Walking in Darkness (Darkness #2)

Prologue Aria

Prologue

Aria

Fear blanketed Aria’s spirit as she tried to figure out where she was. Where she had been taken. Her surroundings felt 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, who had at first appeared harmless, though something about him had set Aria off-kilter.

Her anxiety surrounding him had only increased when she saw him again outside the fast-food restaurant.

But she hadn’t understood that he was truly something wicked until she followed the little girl out to the pond.

Aria had jumped in to try to save her and had quickly realized it was a trap, her spirit and mind tricked as the little girl’s face began to flicker between the man’s and the child’s in the frigid waters of the pond.

He sneered as he began to speak. “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.”

She was frozen where she stood, staring at the man, who grinned malevolently in her direction. Her heart drove in a frantic beat as she tried to process what was happening. Where she was and how she’d been pulled into an unseen plane she hadn’t known existed.

How he was here.

He was . . . human. Aria had seen him in the flesh during the day.

Though she’d also seen him as part of the otherworld when the waters swallowed her in her sleep.

It was as if . . . he was both.

Human and ethereal.

Like her and the rest of her Laven family.

The ones who, when they fell asleep at night, woke in a different realm, chosen to fight the evils planted in human minds by the Kruen who roamed the bowels of Faydor.

She took a slow, faltering step backward, terrified that there might be no way to escape this place.

It felt both confined and eternal. The walls were made of rippling darkness that shivered and wept, though they kept her wholly bound.

She took another step backward, and her back hit the lapping barrier that held her prisoner in this unfound sphere.

She wanted to weep when the man took a menacing step toward her, though at least thirty feet still separated them.

Apparently, she’d been a fool to believe her danger had ended when she had extinguished the Ghorl, the most powerful of Kruen and almost impossible to defeat. It had taken hold of her father’s mind, using her family as bait to lure her back so she would find her demise.

But she’d been wrong. So wrong.

She could almost hear Pax shouting for her from the other plane. Could feel his panic as he searched for her within Faydor, where they’d been hunting.

“What do you want from me?” Tremulous words fell from her tongue.

The man laughed, a vicious sound that slipped through her like ice. “You are all so clueless, aren’t you? Cowards who hide away within the safety of their beloved Tearsith, then fall into Faydor as if you’re actually going to make a difference. As if you stand a chance of stopping me.”

He continued to approach, and Aria’s attention darted in every direction, searching for any possible escape. But the blackened walls billowed and danced on all sides. A fortress of depravity.

There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

“Who are you? I saw you . . . in the day. While I was awake.” She tried to demand it. To keep the quiver from her voice. He didn’t deserve her fear.

But it was difficult to do when pure evil was glaring at you.

His head canted to the side as his grin grew.

“This life is filled with many mysteries, is it not? A child lying in their bed, waking to a paradise unseen, believing they are a chosen one. But no . . . that paradise is only a shroud. A cover for the affliction we’re to be given.

A man walking in darkness, charged with a burden unlike any other would ever be asked.

Asked to carry an albatross so great he’s on his knees, both night and day. ”

Aria’s mind spun through his confession. The hatred and bitterness that underscored the words he uttered.

“But why suffer when we can be so much greater than that?” He kept coming closer, and Aria’s short breaths turned jagged with every step he took. Slow and purposeful, he erased the space between them. His presence slicked over her in the coldest wash of evil she’d ever felt.

She was trembling when he stopped a foot away, and he reached out and dragged a single fingertip down her cheek. It burned through her like a blade, a match to the way his voice sharpened in cruelty. “Why succumb to the albatross of being a Laven when you can have everything?”

He suddenly had her by the throat. Her eyes went wide with the shock, and her hands flew to his wrist. She struggled to break free, both hands ripping against his hold. He only squeezed tighter.

She struggled for air, choking against the lack of oxygen, though she refused to stop fighting.

She couldn’t go down like this.

Not after everything she’d already survived.

“Do you want to know who I am?” His voice curled with venom.

“I am the one who will purge the existence of those who think they have a chance of standing in my way. I am the one who will put an end to your kind. I am Ambrose. And you, little Valient, have no power here. You may have prevailed against the Ghorl I sent, but you will not prevail against me.” His fingers dug deep into her throat.

“Because you are pathetic, just like the rest.”

Aria read the truth in his icy-blue eyes as he added a second hand, squeezing so tightly she was sure he was going to crush her windpipe.

She may not have been able to die within the boundaries of Faydor, but she realized quickly that protection had not been extended to this place.

To this stricken, abhorrent place. She could already feel her spirit being drawn from her body like vapor sucked into the nothingness. Could hear the moaning of her soul.

Agony clawed down her throat and clamped around her chest.

On instinct, she fought harder, and she tore at the backs of his hands and arms as she struggled to break free.

Writhing and thrashing.

Kicking and flailing.

He laughed at her efforts until she managed to strike him in the stomach with her boot. Even she was shocked when he flew back, soaring high in the air before he slammed to the ground ten feet away. He skidded along the hard, barren dirt, his body digging a foot-deep trench in the black-soot earth.

Shock blew his eyes wide as he scrambled up into a crouch, as if he could not grasp the action, before he was flying back for her in a storm of fury.

His speed was greater than that of any human.

Before she could prepare herself, his fist flew, colliding with her right cheek. Pain splintered across her face. She cried out, though she regained her footing and threw her own punch. He gripped her by the wrist before her fist could make contact, and he wrenched her arm backward.

Aria screamed.

“Little bitch. Cunt. Whore.” He wheezed all the foulness that typically oozed from the Kruen. “You have no power. You have no power.”

But she somehow knew that she did. She could feel it spark within herself. A glow that demanded that she retaliate.

Stand and oppose.

It was the light.

The same light that she’d used to battle against the Kruen in Faydor. It was how she extinguished them—binding them with the energy that raged inside her.

It was there right then, burning bright.

Pleading with her to use it.

She didn’t take the time to question if it would work. She tossed her free hand out and projected the energy.

A shock wave of it rushed from her hand.

On a roar, he blew back, though this time, he landed on his feet.

Oh God, it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough to stop him. Panic rolled through her as she watched rage color him an ungodly red. It was as if he were consumed in fire and brimstone.

“You will die—die like the rest. You will not stand in my way. I will reign.”

Aria had no option but to turn and run, but there was no place to run to.

He was right behind her, a frigid blaze that scalded her back. Sickness clawed through the air, which had become dense. Suffocating. She pushed with all her might, though she only ran in a circle.

No way to break beyond the bounds of this nefarious place.

That sensation rose in her again. The light building within her, demanding that she do something.

She held it tight, a glowing orb in the center of her chest.

She kept running as she tried to increase it.

Multiply it.

Searching for a power she’d never before possessed.

One she prayed might be enough to defeat this monster in this unfathomable place.

Hands slammed into her back, pushing her from behind. She stumbled forward, and with it, she could no longer contain the energy, and it blistered from her hands.

It pierced the black, rippling wall in front of her and sheared through the barrier. A gaping hole that writhed.

Aria couldn’t stop the trajectory of her momentum.

And she fell through.