Jax released a heavy breath by her side. “They’re sort of intense, right?”
Pandora snorted, shaking her head. “I feel like a tornado just blew by, and I’m staring at the wreckage with no idea where to begin.”
Kira honked the horn.
“You sure about this?” Jax asked.
Pandora turned back to the car without meeting his gaze. “No, but let’s do it anyway.”
He followed her. They settled back into their comfortable silence as he flipped the ignition and slowly rolled through the open gates. Just like that, they were back in Sonnyville. Back with the conduits. Back where she had been cured. Back where he had last betrayed her.
It was the elephant in the room.
The knowledge of what this place meant was palpable, a third person wedged between them, physically cramping the space and pushing them farther apart.
“Dory,” Jax started and then stopped, sighing.
Her focus slipped out the window.
His fell on her.
She could feel his gaze trace the edge of her profile, searching her features for something, anything.
“Can I just—”
“What, Jax?”
“Will you look at me?” he whispered, so soft she wasn’t sure she heard it.
She slowly turned her head and found his eyes, getting lost in them like always. Before, it was an escape from reality. But now the sensation ached, a harsh reminder of the way things had once been. The way they’d never be again.
“I just want to say one thing,” he murmured. “One thing and then we never have to go this deep again. We can pretend like everything is okay. I can help you. I can try to fix my mistakes. You can let me. And we never have to speak about it. But I need to say one thing.”
Pandora swallowed, not looking away. “What?”
“No matter what happens, don’t lose hope,” he told her, words like a prayer, one he’d been reciting alone but was finally voicing out loud. “I know you think the darkness is your power, or maybe your curse, but it’s not. Hope is. You’re always fighting, always pushing for more, never accepting the cards you’ve been dealt. You’ve never lost faith in your ability to choose your own fate. And I admire that about you. I always have. Even when I lost you, I admired that about you. Because you were right—I was a coward. Without you, I lost the ability to dream, to see beyond what was given to me, to fight for what I believed in. And I never stopped believing in you, despite what you may think. I stopped believing in myself. Without you to hold me up, I stopped believing in my own ability to do anything, to change anything. So I went through the motions of what I thought I was supposed to do, until you landed in that tree house and showed me how to hope again, how to fight. And I’ll be eternally grateful to you for that.”
“Jax—”
“No, let me finish,” he pushed on. “I don’t expect your forgiveness. I’m not trying to win you back. You don’t owe me anything. But I owe you everything. Everything. Without you, I don’t know who I’d be, what I’d be. You taught me to dream, to fight, to hope. And I just need you to know that, Dory. No matter what happens, I need you to know that.”
She wasn’t sure what to say.
So she didn’t say anything at all.
Pandora held Jax’s gaze, unflinching, as his words sank in. You think the darkness is your power, or maybe your curse, but it’s not. Hope is.
She wanted to believe him.
She did.
But other words rolled through her thoughts, blowing all of Jax’s beautiful confessions away. And in those final moments before we said goodbye so many years ago, I gave you a piece of my darkness, because I never wanted to see you stop dreaming.
Sam’s words.
The similarity unsettled her, made her muscles clench.
They’d both fallen in love with a dreamer.
But she didn’t dream. Not anymore.
Every time she closed her eyes, all she saw were nightmares.
“I can tell by your expression you don’t believe me,” Jax said, cutting through her desolate thoughts. “So let me leave you with this. Because the myths might have gotten some things wrong, but not everything, not the most important things. So, if you don’t believe me, believe them.”
Pandora blinked, clearing her mind. “What are you trying to say?”
“Just that your mom left something out of her story about Pandora’s box, the most important thing,” he explained. “Pain and suffering weren’t all she unleashed upon the world. After they’d flown free of their prison to wreak havoc on the earth, Pandora opened the box again. And this time, a little bug flew out, smaller and weaker in appearance, but far more powerful than all those terrors combined. Because it was hope. Your hope. And it made all the difference in the world.”
Jax held her gaze for one moment longer then turned his attention back to the road, releasing her, giving her the space he knew she needed.
Hope, Pandora thought, taking a deep breath as she stared straight ahead at the car leading them deeper into the conduit camp, their home base for the next few weeks—until Naya showed up, until Pandora found answers, until she figured out the next course of action, if there was one.
Hope, she repeated silently, placing her feet on the dashboard and slinking into her seat, letting her head fall back as she closed her eyes. But in the darkness, thoughts of Sam invaded—black wings spread wide, mouth dripping with blood, blue eyes blazing. Her eyes flew open as she sucked in a breath.
Hope.
It was there, somewhere deep inside, a flickering light in the shadows. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it struggling to shine through so much darkness.
Pandora would follow that feeling until the flame burned out.
Or until it grew so powerful it was blinding.
~~~
Don't miss the next book, available now!
Fracture
Midnight Ice Book Three
When you fall for the devil, you’re bound to get burned.
Pandora Scott’s world has blown up once again, but this time she’s learned her lesson—saving the world isn’t a job she can do solo. She needs friends. But when her strongest ally also happens to be the boy who shattered her heart, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Especially since the person she has to destroy might just be the love of her life. With her fate hanging in the balance, Pandora’s got to make a choice. Forgive? Forget? Fight? Or falter? But everything changes when she realizes that the people she thought were heroes might be villains, and the good guys aren’t always as trustworthy as they seem…
Keep reading for a preview of the first two chapters!
Chapter One
Pandora’s voice had gone hoarse from all the screaming.
Night after night.
Dream after dream.
Terror after terror.
By now, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it was. It always was.
Pandora jolted in the bed, clutching her chest as her heart pounded, and her eyes shot wide. A sob ripped its way up her throat, tearing her skin as it clawed its way out. It was a brutal, broken sound that cracked like shattered glass, full of sharp edges that slashed as they rained down upon the four small walls surrounding her. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide from the images that plagued her mind. So she retreated, curling her knees into her chest and hugging them close. She tried to close her lips, but they wouldn’t meet, as though her cry were a physical barrier, too strong to push through.
“Dory,” Jax said, immediately awake. The bed dipped as he flipped over. Strong arms enveloped her as he pulled her close, letting the heat of his chest sink into her frigid back, trying to soothe her. “Shh, it’s okay. I’m here, Dory. You’re okay. It was just a dream. Just a memory. You’re okay. You’re with me. You’re in a different place. He can’t hurt you.”
Jax murmured the words over and over, right into her ear. Soft breath brushed over her skin as his voice sank deep, the only thing that could perme
ate the terror. Pandora let it fill her, let the rich timbre wash the lingering fear away. He held her so tight that her body didn’t have room to tremble, to shake. He held her steady, calm, anchoring her to the world so she could leave the dreams behind.
Her lips closed.
She swallowed.
Then she took a deep, shuddering breath.
Jax must have felt the change. He loosened his arms, still holding her but not as desperately. And the tone of his voice shifted, no longer pleading. “Do you remember anything?”
Pandora sighed, closing her eyes for a moment, trying to bring the nightmare back just enough to remember if it contained anything useful now that the shock had waned.
Blue eyes.
Blue, blue eyes.
That was always the image that lingered, soulful cerulean irises equal parts alluring and horrifying. So filled with love, yet so fueled by hate. Bright as the clearest, sunniest sky, yet lording over a kingdom steeped in darkness.
“Sam was there,” Pandora whispered.
Jax stiffened at the sound of that name rolling off her tongue. Not he. Not Samael. But Sam, somehow intimate. She would always think of him as Sam, despite everything. Those three letters were engraved on her soul and had been for thousands of years.
“What happened?” Jax whispered, nestling his chin into the nook of her neck as he pulled her the slightest bit closer. They fit together, bodies molded like clay, curving in all the same places. He stroked her arm with his thumb, moving to the beat of her heart, which was slowing to match his.
Pandora shook her head, letting it drop back against his shoulder. Sam had been there, wielding his shadows as he did in all her nightmares. Piercing human souls with arrows of ebony, turning them into creatures of the night. Releasing hordes of vicious demons that leapt from the shadows with the enthusiasm of dying men suddenly gifted new life. His onyx wings were slick in the sun, drenched in blood, matching the stain on his chin from a fresh feed.
“Nothing new,” she murmured, blinking the image away. There had been more to the nightmare, she was sure. It was sitting on the edge of her tongue, of her thoughts, taunting with its proximity. And yet, like a forgotten word, it was just out of reach, impossible to retrieve. “Sam with his shadows. Sam with his demons. Nothing more than the visions I saw at the enclave. Just the memories I already had. I can’t see anything else. It won’t stick.”
“Okay,” Jax said, not pushing.
But Pandora was frustrated enough for both of them. Nearly two weeks had passed since that night at the enclave when the mystery of her life had finally been revealed—that she was the key, the titans were the prison, and Sam was the beast trapped within. Nearly two weeks had passed since she’d relived the memory her mother had gifted her with—knowledge of her true name, Pandora Persephone Scott, and all the stories that came with it. And nearly two weeks had passed since she’d last spoken to Sam and had seen the truth revealed in the depths of his eyes—that he was a beast, through and through. A fallen angel. A destroyer. The bad guy and not the hero she’d thought he was.
Pandora hadn’t used her powers since that day.
No shadows. No invisibility.
Partly because she was afraid to see Sam. Partly because every time she thought of the darkness, all she saw was the little wisp of ebony she’d desperately hurled into her father’s chest, accidentally turning him into a vampire. And partly because she missed the power, missed feeling so invincible and so strong—and that longing terrified her.
So instead, she did nothing.
She let Jax use his tracker powers to keep them hidden from the titans while she waited.
Waited for Naya to arrive at the conduit base where they were hiding, hoping the presence of the medium would help bring her memories to the surface.
Waited for the nightmares to pass.
Waited for answers to a mystery she had no idea how to solve.
Waited.
Waited.
Waited.
And if patience was a virtue, it was one Pandora sorely lacked.
“I’m so sick of this,” she groaned into her pillow.
“I know,” Jax said.
“I have to do something, anything. I’m so sick of sleeping and dreaming and screaming and waking up with nothing better to do than wait for the cycle to repeat.”
“I know.”
“I just—” She cut off sharply with a disgruntled exhale.
“I know.”
And he did. Because they’d had this conversation before too. Every night was the same, with the nightmares and the screaming and the soothing and the venting. But at the moment, they weren’t sure what else to do. So they both waited—waited for a clue to drop from the sky and tell them how in the world they were supposed to kill the devil himself.
In fact, the only thing Pandora actively did was avoid Jax. Not physically, because he was hiding her within his tracker magic, and in order to remain hidden, she needed to stay within a twenty-five-foot radius of his body. But mentally, she was an ocean away.
They spoke about Sam and how to destroy him.
They spoke about her memories and what they meant.
They spoke about the titans and how to evade them.
They spoke about everything except the one thing that in some ways mattered most—the two of them. It was the bright, shiny billboard flashing in the background of their every conversation—that awkward awareness they couldn’t escape, yet couldn’t face.
That Jax had loved her and betrayed her.
That Pandora had loved him and loathed him.
That Jax didn’t know how to even begin to beg forgiveness for the things he’d done. And that Pandora didn’t know how to even begin to forgive him.
So they ignored it.
They danced around it.
And the only times they allowed themselves to forget the tangled web of history between them were times like right now, under the cover of night when Pandora was screaming, because Jax was the only one who had ever been able to comfort her.
“Goodnight, Dory,” he whispered, leaving one arm beneath her head as her pillow and the other draped over the valley of her waist, an open invitation.
“Night, Jax,” she murmured, then paused, body stilling.
But like every night before, Pandora couldn’t keep herself from grabbing his hand and pulling his arm fully around her torso, nestling his forearm against her chest, hugging it like a security blanket. And it was. Because when she closed her eyes and took a deep breath with the weight of his body pressing against her, she felt safe. She could pretend for a little bit that she was back in a time when everything was so much simpler, when her problems were so much smaller and her heart so much sturdier.
She could sleep soundly.
And maybe, if they had just started the night like this, she could have avoided the nightmares altogether. But she needed the memories, no matter how bad they were, because they might hold her answers. And more than that, she needed the excuse. Because without the terror and the dread, she’d feel so deeply pathetic admitting that maybe a little part of her was happy and content to fall asleep in his embrace. That in spite of everything that had happened between them, a little part of her had missed this.
Four hours later, Pandora woke alone.
The bathroom door was closed, and the shower was running, so she rolled over, turning away from the bright sun streaking through the window to look around the room. The walls were a soft yellow, still bare. The mattress rested on the wood floor, no frame yet to hold it. There was one end table on Pandora’s side of the bed, paint chipped and wobbly, but sufficient. And on Jax’s side, there was a cardboard box turned over into a makeshift table. And that was mostly it.
Neither of them had suitcases or clothes, having left the enclave in a little bit of a rush—what with Pandora unconscious and still bleeding from a stab wound, with every titan in the world trying to chase her down, and with Jax deciding to turn his back on everything he h
ad ever known to choose the side of the woman he couldn’t help but love. No—packing hadn’t exactly been high on their list. A dresser sat against the opposite wall, filled with some charitable hand-me-downs from their gracious hosts, who had apologized profusely for the state of their guest room, but Pandora didn’t mind. Kira and Luke had moved into their house a few months before and, well, almost everyone they knew lived in Sonnyville, the conduit safe haven, so preparing a guest room had been the least of their worries.
Especially one for fugitives who arrived unannounced at their front door. Pandora sighed, shaking her head as she pressed her palms to her cheeks, rubbing the sleep away. Kira had offered them a house—fully furnished and fully private—in the vampire reintegration center on the other side of Sonnyville, but Pandora had grown nauseated at the thought of returning to that place. Not because of the vampires or the cured—she didn’t mind them. But because of the memories—one memory in particular. The look on Jax’s broken face in the moment he’d betrayed her, the moment he’d ratted her out to the titans, when all of his lies had become so devastatingly clear.
No.
She wasn’t interested in returning to that place again.
Not if she could avoid it.
And if the past week in Sonnyville had taught her anything, it was that avoidance was an art form. She’d gotten so good that by now she could probably evade the sun itself if she really wanted to.
The water turned off.
Pandora’s gaze slipped to the closed bathroom door for a moment, but she pulled her attention away, rolled across the mattress, and landed on her feet on the far side of the room. When the hinges creaked open behind her, she was already digging through the dresser for a clean shirt. She swallowed when she felt the swift caress of Jax’s eyes, brief but burning, an awareness that never quite went away.
Freeze (Midnight Ice Book Two) Page 21
