Page 85 of Visions of Darkness

“That only I had the strength to defeat this evil.”

“What evil?”

Uncertainty billowed through my spirit. “I’m not sure. The Ghorl, I guess.”

He sighed in frustration. “There has to be something. Something more than the little information we’ve been given.”

I took a bite of my waffle, contemplating before I asked, “What are you hoping to find?”

His left shoulder hiked toward his ear. “I don’t know. A clue. Something that could give us any insight into you. How it’s possible that you bound a Kruen while awake. You’re unlike anything we know.”

Pax hesitated, regret glittering in the white flames of his eyes.

My head tipped to the side as I frowned. “What is it?”

He warred, then said, “Ellis said he’d read in the book a mention of there being Laven who had greater powers than others, and there was ...” He hesitated before he added, “There was a legend passed down from his elder of there being someone like you long ago.”

My stomach lurched. “Why would he never have spoken of it before? In all our teachings?”

“I’m guessing because there were no others like us. That it seemed an anomaly, and he didn’t want to add a new burden to those we already carried.”

A new burden.

I felt the weight of it then.

The dread that dimmed Pax’s expression. The aggression that lined his jaw.

“Tell me,” I demanded. The last thing I could handle was him keeping things from me.

He inhaled a deep breath before he leaned forward. “He said she was hunted because of her powers. Because she became such a threat to the Kruen.”

He left out what was abundantly clear.

They had ended her.

His hand was suddenly squeezing mine from over the top of the table. “But I promise you, I won’t let that happen to you. I will find a way to stop this. Once we put more distance between us and Albany, we’ll find someplace to research. See if we can uncover anything that might help us. Whatever it takes, I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you.”

I turned my hand so I was holding his, hanging on because I didn’t know how to process all this.

I’d known deep inside that I would be hunted because of these powers. Powers that I had no idea where they’d come from. But there was something else altogether about getting the confirmation this way.

My spirit wept for the Laven who’d had to suffer it, wept for the loss I would soon sustain.

My mother’s face flashed through my mind again.

She would be devastated, destroyed when I was found. And she would never understand.

Regret churned through me, the pain of leaving her tormented this way.

“I promise,” he reiterated before he unclasped his hand and turned back to picking at his food.

He and I fell into a strange, disoriented comfort after that, slowly eating, processing, trying to come to terms with the place we’d found ourselves in.

Once we finished, our server left our bill. Pax pulled out a wallet that was stuffed with cash and placed two twenties onto the slip.

I eyed it. I had nothing. I was completely dependent on him.

“Do you have a job you’re supposed to be at?”

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