon to my mouth.

No way to swallow the bitterness that soured my stomach and crushed my spirit.

Exhaustion had set in, bone deep, and I found myself fighting the sleep that I had begged for earlier but hadn’t come. The aftereffects of the sedative lingered in my veins, luring me toward a blissful state of unconsciousness.

Or maybe it was just the knowledge that I would soon return to Pax that pulled me in that direction. The need to be with him, to stand and fight at his side, that made me ache for the tiny bed in a foreign room that I knew would be waiting.

Closing my eyes felt like a promise that everything would be okay.

Because being a prisoner within these walls sang of torment.

A foreboding whispered from my soul.

A haunting echo of a warning.

As long as I was here, I was in danger.

I could feel it.

Perceive it like truth as I let my gaze wander over the raucous energy of the cafeteria.

I tried to figure out where it was coming from.

The threat that lingered like an omen.

Patients were scattered about, some in groups and others sitting alone like me, downcast and withdrawn, wishing to be anywhere but here. Others talked and teased, the coed situation offering the perfect conditions for flirting and crass exchanges.

The teenagers here weren’t unlike the ones at my high school.

Each seeking solace in who they were, or maybe fighting against it and trying to become someone else, human nature driving them to fit in.

Others clearly revolted against the idea of conforming, claiming their individuality like a brand they wore.

I tried to guard myself against what hummed below the surface of it all.

Pain.

Grief.

Desperation.

Hopelessness.

I’d never sensed it so profoundly before while being awake. Right then, it felt as if I hovered near Faydor, not quite within its boundaries but close enough to hear the wickedness that droned within its borders.

Though here, it was distorted. Warped, misshapen moans that echoed somewhere in my soul.

I had no idea why I could feel it then, how I could almost hear the atrocities being whispered into their minds by unseen Kruen.

It was something I’d never experienced before.

Squeezing my eyes closed, I tried to guard myself against it.

One of the counselors clapped her hands and shouted over the din, “All right, everyone, finish up; dinner is almost over. Once you’re done, go back to your rooms.”

I didn’t hesitate to stand.

The second I did, I was hit with a rush of dizziness, and I fought the weight of it as I carried my tray to the cart where we were supposed to leave them. Once I’d scraped the remnants of my dinner into the trash and set my tray on the cart, I crossed the cafeteria, keeping my head low as I followed the crowd out.

I went left, down the short hall toward my room.

Each step had become painful, the fatigue overwhelming. My wound hurt even worse tonight, the barely healing skin retorn in the scuffle I’d had with my father, reigniting the searing flame that singed my flesh.

When I got to my room, a bag my mother had packed for me was sitting on the end of my bed. The contents would have been searched. Anything deemed inappropriate would have been set aside for when I was discharged, and the rest was neatly folded inside.

Pajamas and sweatshirts and jeans. Underwear. My toothbrush and toothpaste and deodorant.

My heart clutched when I saw what was at the bottom. It was the stuffed bear I had slept with until I was seven and now kept propped on the dresser in my room, a tangible I love you from my mother.

Sadness swept through me, grief at what was to come and what I was going to have to do.

“Hi!”

I whirled around when the eager voice hit the air, the oxygen ripping from my aching lungs on a rasp. I gulped when I realized I was in no danger.

It was only a girl about my age standing in the doorway. I struggled to calm the frayed nerves that had me on edge.

She was short and cute, and her blond hair was in a messy twist on top of her head. She wore a sweater, sweatpants, and socks, and she popped up onto her toes and clapped her hands as if she hadn’t noticed she’d just scared the crap out of me.

“I heard I got a new roommate, and I saw you in the cafeteria sitting by yourself, and I really hoped it was you. I am so excited you’re here. I’ve been here for four days by myself, and it’s so freaking boring, you have no idea. I’m Jenny.” Without pause, the words flooded from her mouth.

Her loneliness rushed out with it, a palpable wave that came from out of nowhere and struck me in the chest.

“I’m Aria,” I murmured.

“Oh my God, this is going to be amazing. We’re going to have a blast together,” she said as she scurried to her bed. After climbing on top, she crisscrossed her legs and faced me.

I moved to sit on the edge of mine.

“And you’re so pretty.” She said it right before she fully met the force of my eyes. Reeling back, she dropped her gaze, all of a sudden becoming very interested in a bare spot on the floor.

I hated that the sight of me caused her to have a reaction like that, the way it often did when people met my gaze.

My eyes, so pale gray they were almost completely white. Pupils close to nonexistent.

I hated for her to fear.

Only she seemed to work through it—refuse it—and she returned her attention to me, as if she’d decided she wouldn’t allow my strange-colored eyes to freak her out.

I let go of a soft laugh. “So are you.”

Bouncing on the mattress, she smiled, so wide. “It is seriously so cool you’re here. I mean, I know it sucks and all, but at least we can go through it together, right?”

I was struck with the sudden impulse to hug her. To chase away the loneliness that was clear in her faked smile.

The urge was intense.

Powerful.

Again, it was something I’d never felt before. This strange sensation to reach out and touch.

It was so intense I had to force myself to remain sitting, to swallow it down and ignore the compulsion that crawled over me like a skitter of ants.

“So tell me what you’re in for.” Her voice was casual, though I could still sense the tremor.

How did I answer that? The last thing I wanted to do was ignore her need to connect with me, so I tugged down the neck of my shirt and twisted around so she could see part of the bandage that ran from the top of my shoulder and across my back.

Earlier, I’d barely been aware of them cleaning it.

When I’d been sedated and numb, they’d taken me into an exam room to get my weight, height, and vital signs. I’d squeezed my eyes closed when they undressed me and took pictures of each scar, and I’d tried to ignore their murmurs of disbelief and barely hidden disgust when they saw the new burn, which looked like a charred gash running across my back.

They had cataloged each wound as if they were cataloging my illness.

Afterward, the fresh burn had been cleaned and a bandage placed.

“You’re a cutter.” Jenny whispered it. Sympathy wove into her tone.

I wanted to cringe at the way she used the phrase. But I remembered from the last time I was here how patients lumped themselves together.

The cutters.

The druggies.

The psychopaths.

I had to believe it gave them a way to relate.

“You?” I asked, the question thick as I forced it up my throat.

“Oh God.” She rolled her eyes and tugged at a lock of hair. Discomfort vibrated her being, though she continued to smile as if she held no pain. “My parents totally freaked out for no reason. It wasn’t even that big a deal.”

I waited, giving her time to continue.

A discomfited chuckle escaped her lips. “So I was dating this guy. Tyler. We got into a fight. I was super annoyed, you know, so I’d taken a couple of pills to help me sleep. That was all. It’s not like my mom doesn’t take them every night.”

Distress underscored the lighthearted confession.

“I’m sorry if someone hurt you.” I wished there was a way to take it from her. Hold it.

Sorrow flashed through her expression, so quickly I could have missed it, though I saw it like a streak of darkness.

One shoulder hiked up, as if she were trying to disregard the severity of what she felt. “He was a total asshole, Aria. Like, such an asshole.”

“I hate that for you.”

I could feel her warring, the way she rocked on the mattress and began to hug her knees to her chest.

“You can tell me, if you want.” My spirit stretched toward hers, and I was consumed again with the need to touch her.

I’d never experienced it before.

Nothing like it.

This need that burned like a fire inside me.

Pulling me toward her like a gravity I couldn’t resist.

Her mouth pinched at the side, and her words began to rush, shallower and shallower as they gushed from where she’d kept them hidden. “I didn’t even want to have sex with him, but he totally begged me. He said he loved me and couldn’t live without me. I believed him, Aria. I was such an idiot to believe him.”

A sob hitched in her throat, and she looked away, as if she couldn’t stand to let me see her pain. “He told his friends I was terrible. He even posted it on his Snapchat story with a video of me walking away from his house that night with the caption ‘Who not to fuck.’”

She sucked in a breath. “The next day, everyone kept saying all these awful things to me every time they passed me in the halls. Offering to teach me since I had no idea what I was doing. That they’d be happy to pass me around since Tyler was done with me. Everyone was laughing, whispering behind my back. Even my friends.”

Tears glistened in her eyes when she glanced back, and she chewed at the edge of her thumbnail while she sat there trembling. “I finally went to his house and confronted him. He laughed like I was stupid and denied ever telling me that he loved me. He said I had made it up. Told me I was pathetic. Told me that I made him sick.”

Tears streaked down her cheeks. She frantically wiped at them, her tone going hoarse when she began to whisper, “I didn’t want to feel that way anymore, you know? So I went into my mom’s medicine cabinet, and I took a bottle of her sleeping pills. I swallowed all of them with a bottle of vodka. My mom found me on the bathroom floor. I just kept thinking that maybe it would be better if ...”

She trailed off, leaving the thought unsaid but heard.

In an instant, I was on my knees at the side of her bed, unable to stop myself.

The impulse was too great.

Overpowering.

I took her face in my hands. The air punched from my lungs when the familiar cold streaked through my veins, though the spot where I touched her burned.

A chill raced down my spine, and darkness flashed at the edges of my sight.

A barren plane. Vapors and mist. Shadows rose and lifted and swirled through the wiry elms. The night thick, the sky low. Evil prowled across the lifeless ground.

Fear thundered my heart into mayhem, and confusion rushed through my brain.

What is happening? What is happening?

My eyes squeezed closed as I fought against the terror of the unknown, and my hands were shaking so violently I was barely able to hold on to her.

Jenny trembled beneath me just as savagely.

At the touch, an onslaught of images invaded my mind.

An insecure little girl sitting alone beneath a window in an empty room, her blond hair in pigtails, a doll clutched to her chest.

Parents who were too busy to notice.

The same loneliness I’d felt radiating from her earlier poured from her spirit, and a voice that was not her own whispered in her ear, “ You’re pathetic. Worthless. You’ll always be alone. No one will ever love you. ”

It grew louder, more menacing.

“ You little slut. Bitch. Whore. You’re disgusting, begging for attention. Pathetic. How could you ever show your face again? ”

Jenny’s eyes were wide and confused, though she didn’t try to break free of my hold.

Awareness swept through my consciousness. The instinctual call to bind the wickedness the way I did in Faydor.

Somewhere inside me, I knew it was impossible. I couldn’t bind a Kruen while awake—or even hear it, for that matter.

But I did.

I heard it just as distinctly as if I were tracking it across Faydor.

I saw it then.

A shadow that took shape deep in the recesses of her mind.

A Kruen.

God, how was this happening? Panic battered against the instinct that compelled me to bind.

I shoved the panic down and fought for her, let the energy gather inside me until it was a vibrating orb, though rather than projecting it with my mind the way I did in Faydor, I pushed it out through my hands.

I fought with all of me to separate the black spirit from hers.

The Kruen reared and flailed in an attempt to deflect my attack.

I missed the first time, and energy crackled, and I focused harder, digging around inside myself to find the strength. To fight harder. I reached out with all the strength I possessed to cast out the light within me.

A light that swelled. So bright it nearly burned. It whipped out like an electric current that blazed down my arms and through my fingers.

Sparking and snapping like a strike of lightning. Agony screeched from the Kruen’s disfigured, mutilated mouth when the light struck it.

In a flash of glowing darkness, it was crushed.

Eviscerated.

Dust.

Jenny’s eyes went wide in shock.

Gasping, I dropped my hands like I’d been burned and backpedaled on all fours across the floor. My back slammed against the side of my bed. Pants raked from my raw throat, and my heart clattered within the confines of my chest.

“What was that?” Jenny whispered as she reached up to cover her cheeks where I’d been holding on to her.

Swallowing hard, I shook my head, barely able to speak. “I just wanted you to know you’re not alone.”

Uncertainty rippled across her forehead, and she slumped forward as if she’d also been drained.

“I’m so tired, Aria.” It rang of confusion, and she slowly moved to drag her covers down and then slid beneath them, blowing out a bewildered sigh as she slumped onto her pillow.

Trembles continued to rock through me where I sat on the floor, propped against the bed.

Wave after brutal wave.

My shoulders heaved and my spirit screamed.

Frenetic energy scraped from my lungs.

What is that? What is that? It’s impossible. Impossible.

Terror thundered through my blood, and I lifted my shaking hands to look at my palms.

My palms that had bloomed a bright, fiery red.

The door suddenly banged open.

A bolt of panic surged, and I pressed harder into the bed, my feet pushing against the floor in an attempt to get away.

Terror gripped me in a way it’d never done before.

“Oh, goodness, sweet girl, you can’t be on the floor.”

I peered through the fogginess of my brain at the woman who had come in. She wore pink scrubs, and her brown, curly hair was cut in a short bob. She abandoned a cart just inside, and concern radiated from her demeanor as she came to kneel in front of me.

“Let me help you.”

She stretched out a hand. Warily, I accepted it, my feet unsteady as she pulled me to stand. I swayed to the side, and she looped an arm around my waist. She pulled down the covers as she guided me onto the bed.

“There we go. It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

Trembles continued to roll through me, though they began to slow.

“You’re fine,” she promised.

A stethoscope was suddenly pressed to my chest, and I could feel the distinct concern in her movements. “Do you have a history of panic attacks?”

“No. I think ... I think the sedative they gave me earlier when I was admitted made me almost faint.”

At least I had the fortitude to give her that. I had to be careful what I said and did, or I was never going to make it out of here.

I fought to draw air into my lungs while I lay staring at the ceiling, my mind whirring with the fear and questions that wouldn’t let me go.

I’d never, ever heard of that happening while awake before.

Of a Laven binding a Kruen, or even sensing one.

Still, a comfort had begun to seep into me. A comfort that promised I wouldn’t feel the same loneliness echoing from Jenny any longer.

A peace had settled into the atmosphere from her side of the room.

“That’s likely it. You should feel much better in the morning.” The nurse moved back for the cart she’d left by the door and pushed it over; then she pulled the long curtain that hung from the ceiling across the room to give us privacy.

“I’m Jill, the RN on duty tonight. I’m going to get you cleaned up and changed, if that’s okay with you.”

Her tone was soothing, riddled with compassion. Goodness spilled from her like a sieve.

“I don’t mind.” It was a bare mumble from my thickened tongue.

She helped me back up to sitting, and she carefully peeled my long-sleeved red T-shirt up and over my head.

“Anything you need, you ...” Her voice faltered when the bandage covering half my back and my right shoulder came into view. Sympathy gushed from her spirit before she managed to finish her thought. “You just let me know.”

I forced a nod.

“I’m going to need you to lie face down.” She guided me onto my stomach so she could get to my back.

I didn’t have the energy to wince when she began to peel the tape from my skin.

A soft gasp escaped her lips as she exposed the wound inch by inch, and she whispered under her breath, “Oh my God.”

She’d frozen with the bandage only halfway loosened, the weight of her horror heavy as she stared at my back.

Unease twisted my stomach, the most vulnerable part of me exposed, so misunderstood.

I wanted to weep.

Finally, she gathered herself, and she swallowed deeply as she murmured quietly, “We’ll get this cleaned right up. Don’t worry.”

She removed the rest of the bandage, then retrieved something from her tray. “This might sting a little,” she warned.

It did, but again, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t do anything but remain motionless as she tended to me.

After she applied a new bandage, she helped me into a pair of pajamas. She shuffled me around and drew up my covers, shushing me in a motherly way.

“There you go, sweetheart. Get some rest.”

She pushed back the curtain, then moved over to Jenny, her voice coated in the same compassion. “Wake up, Jenny. You need to take your meds before you go to sleep.”

Jenny groaned as she stirred, exhausted as she sat up to accept two paper cups: one with water and one with pills. She tossed them back and chased them with a drink.

“Thank you,” Jenny mumbled.

“Of course.” Jill tossed the paper cups into the trash, then pushed her cart to the door. “You two get some rest. Let us know if you need anything.”

Jenny offered an almost inaudible “’Night.”

Jill slipped out, leaving the door open a couple of inches. A sliver of light streamed through the crack, barely illuminating the room enough so that I could make out Jenny’s silhouette where she was tucked beneath the covers.

She rolled onto her side, facing me, her words garbled and slurred. “Do you think it’s weird they make me take pills when that’s the reason I’m here?”

It took every last ounce of willpower to focus on her in the dim light. I was so drained I could no longer move my limbs. “No. They just want to help you.”

She nodded against her pillow. A few seconds of silence passed before she muttered, “Thank you for earlier. For letting me talk. You made me feel a lot better.”

“It was nothing.”

“It felt like ...” She paused, her brow twisting in the shadows. “It felt like something.”

Moments later, her breaths evened out. They were long and deep, a monotone lullaby.

Lying on my side, I closed my eyes and drifted somewhere between consciousness and sleep.

I chanted his name as lights flickered and flashed, my spirit fluttering in anxious anticipation.

Pax. Pax.

Just at the edge, I heard my name somewhere in the distance. It held me in this realm, my spirit hovering at the cusp.

I realized Jill was talking about me.

“Have you seen her back?” Her voice echoed from somewhere outside my door. Concerned frustration underscored her tone.

“What are you saying, Jill?” an unfamiliar voice asked. “Her chart clearly states there is no evidence of someone else inflicting those injuries.”

“I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just that I saw something similar once, back when I worked in Des Moines. Something is off ...”

Their voices faded as they began to travel farther down the hall, becoming indistinct as I felt myself detach.

Aria floated, her spirit beaten and broken, her soul calling out to her Nol to be saved. She spun what felt never-ending until she flashed from the mortal world and the moist dirt of Tearsith was suddenly firm beneath her feet. A lush paradise welcomed her, grew up on all sides, the trees dense and their leaves thick.

He was waiting in the middle, like she knew he would be.

Stumbling, Aria took five steps out into the meadow before she crumpled to the ground.