Page 176 of Visions of Darkness

My name was affliction.

Devotion.

Relief.

He dropped to his knees at my side, and a cry erupted from where it’d been locked somewhere in my consciousness, so big and loud it banged through the room and ricocheted from the walls.

“Pax.”

In an instant, he had me pried out of my mother’s hold and pulled me against him.

Terrified, my mother scrambled away, her mouth held in shock as her mind reeled at the sight of the one person whose name I’d been forbidden to speak.

“Pax.” I cried it again, and I knew I’d sing it forever. “Pax.”

Sure, secure arms held me close against him as he exhaled the near tragedy, his voice so low as he murmured at the top of my head, “You did it. You did it. You ended it. You’re safe.”

He inhaled on that, breathing me in, drawing me deep into the well of his spirit. “You’re safe.”

I curled my arms around his middle, hanging on as I wept.

As I wept for the little girl who’d spent her childhood terrified of being seen. As I wept for the traumas that had been inflicted because of it. As I wept for my mother, who’d only done it out of her ceaseless love. As I wept for what we’d endured over the last week.

And most of all, I wept because we were free.

Pax shifted so he was sitting on the ground, and he pulled me onto his lap, my side tucked into his chest as he kissed along my crown, my temple, my brow. “You’re safe.”

“It’s over,” I finally wheezed.

I felt him nod against me. “It’s over. You did it. You ended it.”

My fist curled into his shirt. “We did it.”

“What’s happening? Oh my God, what’s happening? Am I going crazy?” My mother yanked at her hair from where she rocked, sitting upright on the floor. Tears marred her red, chapped cheeks.

I hated that she continued to question the truth that was set right out in front of her, though there was still a piece of myself that understood her disbelief.

Even I, having access to all the things I’d seen and experienced, had questioned my own sanity.

But maybe now she could finally see.

Sniffling, I unwound myself from Pax’s arms, even though I could feel his resistance in my doing so, and I pushed to my feet. My legs wobbled, but I could stand. I moved to my mother, and I stretched out myhand. She clung to me as I helped her up. A deep line cut between her brows as she warily watched Pax from over my shoulder, as she glanced back at me, silently begging for answers.

“It was never a lie, Mom. Who I am. The scars that I hold and how I got them. And I know it’s difficult to understand, that you never believed it possible, that you thought I was unstable. I don’t blame you, because it’s beyond the unfathomable. Who we are.”

I looked back at Pax then, lost to the steadfast devotion that blazed in his eyes. Then I turned back to my mother. “Everything I ever told you was true, all except for the lies I’d been forced to tell to try to hide who I really am. But I won’t hide who I am anymore.”

She waffled with the inconceivable, her mind and heart torn, and her gaze traveled to Pax, whom I could feel was standing behind us, the man in the middle of the room, a power all his own.

I knew what he looked like to other people, but I knew right then that the only thing that really mattered was the way he looked to me.

“He’s real. It’s ... real.” Blankets of moisture poured down her face as she shook her head, as if her logic urged her to refute it while her spirit swam with the realization.

“It is. And the reality of it put you all in danger.”

My attention swept to my father, who was silently sobbing against the far wall, rocking and rocking as he looked at us.

“I don’t ...” My mother’s expression pinched. “I don’t understand.”

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