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)
For one second, it lurched back, but then it was right back on me, the venom in its voice filling the room.
“I will destroy you. I will destroy you all. None of you will survive.”
I nearly lost hold with the force of it, with the horror that it was speaking directly to me.
I fought just as desperately as it did, my father’s hands its weapons as he squeezed so tight that I thought he was going to crush my throat.
And the lights began to flicker again, the oxygen growing too thin, my body succumbing to my human limitations. My heels dug into the carpet as I tried to buck up to knock him off.
Blackness gathered at the edges of my sight, and still I tried.
The Ghorl suddenly roared, rearing back as streaks of light hit it from all sides.
Shock rounded my father’s eyes, confusion bounding, his mind stuck in two places.
His hands trembled, his decision wavering.
It was enough—enough for me to press further into his mind, and I gripped his face as tightly as I could as I peered at the Ghorl who was being attacked on all sides.
Pax.
Pax was there.
He was flanked by Timothy and Dani, and Ellis and Josephine were on either side of them.
Relief slammed into me.
They found him.
They found him.
Each stood glowing, rippling with power, vibrating with the light that streaked from their beings.
“Fight, Aria, fight.”
And I could feel Pax’s words through time and space. Through realms and eternities.
“Fight.”
And I did. I fought. I stretched out the light.
Wisps and tendrils of electric current struck it like arrows.
It flailed and screamed and writhed, whirling around as it tried to retaliate.
Fragments of fire lashed out, but each missed my Laven family.
We all gathered every dreg of strength we possessed and harnessed it.
Pouring out our authority.
Searching for the good.
Fighting the evil.
“End it, Aria. You’re the one who possesses the true strength. You’re the only one who can do it.”
Pax’s belief filled my mind.
I gathered the last crumbs of strength I had left, and I projected the rays of obliterating light.
And in a flash of glowing darkness, the Ghorl was crushed.
Nothing but dust.
Chapter Forty-Five
Aria
Ragged juts of air wheezed in and out of my lungs as my father’s hands went slack, and my back arched from the floor as if to get me closer to the sweet reprieve.
Exhaustion pinned me to the spot while my father fumbled backward onto his butt, and he used the heels of his shoes to backpedal across the carpet as if he was suddenly spurred to put a mile of distance between us.
Horrified in his confusion.
Bewildered in his disbelief.
His back hit the wall, his eyes wide, his expression gutted.
While my mother was at my side on her knees, her hands trembling so hard they rattled as she gathered me up against her chest and began to rock me. “Aria. Oh my God. Oh, my sweet girl. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
Sobs ripped from her, each pouring out, more desperate than the last. “Aria,” she whimpered.
She tried to scoot me back, away from my father, who was pinned to the far wall, her voice edged in hysteria. “I need you to stand up. We have to get out of here. I took your brothers and your sister to your grandmother’s like you told me to. They’re safe. I’ll make sure you’re safe, too.”
My chest squeezed. She’d listened to me, at least partially. She’d taken the kids but hadn’t stayed there herself. And when my father had told her to run, she hadn’t. She’d stayed. She’d stayed.
“Please, get up,” she begged, her hand frantic on my face as she wept. “Tell me you’re okay. We have to get out of here.”
A wave of dizziness spun my head, and I fought for coherency when the depletion threatened to drag me under. But it was different this time. There was a force that continued to run through my veins, a shivering high that stroked through me with relief.
“He won’t hurt you now.” Each of the words snagged as they scraped up my raw, sore throat.
A sound of torment echoed from the other side of the room. An agonized regret that wrenched through my father’s soul. I doubted he could comprehend the full extent of what he’d done, of what he’d nearly surrendered to, the vessel he’d become, but I was sure he still had access to the memories of the psychosis he would likely think he’d been under.
My mother’s face blanched in a coil of misery, a pasty, mournful white, full of misunderstanding and misconceptions. She frantically brushed back the matted locks of hair stuck to my sweat-drenched face. “You came back. You came back. And he—”
She choked on the last, unable to give voice to my father’s actions.
“How could he?” She cried out her sorrow.
I took her hand and tightly wrapped mine around it. “He didn’t know. It’s not his fault. His mind wasn’t his own.”