Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,98
to know his mother better while she’d been alive.
Benji blinked in remembrance.
When Uncle Tal first came to stay with Mom, Dad and him at their apartment, Benji had wanted to cry every time he looked upon the male. Even though Uncle Tal never showed his pain outwardly, always saving his smiles and chuckles for Benji, and regaling him with wonderfully vivid bedtime stories, Benji felt the warrior’s pain viscerally. He had so many scars, Uncle Tal. They’d never fade. But it was the hurt on the inside that was worse. Benji could sense it like a living thing.
Uncle Tal was getting better though. He was finally healing. And this made Benji incandescent. No one deserved happiness more than Uncle Tal.
Except for one other…
A man Benji liked to consider his friend (and, really, Benji didn’t like to consider anyone his not-friend).
Erebu. Ere.
He always made Benji laugh with the funny way he talked, the words he said that he didn’t mean. As well as the words he didn’t say that he did mean.
But most of all, he made Benji’s heart ache with the beautiful darkness and light mixing and mingling in his sapphire eyes. If ever there was a being who needed to be loved, it was Ere. It exasperated Benji to no end that Ere himself didn’t think so.
All this was to say—Benji wasn’t happy all the time.
He wasn’t totally ignorant of the injustices and cruelty and pain in the world, no matter how his extended family and friends tried to shield him from harsh realities. But he liked to look on the bright side of things. And there always was one.
Always.
Darkness was merely the absence of light. One couldn’t exist without the other.
Oh, some might argue that they could, and Benji had spent many hours debating philosophically with various anonymous strangers online on these matters, and others, in various forums. But in Benji’s view, one couldn’t exist without the other. He had all kinds of arguments…
But the point being: where there was darkness, there would always be light. And personally, he liked the bright side better.
That wasn’t to say that he didn’t like the darker side, because he did. Dark could be comforting, calming, still, silent. Sometimes, when he saw or sensed darkness in people, he wanted to embrace it. Embrace them.
He embraced Sophia’s darkness now. Well, at least her hand.
She turned to look down at him. It took a moment for her to truly see him.
A little bit of the darkness engulfing her eyes slowly receded. And then they widened, as if she was surprised by something he said.
Benji frowned a little. What had he said?
He remembered sending calming thoughts her way, but suddenly, something overtook him. A wave of dizziness that made him see stars.
And then—
The world stopped.
Time froze.
Like Quicksilver in the X-Men comics, Benji experienced everything in freeze-frame. Only he could move, it seemed.
He looked around him in a trance.
Sophia’s eyes glowed amber now, like burning gems in her face. Light radiated from her limbs and face, even from her slightly parted mouth. Her wavy, shoulder-length hair surrounded her head in a soft halo.
She’d let go of his hand.
The bad guys had frozen too. Three of them were engaged in battle with Sophia’s Mate. Dalair was his name, Benji remembered. The Paladin.
It was surreal how they were paralyzed in the midst of a gruesome scene, axe and sword raised, faces contorted in masks of death and violence, Sophia’s Mate answering their blows mid-strike with arms braced and jaw locked.
Stranger yet, a white dragonfly, looking suspiciously like the one Benji had seen when he was water coloring with Ere at the Shield, fluttered in a zig-zag path right in front of his face. Seemingly on a casual flight through the forest, unconcerned and untouched by the violence at play.
When everything else was frozen, this flitting movement was especially jarring to witness.
Benji turned away from Sophie to follow the path of the dragonfly. But after taking a few steps, the creature climbed up, up, into a bright ray of sunlight that filtered through the treetops. Benji squinted against the too-bright light, no longer able to watch the dragonfly’s ascent.
And then, the strangest of all things happened.
The familiar, yet foreign, tinkling of bells drew Benji’s attention toward the shadowy interior of the forest. A woman’s laughter. Faint and distant.
He’d heard that sound before. It made his heart squeeze with hurt, at the same time that it filled him with a pleasant nostalgia.