Page 106 of Walking in Darkness
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.”
Air huffed from her mouth on a soggy chuckle, and she sniffled. “Of course, I didn’t want to believe it. I mean, God, it’s terrifying. Terrifying to think of those scars littered all over her body and how she sustained them. Terrifying to think of what you’ve seen and what you all endure. Terrifying to think that any of this is real.”
“I wish it wasn’t,” I admitted.
She shifted a fraction as she processed what she’d witnessed both while Aria had been in the facility and tonight. The magnet that had refused to let her go in the time between.
“When it was clear that janitor had been after her, I knew what I had to do.” Her head bounced slightly.
A reaffirmation.
A bolstering that the choice she had made had been the right one.
“And after that?” She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. “It was like that single act had tied me to her in some way. As if a tether between us had formed.”
“You saved her.” The words were gravel. “Twice.”
Silence stretched between us for a moment before she spoke, her voice broken when she asked, “What does it mean for me?”
I blew out some of the strain on a long exhalation. “Only thing I know is, you were meant to be a part of her life. A piece of this. How or why?” I shrugged, though it wasn’t casual. It was heavy. Weighted with all the questions of this life. “I don’t understand it any more than I’ve ever understood why we were chosen. How it is possible. But I know it’s important. That it matters.”
“Can you stop ...” Her entire face pinched before she forced out, “Can you stop whatever is happening? This merging of two worlds?”
Stop theend.
She didn’t need to say it aloud for me to hear it. For me to feel it.
Because it was out there, the awareness of what we were coming up to.
The end of this life as we knew it.
Maybe the end of humankind altogether.
