Page 162 of Visions of Darkness

Blinking, she shook her head in doubt, and when she spoke, her voice was rough from the trauma she’d sustained. “I thought I’d almost fallen asleep, but then something woke me up. I was here, in the room, and you were sleeping on the floor, but when I looked out the window to figure out what the sound was ...”

Droplets of water trailed down her face, gathering with the tears that got loose from the darkened pools of her eyes. “The little girl was there.”

A bolt of terror rocked through me, and my molars ground.

There’d been something about the little girl that hadn’t sat right.

It’d felt like an omen.

A harbinger.

“She was outside, alone in the cold. Barefoot and only wearing a thin nightgown.”

Distress pinched Aria’s brow. “It was like I could feel her out there, calling to me, and I knew I had to help her. But there was also something about it that warned everything was wrong. Instinct kicking in that what I thought was happening wasn’t. I tried to call out to you, but I couldn’t make the words form. It was like ... I could make no sound. Had no control over my actions. The only thing I was capable of was unlocking the door and following her out.”

A tremor rolled through me, and my arms tightened around her.

I didn’t respond; I just waited, letting her sift through the debris.

Aria inhaled a shaky breath. “She darted across the lot. I shouted for her to stop, but she just looked back and laughed before she turned and ran farther away. I knew the road was out there, so I followed. There was a heavy fog, and I could barely see. It was so disorienting. Like everything I’d remembered from when we’d pulled in had ceased to exist—the motel disappearing behind me, and rather than there being a gas station on the other side of the road, there were fields. The only things remaining were the road and the little girl.”

I couldn’t breathe as she continued to explain. “Right before I got to her, she ran across the road. A truck blazed through, and I thought she’d been hit.”

Her nails sank into my skin as her explanation hitched. Then the words started tumbling like a landslide from her mouth. “Only, once it blew by, she was on the other side, and she was laughing and laughing. I followed her, Pax. I followed her into the maze of high grasses on the other side, even though Iknewsomething was off. I could feel it. But it was like I was shackled by a panic that wouldn’t let me go, and I kept chasing her. Pleading with her to stop. She kept going until the field opened to a pond, and when she stepped into it, she immediately sank.”

Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

A ball of razors rolled down the length of my throat, and I pulled her closer and clung tighter. Desperate to get her close enough that I could protect her from every threat. From every monster. From every evil that hunted her, night and day.

Aria felt the torment of it, too. The hopelessness that roared inside me. How could I truly protect her when I had no idea what we were up against? How, when whatever the fuck this was echoed with a power unlike any of which we’d ever been told?

“I didn’t think, Pax—or maybe I did know it in my gut and I just didn’t have the choice—but I jumped in after her. I saw her sinkingtoward the bottom, so I swam after her. Only, when I finally got hold of her, her face shifted.”

Aria’s expression pinched in turmoil. “It was the man ... The man from earlier today ... The same man I’d thought I’d seen the first night after you rescued me from the facility. It was him. And it was her.”

Her pulse flew as fast as the words that poured from her tongue. “Their faces were flashing between the two of them, and when she opened her mouth, shadows began to flood from it. Wisps that curled and spun before they grew to take shape. Kruen.”

Ice slicked down my spine.

“They wound around me. They bound me the same as if I were bound in chains and kept me under. I tried to fight them. I tried so hard, but I couldn’t break free.”

Tears blurred those mesmerizing eyes. “I would have drowned if you hadn’t awakened me. If you hadn’t heard me.”

I shifted so I could pull her flush against me. My hand went to the back of her head and my fingers wound in the strands. My other arm looped around her waist as I crushed her in my hold. “I will always hear you, Aria. Feel you.”

“I think I’m running out of time, Pax.”

“No, Aria. No.” My voice croaked over the rejection.

She blinked up at me. “If they can get to me this way? Keep me from passing into Tearsith and instead drag me someplace else entirely? How can I anticipate an attack when they’re coming for me from every direction? Awake? Sleeping? And in the in-between?”

I edged back to put a foot between us, and both my hands flew out to frame her face as the water pounded into her back. I dipped down to make sure she was looking at the truth of what I said. “I won’t sleep. I won’t drink or eat or rest until I’ve ensured that you’re safe. Not until we end that Ghorl.”

Curling her hands around my wrists, she peered up at me. Trusting me. Loving me. All while a storm battered in the middle of us, raging against our shores.

Reverence filled her voice. “I want you to know, whatever happens or however this turns out, that tonight, with you? It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

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