Chapter Forty-Seven Pax
Chapter Forty-Seven
Pax
I think we were all numb as we pulled into the hotel in the next city we came to, about thirty minutes outside of where it’d all gone down.
I’d driven since Dani had barely been able to walk after we’d found Ellis, and the whole ride here, she and Timothy were completely silent, curled up in the back seat.
Aria sat in the passenger seat next to me.
In a spot she’d so often been over all these weeks.
Weeks that felt like a century.
An eon.
Our worlds merging and our axis cracking apart.
A lifetime.
A beginning.
An end.
A reemergence.
I could almost taste the questions that swirled through the car. The uncertainties.
The loss.
The relief.
The pure absolution I felt when I put the car into park outside the lobby of one of those chain hotels found along every highway, and turned my gaze on Aria.
Aria, who would never fail to steal my breath.
My partner.
My Nol.
My wife.
The one who’d saved me. The one I knew with every part of myself.
My soul’s destination.
She was war-torn. Clothes shredded. Hair matted and clumped, blood smeared all over her striking, beautiful face.
But it would always be those eyes that got me. The palest gray eyes that speared all the way through flesh and bone to what was written in the deepest parts of me. This woman who’d always seen.
Sorrow lanced across her sharp brow, though there was so much more in her expression.
Freedom.
Deliverance.
Exoneration.
The chains that had bound us for so long were gone. The fear that had hunted us extinguished.
And the hope—the hope that she’d held had been found.
Fulfilled in the truth that we saw—people wandering around, confused yet whole; rays of sunlight beaming across the sky, warming the bitter cold that had frozen everything over.
Moisture filled her eyes as she stared over at me. So much emotion clogged her spirit that I could tell she didn’t know if she wanted to shout with joy or drop to her knees and weep.
Because with the triumph had come tragedy.
With the victory had come misery.
Reaching out, I set my hand on her cheek and brushed the pad of my thumb beneath the hollow of her eye. My head barely bobbed. The slightest moment that promised that I got it. That I understood.
Understood that there was still a burden in the fulfillment of her purpose.
Dani choked on a sniffle, her voice a raspy moan that infiltrated the car. “How could we just leave them there?”
Josephine had refused to leave Ellis’s side. Had refused to come with us. Had demanded we go.
We respected her enough to give in to that request, even though it had torn every single one of us apart.
“Because she needed to be there with him. Alone. To seek whatever peace she could find.” Timothy’s words were soft, issued with encouragement and his own sorrow.
We were reeling with the truth that this was the only time the two of them ever had. That they hadn’t gotten the chance to know each other outside the battles we’d forever fought in Faydor. Their only meeting in the flesh had been this—their souls drawn together for the shortest amount of time.
But I think we also knew Ellis’s heart. Knew he would have gladly sacrificed himself. Hell, he’d been sacrificing himself all along.
“I’m going to get us a couple rooms. I’ll be right back,” I finally said, knowing we needed to rest.
Heal.
Actually fully breathe for the first time in weeks.
Aria brushed her fingers down my arm in a silent agreement, and I clicked open the door and stepped out into the chill, though the howl of the wind had ceased. I glanced at my reflection in the window of the car.
I was covered in blood. My clothes saturated and my hair matted in thick clumps. Face streaked and stained red even though I’d wiped it with a towel Dani had had in the trunk.
The scars written under it.
Painted in the gore that had been my life.
I looked terrifying. Like the dangerous freak my biological father had believed me to be. And yeah, I’d faced many terrors in my years. Had inflicted them in my own way. Had thought myself only worthy of imparting death and judgment to those who’d wielded their sins.
But now I saw something different reflected back. Saw something beneath the scars and disfigurement.
I saw the man I was destined to be.
The man who’d been brought here to stand beside the one who would save us all.
Aria caught my eye through the window. All that affection and goodness radiating out.
Together.
Giving her a soft tip of my chin, I blew out a sigh and scuffed a hand through the disarray of my hair as I strode toward the automatic lobby door.
It opened with my approach, and I walked inside to find three employees huddling around the registration counter.
The four flat-screen TVs that hung on the lobby walls were all tuned to a news station that was covering a local disaster.
A tornado that’d ripped through a small town and destroyed everything in its path. Emergency crews were just descending on the scene, but reports said the death toll was expected to be significant.
Footage from a helicopter played over the screen. The sheer devastation that had been wreaked—every building demolished. Rubble was piled high, and they tried to blur out what was clearly a slew of bodies strewn all over the streets.
In the scrolling text beneath it were reports of other calamities throughout the world. The rash of crimes that had befallen every city in every country. The terror that had run rampant.
Terror I had a hunch had gone silent.
The employees watched, rapt, their voices hushed as they whispered about the destruction.
A woman looked up when she heard me approach. Shock widened her eyes when she saw my state, her fear apparent as she inched back a step.
I cleared the roughness from my voice, forming the lie that had to be told. “I didn’t mean to startle you with my appearance. We just got in the middle of a really bad storm. Wind was so bad we got thrown off the road. Bashed myself pretty good.”
I gestured to a fresh cut on my forehead.
Another employee pointed at a television behind me. “Was a full-out tornado that destroyed an entire town. Looks like you got lucky.”
I swiveled around to look, heart gripped by the sight, by the number of Laven who’d been slaughtered. By the people of that town who’d been wiped out before we arrived.
My words were thick as I released them into the sticky air: “Yeah. Looks like we definitely were.”
Had the urge to place my hand over the wound I’d sustained. A wound that was almost healed because of my Nol. Because she’d always been my destination, where my soul belonged.
The one who’d led me back. Her spirit a call that I would forever heed.
Forcing it down, I spoke again. “I need a couple rooms, if you have them. We’d like to get cleaned up and rest before we take a chance of getting back on the road again.”
“Smart move. Who knows if some freak storm is going to come out of nowhere again. The whole sky was black. Freaked me out, if I’m going to be honest.” The desk clerk tapped into a computer as he rambled under his breath. “That was some apocalyptic shit.”
He glanced up at me. “Do you have a room-type preference?”
“Kings, if you have them.”
“You’re lucky again, my friend. I have two available.”
“Thank you.”
“Rate is $115.99 a night, plus tax, bringing you to a total of $263.19.”
I dug my hand into my pocket, and I pulled out the one credit card I had to my name. The one that would mark me as having been in this spot.
And I had no trepidation about doing it.
Because we were no longer running.
We were no longer hiding.
He ran it, then told me about the free happy hour and breakfast in the morning before handing me two little folders with our keys. “Hope you enjoy your stay.” He gave me a genuine smile. “Glad you made it out okay.”
“Yeah, me too. Glad it didn’t hit here,” I returned, voice gravel as I thought of what could have happened. How what had happened in that town could have spread out.
Far and wide.
How life as we knew it could have been eradicated. The sheer number of those who would have perished. The evil that would have roamed the earth.
Ruled it.
I stepped back outside, and immediately my gaze landed on Dani’s little red car, attention focused on Aria, who watched me through the windshield.
God, the number of times I’d walked out of a motel lobby to find her just like that. Watching me with those eyes. With that love she always held for me. Embracing it without shame. Sharing it without reservation.
Chasing it when I’d been so fucking afraid.
When I’d been terrified of what returning her love would mean.
Terrified of what it would cost.
Turns out, that love had given us everything.
A chance at a life that neither of us thought we could have.
I moved to the driver’s-side door and climbed in, and I passed a key card back to Timothy. “Room 212,” I told him.
“Thanks, man.”
I’d left the car idling, so I drove around to a spot near a side door.
Timothy slipped out, then ducked back in to help Dani out. He swung her directly into his arms. I didn’t know if she was spent or wounded or too full of grief to walk, but he knew what she needed.
For so long, I’d wondered if Aria and I were the only ones who shared the scale of this connection. I knew better now. Recognized what we’d been taught was a sin was actually a gift.
Timothy didn’t say anything—he just carried Dani up the sidewalk before they disappeared through the door.
I moved to the trunk, grabbed our duffels, then wound around to Aria’s side.
She stepped out the second I got there.
Everything about her was overpowering. So perfect and right that a knot tightened at the base of my throat.
We didn’t say anything, either, as we made our way up to our room, as I touched the key card on the reader and let us in to the warmth that billowed from within.
We slowly—carefully—undressed each other, ridding the other of tattered clothes marked with the carnage of what we had faced.