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Did they know this planet would fall just like all the rest of the?

"Don’t" Seth corowl in et you to bed"

I shook hts and realized I had started to tremble I refocused my eyes and turned around so that Seth could lead me up the stairs and to my room Each step felt painful and took effort Each led for

I was exhausted But I was ht More than the fear of my almost death was the realization that Aliah could have done anything to me and I wouldn’t have been able to stop hiainst me, it was more that I eak and helpless in his arms He had debilitatedand he had forced his Darkness into ainst his all-consuined facing

So much more evil than I ever believed existed

Or ever wanted to believe existed

Seth opened my bedroom door and turned on the bedside lalow of light I stepped insidehere anymore This was the rooht as a wide-eyed, inadequate failure

This room was for those who believed they were still safe

I wasn’t safe

"Coainst the closed door; his shoulders were still painfully tight, his light still shi around him His eyes were a perfect color of honey that was deepened with his intensity He reached out a hand to , calloused, perfect hand and I took it so that he could pull ain

I didn’t feel safe anymore All of my disillusions had disappeared

Except in Seth’s arainst his chest, with the beat of his heart pounding againstin this world… here I felt safe

"Whatever you are feeling… whatever you are thinking… it’s not your fault," Seth promised, his voice so thick with emotion that it made ain

"It’s not yours either," I whispered His breath hitched in response and he clutched me ionizing fear that laced each of hts with despair, but it was useless The fear seeped in, infected everything inside of et me," Seth answered simply and I was surprised by the siht years knowing two things for certain One that the Darkness, in whatever for, breathing, good thing that exists in this universe There are levels of denial and safety and naivety, but the Darkness wants us all And it will stop at nothing until it either has us all or it’s destroyed And the second thing I know is that at some level… we all want it to capture us"

I stopped breathing coht But Seth lived with a level of pain and struggling that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, not at any level And as easy as it would be for ht… I had to believe there was an in between the pain of his path and the reality of the world we lived in

"We fight two battles, Stella," he continued and now I kneas right "One against the Darkness that threatens everything we know and love And another against ourselves and ould destroy should we give into the Darkness and end it all ourselves"

We stayed like that for a few er under my chin and tilted my face upward to look at hiht’s events the roo I could see clearly, his piercing eyes, his chiseled jawline, his full, wet lips

I felt my own lips tre pressure He kissed ently and I had never felt more delicate but protected in my entire life The kiss, my first kiss ever, only lasted for a few seconds, but it was enough to change e the most secret places of o back to being the saesture I felt every fear and insecurity he had and held for me, but I also felt the depth of his emotion, the hope he had for us and in the undiscovered future neither one of us fully realized yet He was so o, so much more important to every fiber ofwill feel less heavy in therace

"Promise?" I asked in a small voice

"Promise," he said finally and then released inored into fresh paja around inone I listened for a while to the conversation that continued after Seth returned downstairs, but eventually the voices quieted and then disappeared coh I was almost positive no one had left our house

I willed oing on inside of ht