Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 213974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1070(@200wpm)___ 856(@250wpm)___ 713(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 213974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1070(@200wpm)___ 856(@250wpm)___ 713(@300wpm)
My breath snagged in my chest. With the eather lighting up the veins of his, cutting through the whipping shadows there, and the darkness gathering on the floor, I thought there might be a good chance he could, in fact, do that, especially given Kolis’s state. As Kolis himself had said: His nephew was very powerful. But…
But Kolis couldn’t die.
I’d known that when I drove the bone through his heart. My hold on Ash tightened as I willed myself to be, for once in my life, the smarter, more logical one. “Let it go.”
Ash tensed against me as a thick mass of midnight whipped around us. “What?”
“Let it go,” I repeated, tugging on his hair until his gaze returned to mine. I could barely see the pupils in his eyes. “He’s not worth it.”
“Worth what, exactly?” he snarled. “Because right now, anything and everything is worth ending the bastard’s existence.”
“The end of the realms?” I reasoned.
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t give a fuck about the realms.”
A quick, hoarse laugh left me. “Yes, you do.” I took a deep breath to clear my mind more. “You care about the realms.”
“You give me too much credit, liessa,” he said. “You think of me too kindly.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” I shot back.
Two clouds of shadowy eather rose behind him, taking the faint shape of wings. “I’ve told you this before. Any and all decent bones I have in me belong to you.”
“And I’ve told you before, that isn’t true.”
“Do not argue with me, Sera.” His body hummed with vicious power as the shadows in his skin melded. Somewhere in the chamber, something cracked loudly. “Not about this.”
“I’m not arguing with you!”
He glared, and I could’ve sworn he was counting to ten. “I don’t think you understand what the word argue means.”
“I don’t think you understand what it—”
“He bit you!” Ash roared, causing my body to jolt as the shadow wings slammed down onto the floor, shaking the entire chamber.
I sucked in a sharp breath, resisting the urge to touch my neck. “He didn’t. I stopped him this—” I stopped myself before I said more and made things worse. “I stopped him.”
“This time?” Ash’s voice dropped to a whisper of such cold death that even I shivered. “That is what you meant to say.”
“No.”
“Do not lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” I lied.
Shadows spread up his throat, cresting his jaw. “Do you think I don’t know what has been done to you?” The air turned freezing. “What he’s done?”
I locked up as I felt the blood racing from my face. Every muscle had gone rigid, and it had nothing to do with the iciness of the chamber. “No,” I said, and I wasn’t exactly sure who I was saying that to. Him? Me? Both of us? Either way, he couldn’t know. I needed to believe that. Ash only suspected things based on his knowledge of Kolis.
Ash shuddered as he stared down at me. “I’m going to eviscerate him,” he swore in that icy, shadowy whisper that I bet whipped through the Abyss. “I will tear his head from his shoulders and rip him limb from limb, scattering what remains across the realms.”
My brows knitted as something occurred to me. “Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad plan.”
“Then do not argue with me, liessa.” His arms loosened around me, and my rear was once more touching the floor.
I gripped his shoulders. “That’s not what I meant.”
Those smoky wings swept up again. “Do you think I cannot see?”
“I’m thinking that’s a rhetorical question since you obviously can.”
“I can,” he confirmed, rolling his eyes. “I see how he has you dressed.”
I rolled my eyes right back at him.
“I see what state you’re in.”
What state…? Looking down, I saw that the fragile material of the gown had torn at the neck. By some miracle, my chest wasn’t exposed—well, more exposed than it already had been.
“Do you think I don’t know what it must’ve taken for you to tap into the essence like that?”
“If you ask me one more question that you clearly think you know the answer to…” I muttered.
“To wield it to such an extent, do this to him, and free me?” he continued, ignoring me. “And did you forget that I could feel you? Sense what you were feeling?”
Oh.
Oh, no.
My lips parted as he confirmed my worst fears.
“Every time I was conscious, I felt you. Your pain. Your fear. The panic. The fucking desperation.” The walls rattled as that frosted whisper circled the chamber, falling against the floor like hail and sleet. I knew it wasn’t Nektas or any other draken doing that. “Your anger? I felt it all. Tasted everything you were feeling until I was drowning in it. Until I tore at my flesh to get to you.” His voice cracked then, and so did the wall behind him. “And I could do nothing—fucking nothing—to protect you. To take away any of the horror you were experiencing.”