“We need to get her to safety!”Endor said as he pushed past Valory and headed for us.He reared his arm back, but Valory caught it.
I reached for him, needing to ground myself to my guardian of death, because the vision that took me was the strongest one yet.
And when darkness came, it was more than comforting.
It felt like I was exactly where I belonged.
CHAPTER10
Endor
Mercy’sneural pathways sucked me in like a vortex.The force was strong.Stronger than it had ever been before.
The darkness surrounded me and the sound of heavy rain was like a booming bass, like a drum that vibrated within every sense of my being.
The light beside me flickered, and without thinking, I reached for it.That singular glow lit the space just enough that I could see a warm hand squeezing mine.
My angel.Valory.
She didn’t say a word, but she pulled herself closer to me.Her fear and worry could be felt like an entity, and I grabbed onto her, pulling her into my arms.
I could only hope that it provided her the comfort she needed.Her arms wrapped around my body and she shook, her breath rapid.
The rain was heavy and the sound of windshield wipers thudding against glass echoed.
“Five more minutes,” Miles’s voice called, tinged with sleep.
The windshield was blurred by rain and darkness.
The faintest red light shone on the glass, smeared and distorted by the crystalline droplets assaulting the car.The radio dipped in and out with static, the singer crooning on amidst acoustic guitars about following someone in the dark.
Mercy’s yawn was like a lion’s as she closed her eyes for just a moment.
She didn’t see the deer until it was too late.
She swerved, trying her best to avoid it, but what was done was done.
Fate had been divined already, and I watched as the car spun out, flipping and rolling until it crashed headfirst into a large tree.
Thunder rolled and lightning struck, the storm around them furious at the unbalance.
Valory’s grip on me tightened and she buried her face in my shirt.I didn’t want to watch, either, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away.
“We need to witness,” I told her, and pulled her face from my chest, despite how perfect it felt there.Valory’s eyes were filled with tears and the pain in her expression was irrefutable.I grabbed her face, imploring her with my gaze.
“I can’t,” she said, her voice shaking.“I can’t watch her die.”
“She isn’t dead,” I reminded her, that deep ache in my chest filled with wretched hope.
She wasn’t dead.I knew that, because if she were, she would not have been lost.She would have been categorized and slotted into her resting afterlife, never to have graced HAD or HHD.
The sound of a pained grunt pulled our attention.
The car smoked, the radio droning on with that sad acoustic guitar that only made it unbearably worse.
The lyrics hit me like a brick as the singer swooned about heaven and hell deciding that they were bothsatisfied.
As if somehow, even in such a moment, the world knew she would find us.
