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)
Pax looked at him. “I need to go to her. She’s in danger.”
He knew it.
Could sense it as strongly as he’d sensed it during the day.
“No,” Ellis wheezed. Fear crawled across his features. “You must not let those thoughts enter your mind.”
Pax shook his head, grinding his teeth with the anger that sprang from the depths. “What? Am I just supposed to stay here and know she’s being harmed? Ignore the fact that she’s in danger? When I can help her?”
“You want to protect her? If you go to her, you will only be putting her in more danger. You must remember that. You are protecting her by staying here and keeping to your Laven creed.” Ellis’s words were edged in urgency. “Our bond with our Nol is the greatest, most powerful connection we will ever experience. But we cannot interact with them in the human realm. We cannot. If we do, we only welcome destruction into our lives. You know what happened to Valeen.”
It was something that had been pounded into his head since he was a young child. A Laven would destroy their Nol if they came together while awake.
That somehow, their souls would eat away at the other. That their love would turn to hate.
But Pax had never quite been able to accept it. Had questioned it because there wasn’t one single speck inside himself that could believe he would ever hurt Aria.
“I would never turn on her.”
Severity lined Ellis’s voice. “The only strength the evil ones possess is when you’re awake. They can’t destroy you here, in this place, and not in Faydor, either. But they can in the day. Laven can be led astray in the day. You’ve seen it yourself. None of us are exempt from the sins that our human minds open us up to. But if two are together? Nols, nonetheless? You will be that much more noticeable to the Kruen who will seek your demise. Kreed could not resist the lure of depravity, and all the world fell because of him. And he was a god. Think of what might happen to a lesser man. How much greater their ability to tear you apart? To pit you against one another? To inflame and incite? They would bring desolation into your life. Our human minds cannot handle that sort of attack, nor can our bodies. One of you would succumb.”
Death.
It was what Ellis promised.
But Pax would gladly accept death if it meant Aria was safe, because he knew, to the deepest depths of himself, that he would never cause her harm.
Ellis squeezed Pax’s shoulder. “You lose sight of your purpose when you’re with her. She’s already overshadowed the importance of what you are.”
“Fuck what I am.” Pax couldn’t keep the shearing bitterness from his tongue.
Ellis flinched, then pressed on as if Pax hadn’t cursed his fate. “Do you think I haven’t had to fight the urge to find Josephine while awake? Do you think she’s not special to me in ways that no one else could ever be? That I haven’t feared for her or wanted to be there for her? But it’s my duty while I’m awake to protect my family. To give myself to my wife and my children. I was meant to live that life, too.”
He set the full force of his gray eyes upon Pax, and his tone hardened. “Just like you must live yours.”
Pax had to hold back his scoff.
As if he would ever allow anyone to get close to him there.
As if he’d ever allow himself to care.
He could never wrap his mind around the fact that Ellis was married. Had children and grandchildren.
“You don’t understand, Ellis,” he grated, shifting the focus of their conversation. “Something happened while Aria was awake.”
“Was she hurt?” Concern flashed through their elder’s expression.
Bile gathered at the base of Pax’s throat, and the words were shards when he forced them out. “No, Ellis. She bound a Kruen while awake.”
Ellis turned a pasty white.
“She saw into Faydor by touching a girl.” Dread filled Pax’s voice. “Saw into her mind. She saw a Kruen, and she bound it. She bound it, Ellis. How is that possible?”
The old man’s skin was pallid.
“What is it? What do you know?” Pax demanded.
Pax could see the alarm rolling through Ellis, the way panic held his tongue.
Pax reached out and grabbed his forearm. “Please, tell me.”
Ellis’s throat trembled as he swallowed; then he lifted his chin in frankness. “I heard of it happening once.”
Pax shifted, angling down so he could read what was written in Ellis’s expression. His elder’s dread was so thick Pax could taste it. “Who?”
“A girl. Long ago.”
“What happened to her?”
Agony spiraled through the murky gray of Ellis’s eyes. “I have read a vague mention of it in The Book of Continuance. An obscure statement that there are some of us who are given a greater gift. But I’ve never seen it in my lifetime. I have only heard of it once, passed down from my elder—and from his warnings, I understand that they hunted her. Hunted her until they ended her.”