Chapter One Aria
Chapter One
Aria
Disoriented and gasping for breath, I jolted upright in bed, terror clutching my spirit. I blinked as I was blinded by the bright rays of sunlight that seared in through the gap in the long drapes.
It took me a moment to process. To understand that I was safe.
I was here . . . surrounded by morning light in the same hotel Pax and I had checked into last night.
One second later, Pax shot up from where he had been asleep beside me.
Those pale-gray eyes were wide with panic. With the torment of what he’d suffered while we’d been separated.
For one second, he stared at me, like he had to process that I was there, too, before he threw himself forward, gripping me in his arms, and holding me against the strength of his chest.
Heat burned through the cold that had held me hostage in that place.
“Aria,” he rasped. “Fuck, I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find you. And you’re here. You’re here.”
His words came out in a torrent of dread.
In relief.
In confusion.
Frantic, he kept brushing a quivering hand down my head and back, as if it were the only way to assure himself that I was there.
“Where were you?” he finally demanded, his voice raw.
“It’s not over.” I choked on the words, pain still obliterating my throat as the harsh, horrible reality sank down into my spirit.
It’s not over.
It’s not over.
Those three little words pelted him, and I felt him stiffen against me before he peeled himself back and held me by my arms.
Fury contorted every line of his severe, glorious face. Every sharp edge hewn in brutality.
“What do you mean, it’s not over?” he growled.
I gulped around the chaos that thrummed through my being.
“It wasn’t the Ghorl who was really after me, Pax.
It was something . . . someone greater. The man.
The one I saw at the diner and then outside the fast-food restaurant?
The man whose face flickered between his and the little girl’s?
He was the one who sent the Ghorl. He is the one who was trying to stop me. ”
Rage clouded his expression. “You saw him again?”
My nod was shaky as my thoughts spiraled through what had transpired. “Yes. I felt something when we were hunting the Kruen last night. A force.”
Confusion hitched my voice, and my brow pinched as I tried to make sense of it.
“It was almost like the gateway from Tearsith into Faydor. How we know what direction we’re supposed to go because we’re called to it.
But it was so much stronger than that. Irresistible.
I couldn’t do anything but reach out for it, and when I did, I was pulled through. He was there, in this . . .”
I swallowed around the throbbing thickness of my throat, the words a quiet rush of disbelief when I managed to expel them. “It was another plane. As if I were standing in the middle of a dark, frozen snow globe, stranded and completely contained. It was quiet. Still and cold. Tearsith’s opposite.”
But I also had a feeling it was Tearsith’s dark mirror. A resting place for whoever this man named Ambrose really was. A plane that held his darkness.
Pax’s palms trembled on my arms, and I could hear the grinding of his teeth. “You were dragged away from me? From Faydor and into this . . . ?”
He trailed off on a ragged breath. His eyes closed for a moment before he opened them to me. “But you’re here. You woke up here.”
He said it like the truth of it might ground him. Like it might be the only thing keeping him from flying off the bed and going on a rampage.
Though I wasn’t sure that would remain true when his attention tracked the spot on my cheek and down to my throat, both of which I was sure burned a fiery red.
A sound of wrath left him, yet his touch was gentle when he lifted his hand and caressed the spot where Ambrose had dragged a fingertip down my cheek.
“Who is this monster?” Pax could barely grit out.
My mind spun through the things I’d learned, though most of it had only caused me more confusion.
“He called himself Ambrose. He said he’d sent the Ghorl to end me.
He . . . he called me a Valient, Pax.” I nearly begged it.
“He called me what Maria Lewis called me. What she’d believed her husband had been .
. . the only one with the power to defeat a Ghorl. ”
Maria Lewis was the only person I’d ever heard use the title Valient. There had been no mention of it in our history, other than the vague intimation of a stronger type of Laven in the great book. Our teacher, Ellis, had only heard myths and tales of one.
“He said he’d ended my kind for generations. I think he meant Valients,” I continued. “He said there was nothing I could do because he was going to end me, too. Right then. At least, that’s what he thought he was going to do.”
Turbulence rolled through Pax’s being. “But you got away.”
He said it as a statement, though I could hear the question behind it.
How?
How was I here?
How did I survive?
Above all that, I knew he wanted to berate himself for not having been able to stop it.
Blame himself.
But this was so much bigger than just the two of us.
“He tried to choke me. So casually. Like he thought he could just reach out and snuff the life out of me. He thought he was going to end me there. I know he did. He believed he would kill me last night. He told me I had no power in that realm, and he approached me as if he was the one who held it all. He was shocked when I was able to fight back.”
Questions raced through Pax’s features, though he brushed his thumb over my cheek, his words a scuff of praise as he murmured, “Of course you fought back. You wouldn’t let that bastard win. You’re too strong for that.”
“I fought him off—physically, at first. I was basically just in a fight-or-flight mentality, and the only thing I could do because he was choking me was fight. But then I . . . kicked him, and he flew off me. Flew, Pax. I don’t know where it came from, but it was like I had this strength I had no idea I possessed. Born in that place. For that moment.”
As if that power had sprouted up through my vulnerabilities.
The corners of my eyes pinched as the memories flooded me. “It was the light. The energy that we have in Faydor. It was screaming inside me, urging me to use it against him. End him the way I would a Kruen.”
My tongue stroked out to wet my dried lips. “It only knocked him backward a small amount, though, and he immediately attacked me again. But that urge was there . . . burning inside me. To fight. To harness the light.”
I paused, then whispered, “And somehow, I amplified it—though I didn’t know how to use it or if there was any way to use it to defeat him.”
Air puffed from my mouth, and my head slowly shook.
“It was all there, this ball of power that throbbed inside me. Then, all of a sudden, he shoved me from behind, and when he did, I was no longer able to hold on to the power. It flew out of me, pierced the barrier of his realm, and cut it wide open. When it did, I fell through, and I ended up here.”
I’d been shocked awake.
Coming to, right in this place.
I peered over at Pax, whose expression dredged through a thousand questions. Through the fear and the turmoil. The confusion and the relief.
I struggled to grasp the significance of what had happened. To understand this brand-new piece in what felt like an unsolvable puzzle.
Pax gripped me by both sides of the face. “But you did it. You got out. You got away from that bastard.”
I curled my hands around his wrists. “Yes.”
He dropped his forehead to mine, the anguish he’d felt bleeding out. “Fuck, Aria, I was so scared. So goddamn scared when I couldn’t find you.”
He inhaled me, his eyes squeezing closed before he brought his mouth to mine.
His lips pressed firm and solid, both torment and an apology bound in the action.
I exhaled, whispering, “I’m right here,” against his mouth.
He groaned, and his hand twined up in the fall of my hair. “I can’t believe this is happening again. Aria, I won’t let him get to you. I’m going to fucking tear that piece of—”
I pushed forward, stealing his words.
Begging him to focus on me. On the fact that I was there and whole.
He responded, kissing me deeply.
It was tortured.
Impassioned.
A promise and a petition.
Fire tore through my frozen body. Heat and comfort and need.
I trembled, and Pax’s palms smoothed over me, chasing the chill away.
“Thought I was going to lose my mind,” he rumbled against my lips, hauling me even closer. “Trying to find you. Searching through Faydor when you just disappeared.”
“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.”