Chapter Thirty-Four Aria
Chapter Thirty-Four
Aria
I woke up curled in the safety of Pax’s arms. Warmth radiated around me. A fire that burned at our connection, where he was pinned to my side.
A cover.
A shroud.
An embrace.
Groggy, I blinked my eyes open to find his right there. That pale, fiery gaze tacked on me in all its ferocity as he stared at me from where his head rested on a pillow.
I got the sense that he’d remained in that exact position for the entire night.
The man was a guard.
A sentry.
Wishing for a way to be my savior.
My chest constricted at the pain that also roiled in that gaze as he looked across at me.
Deep, dark, and haunted.
Though there was such relief mixed in it that I felt myself floating in the sanctuary of the murky depths.
Held there.
Uplifted.
A buoy and belief.
His palm was already on my cheek, and the pad of his thumb brushed along the curve of it before it wandered over my chapped lips.
“Hi,” he murmured. The single word was raw. Brittle and cracked.
I swallowed around the sticky thickness that nearly closed off my throat. The faintest hitch of a smile wobbled at the edge of my mouth, the amount of love I felt for him in that moment overwhelming. “Hi.”
He kept looking at me that way, unrelenting, drinking me in as if he’d been afraid he’d never get to see me again.
It’d been close.
Even though I felt disoriented—almost numb—I knew it. I remembered feeling myself drifting away into the nothingness.
He blinked. Studying. Adoring. Half grieving. “The way it feels to see those beautiful eyes staring back at me.”
Reaching out a shaky hand, I curled it around his wrist, the words tacky as I forced them from my tongue. “The way it feels to wake up and the first thing I see is your face.”
So fierce and awe-striking.
Its harsh angles carved in my memories and forever written in my mind.
His lips plush and his nose sharp.
And his heart . . . I could feel it thundering through me.
“I was so afraid, Aria,” he gritted out. “So fuckin’ afraid.”
The movement was slight as I nodded against his palm. “I was afraid, too.”
Understanding passed between us before he shifted around and grabbed a cup from the nightstand. He maneuvered so he could bring the straw to my lips. “Here.”
I sucked down the cool water. Probably a little too fast. But my mouth and throat were parched.
When I’d nearly drunk the entire thing, he set it back on the nightstand, then turned right back to me.
“How do you feel?” His voice scraped out the question.
I searched inside myself for the answer, my mind right back to when I’d been struck out of the blue. A dagger from the sky. The obliterating pain, so severe it’d blinded me before I was just . . . out.
Right then, I could feel the large bandage that covered my abdomen. I knew it covered the spot where I’d been burned . . . or . . . stabbed, really. This wound was different from anything I’d sustained before. At least that much I knew for certain.
But somehow, I felt . . .
With a frown, I shook my head slightly. “I’m not in any pain.”
Three severe lines slashed into Pax’s brow. “You don’t need to play it off as nothing, Aria. What happened last night . . .”
He trailed off, unable to say it.
“I’m not. Truly. I feel a little groggy and out of it.” I blinked to process it. “And I’m aware of the area. Like . . . it’s kind of tingling. But other than that, I think I’m okay.”
Reticence filled Pax’s expression. Wanting to distract him from it, I quickly asked, “How long was I out?”
“It’s just after four in the afternoon. You were out for about fourteen hours.”
“You held me the whole time?” Softness filled my tone.
His nod was slow, his touch tender as he kept running the pad of his thumb over the angles of my face. “As much as I could. I left you to take a shower and then use the restroom this morning. Dani sat with you in the moments that I couldn’t.”
“Was I there? In Tearsith?”
For the first time in my life, I’d roused in this realm with no memory of where I’d gone during my sleep. The entire time I was out had been completely dark.
“Yeah. I emerged in Tearsith with you in my arms, and I held you there, too. For hours. Then when I woke up, I was right here, with you still in my arms.”
“I don’t even remember.”
“You were never coherent during any of it.”
Emotion curled through my senses.
“But I think I could feel you. I think I felt you the whole time. An anchor in my soul. A beacon that kept me guided,” I whispered.
“I refused to let you go.” It ground out of him like a claim. A proclamation.
“How could I go anywhere without you? Not when you’re the other half of this heart. The other half of my soul.” I could barely speak.
Pax shifted so he had each side of my face framed in his hands. Intensity blazed from his being. “I would have followed you wherever you’d gone and fought for you there.”
His love was a wave that washed through me, wisping through all the broken places.
Healing as it passed.
Because I could feel myself coming alive beneath it.
Hope searing through my insides where he’d refused to leave me in the depths.
He kept us there for the longest time, the two of us locked, before I forced myself to turn my focus to the questions that marred the peace in my mind.
“There were Kruen here, Pax. Here. And they . . . they were in those men. Not just in their minds. They were . . . possessed. I could physically see them writhing beneath their skin.”
His eyes squeezed closed for a beat. “I know,” he ground out.
“They’re coming for us.” My response was haggard.
Pax warred in the middle of it before he rushed out, “Yes. But Valeen is here, too. At least, some part of her is.” He hesitated before he tightened his hold on my face. “Because Jill is here, Aria.”
In confusion, I rocked back an inch. “What do you mean?”
“The nurse who helped you escape. She was here. In Portland. She kept having dreams that she had to come here. That her purpose with you wasn’t over. And she saved you. She’s the one who patched you up. Gave you blood after you’d lost so much.”
“Oh my God.”
It was a whisper.
Awe.
A blooming of hope in the middle of my faith that kept getting trampled.
Pax threaded our fingers together and lifted them between us. “There’s a reason, Aria. Something we’re supposed to do. We just have to keep you safe until we can see it through.”
“It was different last night,” I told him.
Words started to fly out as the memories came flooding back.
“With you all there. When I expelled the energy the first time, I was drained . . . exhausted beyond my boundaries . . . but when Dani wrapped her arm around my waist to support me, a flicker of the energy returned. We already knew that happened when you touched me. Believed it would be the same for all Nols. But, Pax . . .”
I gulped as the realization came battering into me. “When all four of us were standing together. It was powerful. Extremely. There’s no chance that bolt of energy would have come out of me if all of you hadn’t been right there. With me. Touching me.”
It was the contact.
It was the contact.
Awareness careened, a frenzy that blistered through my insides and sank into my spirit.
Bolting upright, I tossed off the blanket and sheet that covered us, and I started to tear the bandage free from my abdomen.
“Aria, what the hell are you doing?” Pax flew up to sitting, scrambling to stop me.
“No, Pax. Don’t. Just listen. Look.”
I could tell he didn’t want to give in. That he worried I was delusional.
Fevered.
I was, but not in the way he was thinking.
He relented, and I grimaced as I peeled the bandage away to expose the wound.
A wound that was still there. The skin puckered and red and inflamed. But it was healed in a way it shouldn’t be. The skin that had been sutured was closed. Not just by the stitches, but by the mending of the flesh.
Beyond the fathomable.
“How is this possible?” Pax muttered, aghast as he looked at the laceration.
“Because it was a lie to keep us weak.”
A lie we’d been fed.
One I was sure Ambrose had created. Because he knew . . . He knew the power Abigail had possessed when they’d been together.
I could only imagine the ways he’d used it against her.
“Valeen showed you, Pax.” My words rushed in urgency as the truth weaved together.
“She showed you that we belong together by allowing you to feel that I was in trouble. In danger. She gave you that sense that you had no other choice but to find me. And we already know together this power is far greater than we thought—and now, after what happened last night? I have to believe it is even stronger with the four of us together.”
No question our Nol was our greatest strength.
But there was power in these numbers.
In us.
In this family.
Excitement burned a path through me, and I gasped as Pax stared at my healing wound for the longest time before his eyes flicked up to mine.
Awareness flared at the connection. Our breaths shortened and heaved.
“We’re stronger together. All of us,” he murmured.
“Yes.” Then I threw myself at him, lifted up high on my knees as I wound one arm around his neck and braided the other through the longer pieces of his stark-white hair. “Together,” I murmured.
He was sitting, a leg drawn up in front of him and an arm looped around my waist. His gorgeous face was turned up toward me as I gazed down at him.
Each of us held.
Kept.
Then all reservations broke.
He pushed up to capture my mouth.
In an instant, we were fire.
A frenzy.
Desperate hands and beseeching kisses.
He wore no shirt, his chest and back and abdomen bare, and I dug my nails into the designs that covered the rippling, sinewy muscles of his back as I struggled to get him closer.
Need rose up inside me. A tidal wave I had no intention of escaping.
“Aria,” he murmured at my lips.
My name praise.
Bliss.
Truth.