Page 12 of Visions of Darkness

When she found the right number there, she whirled back around, begging, “What is wrong, Aria? Please tell me. Has someone hurt you?Bullied you? Your friends? A boy? What is it? Please God, just tell me. Let me help you.”

Her sorrow was stark.

Staggering.

Unbearable.

I wanted to wipe it away. Hold her. Protect her the way she wanted to protect me. My chest ached, my ribs clamping around my heart, which throbbed with dread.

“Mom, please, don’t do this. I didn’t—” On instinct, the defense fell from my tongue. One I knew better than to give.

Because it only doubled my mother’s agony and amplified her fear.

“What did you say?” Tears poured from her eyes.

My throat locked, and I curled my arms over my chest like it could protect us both from this.

“What did you say? That you didn’t do it?” This time, she grabbed me by the arms and shook me. “Washethere?” she demanded.

I couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe.

“Was he there?” Her words escalated to a shout.

My eyes squeezed closed as visions of Pax raced through my mind.

The beautiful boy who would never be mine the way I wanted him to be.

My love.

My heart.

My soul.

“Tell me,” she pleaded. “Was he there?”

“Mom,” I croaked around the disordered riot that crashed through my room.

Heartbreak twisted through her expression. I could feel it. Feel it like a wound. Her hope dwindling into hopelessness. Succumbing to the belief that her daughter was insane.

This was the mother of a little girl who at four couldn’t wait to go to sleep because there she would see her best friend.

Pax.

At that time, she would sit at the edge of my bed, pull my covers to my chin, and smile in soft encouragement as I told her the fantastical stories about a little boy who was four years older than me. A boy I would play with beyond the boundaries of this world.

She’d listen as I described us running through a secret paradise. Fields of flowers and high grasses, soaring trees with branches low enough to climb, dipping our toes into the stream that wove through the meadow where we’d meet.

How perfect it was there in Tearsith, a haven without pain or shame.

At seven, she’d sat at the edge of that same bed and told me I was getting too old for imaginary friends.

At ten, she’d begged me to stop, gripping my hand as she whispered that I was scaring her.

At sixteen, when I’d left the safety of Tearsith and descended to fight in Faydor, when the wounds had begun to show, I’d been forbidden to ever speak Pax’s name again.

A name I was never supposed to speak anyway, but I’d never been able to keep the truth of that place contained. It’d always felt as if it was going to burst out from within me.

Her nails sank into my flesh. “Tell me!”

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