Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
“You will die—die like the rest. You will not stand in my way. I will reign.”
Aria had no option but to turn and run, but there was no place to run to.
He was right behind her, a frigid blaze that scalded her back. Sickness clawed through the air, which had become dense. Suffocating. She pushed with all her might, though she only ran in a circle.
No way to break beyond the bounds of this nefarious place.
That sensation rose in her again. The light building within her, demanding that she do something.
She held it tight, a glowing orb in the center of her chest.
She kept running as she tried to increase it.
Multiply it.
Searching for a power she’d never before possessed.
One she prayed might be enough to defeat this monster in this unfathomable place.
Hands slammed into her back, pushing her from behind. She stumbled forward, and with it, she could no longer contain the energy, and it blistered from her hands.
It pierced the black, rippling wall in front of her and sheared through the barrier. A gaping hole that writhed.
Aria couldn’t stop the trajectory of her momentum.
And she fell through.
Chapter One
Aria
Disoriented and gasping for breath, I jolted upright in bed, terror clutching my spirit. I blinked as I was blinded by the bright rays of sunlight that seared in through the gap in the long drapes.
It took me a moment to process. To understand that I was safe.
I was here . . . surrounded by morning light in the same hotel Pax and I had checked into last night.
One second later, Pax shot up from where he had been asleep beside me.
Those pale-gray eyes were wide with panic. With the torment of what he’d suffered while we’d been separated.
For one second, he stared at me, like he had to process that I was there, too, before he threw himself forward, gripping me in his arms, and holding me against the strength of his chest.
Heat burned through the cold that had held me hostage in that place.
“Aria,” he rasped. “Fuck, I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t find you. And you’re here. You’re here.”
His words came out in a torrent of dread.
In relief.
In confusion.
Frantic, he kept brushing a quivering hand down my head and back, as if it were the only way to assure himself that I was there.
“Where were you?” he finally demanded, his voice raw.
“It’s not over.” I choked on the words, pain still obliterating my throat as the harsh, horrible reality sank down into my spirit.
It’s not over.
It’s not over.
Those three little words pelted him, and I felt him stiffen against me before he peeled himself back and held me by my arms.
Fury contorted every line of his severe, glorious face. Every sharp edge hewn in brutality.
“What do you mean, it’s not over?” he growled.
I gulped around the chaos that thrummed through my being. “It wasn’t the Ghorl who was really after me, Pax. It was something . . . someone greater. The man. The one I saw at the diner and then outside the fast-food restaurant? The man whose face flickered between his and the little girl’s? He was the one who sent the Ghorl. He is the one who was trying to stop me.”
Rage clouded his expression. “You saw him again?”
My nod was shaky as my thoughts spiraled through what had transpired. “Yes. I felt something when we were hunting the Kruen last night. A force.”
Confusion hitched my voice, and my brow pinched as I tried to make sense of it. “It was almost like the gateway from Tearsith into Faydor. How we know what direction we’re supposed to go because we’re called to it. But it was so much stronger than that. Irresistible. I couldn’t do anything but reach out for it, and when I did, I was pulled through. He was there, in this . . .”
I swallowed around the throbbing thickness of my throat, the words a quiet rush of disbelief when I managed to expel them. “It was another plane. As if I were standing in the middle of a dark, frozen snow globe, stranded and completely contained. It was quiet. Still and cold. Tearsith’s opposite.”
But I also had a feeling it was Tearsith’s dark mirror. A resting place for whoever this man named Ambrose really was. A plane that held his darkness.
Pax’s palms trembled on my arms, and I could hear the grinding of his teeth. “You were dragged away from me? From Faydor and into this . . . ?”
He trailed off on a ragged breath. His eyes closed for a moment before he opened them to me. “But you’re here. You woke up here.”
He said it like the truth of it might ground him. Like it might be the only thing keeping him from flying off the bed and going on a rampage.