Chapter Forty-Six Aria
Chapter Forty-Six
Aria
“Pax!” His name cleaved from my mouth on a plea, and I dropped to my knees at his side.
“Pax. No, no, no,” I begged. My hands shook uncontrollably as they fluttered out to touch him. To feel him. To find him.
He couldn’t leave me.
Please, don’t leave me. Don’t.
“Pax. Please.” It was garbled. Incoherent.
I managed to get my trembling fingers to his neck, and I fumbled as I searched for a pulse. A frenzy grew inside me when I couldn’t find one, and I pressed harder.
Searching.
Desperate.
A thousand pounds weighed down on my chest. The pain so brutal I couldn’t breathe. I wheezed, the air jerking in and out of my failing lungs as I searched the other side, begging and begging, “Pax, please, look at me. You have to look at me. Please.”
Dani was suddenly there, on her knees on the other side of him. “Oh God, Aria,” she choked.
I pleaded, desperation scraping up my ravaged throat, “Pax, please, look at me!”
Her pink hair got in my line of sight as she leaned over him, and she tipped it so her ear was to his chest, watching and listening for anything.
For any movement.
For a breath.
For a heartbeat.
She remained there for too long.
Doing nothing.
“Dani, hurry, we have to help him.”
She sat back on her heels. Anguish pulsed through her features, and she slowly shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Aria.”
I shook mine back.
Frantically.
Refusing what she was trying to say.
“No. No, Dani. No!” I screamed, and I pressed my hands to his chest.
Feeling.
Feeling.
Feeling.
No heartbeat.
No movement.
But I could feel him.
I could feel his spirit, which had always lived inside me.
That intuition—that awareness—that had thrummed between us. No matter the miles or distance or spheres that had separated us.
Our connection, which would bond us forever.
Tears blurred my eyes as I leaned over him, touching him everywhere as the frenzy of words poured from my mouth. “Pax, come back to me. You can’t leave me. Not now. We did it. We did it. Together. Together. The way we were supposed to. Listen to my voice, to my heart.”
I took his hand and placed his palm flat to that thunder that battered at my aching chest.
“You promised you would always find me. You promised. You have to. You have to find me. Wherever you are, you have to find me. You’re my partner. My husband. My Nol. I need you.”
The cries raked out of me.
Misery.
Anguish.
“Oh, fuck. No, man.” From behind Dani, Timothy gripped his head with bloodied hands, the gore of the battle we’d just fought written all over him, before he dropped to his knees.
He nudged Dani aside. “Let me see.”
He cut me an agonized glance as he unzipped Pax’s jacket. He peeled it back, revealing Pax’s shirt, which was ripped from the burn he’d sustained.
The fabric was completely saturated with blood. The wound was right on the center of Pax’s chest, so deep that I feared I would be able to see his stilled, lifeless heart. A hole that was at least five inches wide.
Carefully, Timothy set both hands on Pax’s sternum, just below the wound.
He began to pump. To pump blood through Pax’s veins for him when he couldn’t do it himself.
A frenzy lit inside me. Hope that bloomed in the middle of the torment.
Pax and Dani had saved me. They’d saved me when that healing had been impossible. When I should no longer be breathing. Because they were there. Because they’d poured their power into me.
I had to believe.
I had to.
Tremors rocked through my hands when I pressed my palms right over the wound.
Dani seemed to realize it at the exact moment, too, and she scrambled around so she could place her hands on each side of his head.
And we breathed our belief into him.
Our life.
Our love.
Over and over, I begged him to stay.
“Pax, I’m right here. Find me. Find me the way you always have.”
Timothy pumped and pumped. Exertion strained his arms, but he refused to give up as Dani and I called him back.
As we begged and prayed that the energy we poured into him was weaving something inside.
A healing we couldn’t see.
We refused to falter or give.
Our breaths were harsh and ragged as we gave him everything we had.
And I knew it when I saw the stirring of his eyes.
The slight fluttering of his lashes.
“Pax, Pax! You hear me. I know you hear me.” Tears gushed down my face as the words rushed from my mouth.
“Come back to me. I’m waiting. I’m right here.”
His chest suddenly arched off the ground as he sucked in a jagged breath.
Timothy heaved out a delirious, surprised laugh. “Yes, that’s it. That’s it!”
He pumped two more times before Pax jolted, flying upright as he coughed and choked, his hands gripping his wound as he inhaled oxygen into his lungs. One second later, those pale, pale eyes were on me where I was on my knees in front of him.
Those fierce, terrifying, beautiful eyes.
They were whole and knowing.
Pure and right.
Together.
And together it was done.
I threw myself at him, curling around him as he wrapped his arms around my waist. He released the heaviest breath into my neck as he locked me against his chest. “Aria. I heard you. I heard you.”
“You’ve always heard me.” It was a sob of praise. Of respect for this affinity. For the gift we’d been given.
For this love.
Ellis had always told us who we were would be a blessing and a curse.
But this? Having Pax? It was a treasure.
I held him against me as tight as I could, clinging to him as he breathed me in. Sharp, deep gulps that he pulled into the well of his lungs.
Then he peeled back, his palm soft as he set it on my cheek, his expression racked with devotion, words rough as he uttered them into the air: “You did it, Aria. You fucking did it. I knew you could. Knew you had the greatest strength in you.”
He curled me back in his arms, murmuring in reverence, “You did it.”
Energy swelled, the connection binding. Warmth that blistered through my body and sank down into every recess inside me.
A knowledge that seeped into the marrow.
“We all did it. All of us,” I whispered over the swelling of perfect relief.
A shock of a laugh flew out of Dani, a lightness in the middle of the burden that still weighed down our spirits. “Oh, come on, Aria, did you miss the freaking bolt of lightning that came out of you?”
My laugh was soggy, and my limbs were numb, every muscle in my body mush.
But in it, there was strength.
Belief.
Hope.
We did it.
We did it.
And we were free.
“We really need to try to bandage that wound,” Timothy urged.
I basically had to pry myself away from Pax, not wanting to let go, though I kept our fingers twined as Timothy shrugged out of his heavy jacket, peeled off his tee, then tore it into strips. He wound them around Pax’s chest, tying them tight, before he pulled his jacket back on.
“Thanks, man.” Pax’s voice was coarse. “For everything.”
Pax’s gaze swiveled between Timothy and Dani, then back to me. “To all of you.”
“Always.” Timothy squeezed his shoulder, then swallowed hard as his attention moved over my shoulder to take in the desolation. “We need to get the hell out of here. This place is a straight wasteland.”
As soon as he said it, a feeling swept over me. A cold wind of awareness that shivered all the way down into my bones. I slowly pushed to my feet as the sensation overtook me. The realization of what was missing.
Frantic, my gaze scanned, searching through the Laven scattered about the park. So many of them were wailing and weeping, while others embraced loved ones who had been spared.
Then I froze when I found who I was searching for.
Josephine.
She was there, in the distance, sitting on the ground. Holding Ellis’s hand where he lay beside her. Strands of stringy gray hair blew around her face. A face that was wrought with the starkest grief.
“Ellis,” I whispered around the agony that clutched my ribs, and I started to run, ignoring the pain in my leg as I clambered over the devastation of bodies and debris that littered the ground, pushing myself as hard as I could to get to them. A cry tore out of me when I made it there.
The front of his jacket was completely ripped, revealing a gaping wound that covered almost all of his abdomen.
And the blood.
There was so much blood.
“Josephine,” I said, her name cracking on my tongue as I dropped to my knees. Frantic, I searched for something to use as a pack for the injury. “Put your hands on him. Hurry. We can save him.”
Josephine shook her head gently as she tipped her attention up to me. A single tear streaked down her cheek. “No, my sweet child, we can’t. He’s already gone.”
“No, we have to—”
Reaching out with her opposite hand, she set it on my forearm, stalling my frenzied movements as I tried to shrug out of my jacket. “He’s gone. I can feel it. I know. There is nothing we can do. He has been called on to eternity.”
“No,” I cried, and I tried to push up on my knees, to reach out.
To do something.
But I felt it, too.
A cavern that had been carved out in the middle of me.
One that gaped from the woman who sat stoic at his side.
Agony.
Misery.
The sheer breaking of her heart.
The rest of our family rushed up behind us, grieved exhalations heaving from them when they stumbled on the loss.
I could feel the weight of his pain when Pax set his hands on my shoulders.
Could feel it spilling. A torrent that gushed through us all.
Tears streaked down my face as I reached for Josephine’s free hand, squeezing it tight as we all knelt around the man who’d loved us so fiercely.
The one who’d watched over each of us as a father.
The one who’d carried the weight of us all on his shoulders.
His devotion forever and complete.