Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
“Left,” she rushed, gulping around her anxiety, and I slowed and made a left off the main street and into an older family neighborhood.
It was just after one in the morning, and darkness shrouded the modest houses that lined each side of the road. Not a soul was out at this time.
Everything was still.
Too still.
Bated.
Held.
A thin dusting of snow covered the long-dead front lawns, and the trees were barren in the winter cold. Their branches were so gnarled and twisted it was like looking at a distorted mirror of Faydor.
“Take a right at the next road,” Aria rasped as she pointed at the approaching street. My stomach was in knots as I followed her directions.
Our headlights speared across the vacancy, illuminating the obliteration that was to come.
I had to fight with all the willpower I possessed against the instinct to whip the car around, fly from here, and carry Aria away someplace safe.
But it’d become clear it didn’t matter where we went. The one who wanted to ruin Aria would only meet us there.
I could feel the weight of Aria’s swallow ricochet through the dense, crackling air, and she inhaled a shaky breath as she whispered, “It’s the second house on the right.”
Slowly, I eased to a stop at the curb in front of it, my limbs shaking like rattling chains as I took it in.
It was two stories. Brown and plain and innocuous. The only light glowed from a sconce hung on the wall beside the front door.
But I could still feel the evil radiating from the walls.
The depravity that oozed and wept.
Aria did, too, and she flinched as a shock wave of dread rolled down her spine as she peered out the passenger-side window.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” My words scraped like barbs that impaled her back.
Aria’s response was haggard. “I have to protect them. They didn’t ask for this.”
“You didn’t ask for it, either.”
She glanced back at me. Tears blurred her pale-gray eyes. But they would always be the warmest things I’d ever seen.
“But it’s who I am, isn’t it? And if there is any way I might have the power inside me to stop this? To protect them? Then I have to try.”
Fear pulled taut between us, apprehension billowing on our connection at what we were about to do.
I reached for her at the same time she reached for me. My hands tangled in her hair and hers fisted in my shirt as I captured her mouth in an anguished kiss. Intensity lit, a viable, palpable thing, the protectiveness—the possession I felt—tangible in the connection.
She poured everything I gave her right back into me.
A promise.
Our truth.
Our love.
I didn’t want to end it. Didn’t want to let go.
But I finally slowed and dropped my forehead to hers, gasping through the devotion that I had for her. My palm was splayed over the side of her head when I begged, “Please be careful.”
She nodded against me. “I will. This is going to work. It has to.”
A light flicked on somewhere on the first floor of the house, jarring us back from our cocoon, and we both knew he was awake inside. A trap had been set that had led Aria back to this place.
To the place I’d hated for as long as I could remember.
To the people whom I’d always worried would be her demise.
Turning back to me, she set her hand on my cheek, her thumb caressing a soothing path over the scar cut down the right side of my face. “I love you, Pax. Forever. For eternity. What happens here doesn’t change that.”
Inhaling a steeling breath, she cracked open her door. She paused for one apprehensive second before she fully tossed it open. Then she strode across the frozen thatch and angled up the walkway to the door, the long length of her black hair trailing behind her.
For a beat, she looked back, meeting my gaze through the window.
That stunning, unforgettable face was locked in determination.
She gave a tight nod.
A go.
And I reclined my seat at the same moment she walked through her childhood door.
Chapter Forty-Four
Aria
Attempting to not make a sound, I pushed down on the door latch. It clicked, and the metal gave without any resistance. I felt it like an extended hand from the sinister.
A foul invitation.
I swallowed around the knot in my throat as I carefully stepped inside and quietly shut the door behind me, trying to keep myself concealed.
Darkness reigned like an oil slick, heavier than it should be when a light glowed from the kitchen off to my right. I crept forward, my footsteps muted as I slunk through the shadows of the room toward the disturbance I could feel emanating from that side of the house.
Where normally the house was filled with laughter and the commotion of the day-to-day, now it was silent.