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)
Some kind of fucking sorcery Ambrose had cast, which I was sure was the case, but I was also pretty sure it had become a thread in this reality. That he’d brought them here. How, I didn’t fucking know.
I breathed out a sigh riddled with a boatload of uncertainty. “Think this already fucked-up world is about to completely go to shit. It seems our two worlds are merging.”
“Two worlds.” It wasn’t a question. It was a deliberation. A pondering of transience and death and things everlasting.
Her brow pinched as she turned her soft gaze to Aria. “What are you?”
“Did you read her chart?” I asked.
She gave me a clipped nod. “I did.”
She said it like she hadn’t given herself permission to believe what was written in it.
“Then you know.”
She blinked through the disbelief she was grappling with before she whispered, in a tone that sounded like acceptance, “Laven. I saw that word written in her chart, along with . . .”
She slightly shook her head through the riot of doubt and wonder. “That when you sleep, Aria believed that you fought a war to keep us safe. A war that none of us know is happening.”
It was why Aria had been institutionalized. Because she hadn’t been able to keep that truth from flooding out.
“It’s true. Everything she said, it’s true.” I swallowed hard. “And I’m afraid that war has come here.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Pax
Aria was wrapped in the blanket from the van as I carried her into Dani’s house. She was still limp. Still unconscious. But her chest lifted and fell with each breath. Breaths I inhaled like they sustained my own life as I held her close.
Even though it was dampened, I could sense Aria’s aura all around me.
Coconut and the most extreme sort of goodness.
Pure and right.
This woman who was so powerful. So strong. Clinging to life. A life I tried to cling to with the surety of my arms.
Timothy had already scoped out the inside of Dani’s house, ensuring it was clear. That, for the moment, it was safe and we could rest.
“Take her into my bedroom,” Dani instructed. “Timothy and I are going to sleep on the couch.”
I didn’t argue. I just carried Aria down the short hall to the door at the end. The faint light from the bathroom illuminated the space as I laid her down in the middle of the bed. I touched her forehead, her cheek, her chest, while Dani clung to her hand.
“She’s going to be okay,” she murmured, the promise made to me. To us.
Silence washed over us for a beat before Dani looked up at me from across the bed. “This is insane, Pax. I can’t—”
She clipped off like she couldn’t give it voice, her brow twisting with the magnitude of what had happened tonight. Everything we thought we’d known had been smashed to shit. The feeble ground we’d stood on fractured, a cavern opening up in the middle of the fragile truth we had been hanging on to.
“She’s strong enough,” I rumbled like my own plea. She had to be. There had to be a way to end this. To stop the atrocity of what was happening and keep her safe.
Dani opened her mouth but clamped off whatever she was going to say when Jill appeared in the doorway. She hovered at the threshold, unsure of what to do, a medical bag hanging from one hand.
“Come in,” I grunted as I gathered Aria’s hand and pressed it against the pulse of my heart, begging hers to follow it.
“I’ll let you two have some privacy,” Dani said, excusing herself and quietly creeping across the room and back down the hall while Jill came to stand in the same spot where Dani had been.
She set the bag onto the floor beside her before she straightened. The two of us drifted in a long silence before Jill murmured, “She’s amazing.”
She reached out and stroked her fingers down the side of Aria’s face.
“I knew in that facility that there was something about her. Something that didn’t fit into the mold they were trying to force her into. Something that was radiant, though it was dulled by the lies she had to tell to protect herself.”
“She was so grateful to you. She knew what you were sacrificing to set her free.”
Tears blurred Jill’s brown eyes as she looked down at Aria, who was motionless in the middle of the bed. “I think I knew it the first time I saw her. I had this sense that wouldn’t let me go. A sense that things weren’t what they seemed. That we were missing something important. I could feel it . . . a depth to her that didn’t exist in anyone else. Then I saw you . . .”
She lifted her gaze to mine. “I saw you, and I knew.”