Page 91 of Visions of Darkness

People were there, sitting on the green bank among the vingas, wearing the same brown clothing as us when we showed up in Tearsith every night, though it was obvious from their hairstyles the image was dated.

“I can’t believe it.” Aria stretched out a trembling hand and brushed her fingertips across the screen as if she could reach it.

Our truth.

And, for the first time, we had confirmation that it was someone else’s truth, too.

And fuck, I wasn’t sure that this life had ever felt more real than right then. Sitting beside my Nol and seeing this.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were still alone.

“Who’s the artist?” I asked when I turned back, my voice craggy with urgency.

Aria scrolled through the painting’s description.

“Tearsithis a nineteenth-century painting by Abigail Watkins.”

The name was hyperlinked, and Aria clicked on it.

Abigail Watkins was an American painter.

Born:February 16, 1871, in Pendleton, South Carolina

Died:March 4, 1902, in Charlotte, South Carolina

Known for:Painting

Spouse:Ambrose Watkins

Parents:Robert Ray Smith, Beatrice Louise Remington

Abigail Watkins was known for painting. While the peers of her time had moved on to realism and impressionism, Abigail’s works were notable for their mystical elements and her flair for the demonic, her style lending itself to the romantic period preceding her era. Abigail Watkins’s works were virtually undiscovered until after her unfortunate death at thirty-one years old. While it’s believed most ofher works were destroyed in the house fire she succumbed to, five paintings were recovered and are now on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.

We both were fucking shaking as we clicked through the five images lined up beneath her name.

The first was the original we’d seen, the one labeledTearsithat the edge where she’d swiped the letters across the bottom. The others were unnamed, but that didn’t mean we didn’t recognize them.

Two were depictions of the bowels of Faydor, the barren plane we knew so well. One was a landscape, as if she had perfectly defined the hell where we found ourselves each night. In another, a Kruen had risen high, amassing from shadow to its macabre form. Its face was a void, with innuendos of shape and holes for its eyes that led to eternal nothingness. A pit of darkness and despair. This Kruen had six spindly, branch-like limbs that flamed with fiery tendrils as it prepared to lash out in defense.

The other two were varying portrayals of Kruens peering down from that unseen plane, devouring the innocent below. These were grisly. Gore-strewn. A clear parable of how she interpreted the devastation they wreaked.

“We aren’t alone, are we?” My words were hushed. The search might not have given us the answers we’d been looking for, but I thought there was something comforting about it. Seeing it beyond the borders of our minds.

Aria shifted her attention to me. “No. We aren’t. It’s strange to have felt alone for so long, and this somehow feels ... like an affirmation.”

“It’s a piece. A start.” With it, I had to believe there was more.

Aria turned back to the screen. “I just wonder who she was. What she was like. She died so young. In a house fire. How awful.”

A bit of that hopelessness bottomed out my stomach. It was so long ago, so I doubted we would find any connections. As cool as it was tohave this piece of who we were, we needed a ton more information if it was going to make a difference for Aria. We needed something solid. An answer for who she was.

If we could find out who the Laven was who’d held the same powers as Aria? Find any history on her? Find out exactly how the Kruens or a Ghorl had tracked her down and destroyed her?

Maybe then we could find a way to truly protect Aria forever. Help her tap deeper into who she was.

Maybe I was grasping at straws. Any sort of solution.

But we had to try to find something.

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