Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 229266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1146(@200wpm)___ 917(@250wpm)___ 764(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 229266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1146(@200wpm)___ 917(@250wpm)___ 764(@300wpm)
“Poppy!” The voice was a jolt, a strike of lightning, and my eyes opened.
The mist had thickened in front of me, a whirling, churning mass. Specks of gold blinked in and out from within.
“No farther,” the voice whispered, a voice so pure it was almost unbearable to hear. “What you seek is not to be found here.”
“Stop.” The mist solidified, took form, and became more golden. It was tall. She was tall. Tumbling waves of hair the color of fire twined together. A face blurred, but eyes the color of molten silver burned through the mist. Through me. “Go home. Take what is yours, and you will find what you seek there. The truth. Go home.”
“Who are you?” I whispered. “Who—?”
An arm snagged me around the waist without any warning, drawing me back against a warm, hard chest. There was the scent of dark spices and pine as my feet were swept out from under me, and we went down, landing hard on the ground.
“Poppy. Gods. Poppy.” Casteel turned me in his lap, one hand palming my cheek. He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling rapidly as tendrils of mist drifted over his too-pale face. “Dear gods, Poppy, what in the hell were you doing?”
“I…” I looked around, seeing nothing but thick fog and Kieran standing above us, staring behind me and breathing just as heavily as Casteel. Confusion swept through me.
“What the hell were you doing?” Casteel demanded again, giving me a shake. His breathing was harsh, forming quick clouds in the cold. “You could’ve—you would’ve been broken, Poppy. Broken and shattered in a way I would never be able to fix.”
I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but he looked…he looked like I’d never seen him before. Terrified. Eyes wide and luminous, even in the mist, the planes and angles of his face stark.
He clasped my cheeks with his gloved hands. “I told you not to wander off.”
“I…I didn’t,” I told him. “I was sleeping—I was dreaming. I heard…I heard my father calling my name—”
“Fucking mist,” Kieran growled, waving a hand angrily through the thick white.
“No. No. It was a dream, but it was real. I mean, it was pieces of the night the Craven attacked. Someone…someone else was there at the end.” I started to pull away, but Casteel stopped me. “He was dressed, cloaked, and he was there that night.” I twisted in Casteel’s grip. “I was trying to see his face. If I could only see his face, I’d know who he was. I just…”
My lips parted as I stared into nothing. It wasn’t a void simply absent of light. It was an end. A vast nothingness waited beyond the edge of a…cliff.
“Oh my gods,” I whispered, shuddering as I realized how close I’d come to stepping off into…into nothing.
“It was the mist,” Casteel said, his tone too gentle as he guided my stricken gaze back to his.
“She stopped me,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Didn’t you see her? She stopped me. Oh, my gods.”
Casteel smoothed his thumb across my cheek, along the scar there. “No one else was here. It was just you and the mist.”
“No. There was someone else.” I looked over my shoulder, toward the emptiness. “I heard her voice. She kept telling me to stop, and then she appeared in front of me.” I turned back to Casteel. “She was right there. Where there is…there is nothing. She told me to go no farther. That the truth wasn’t here. She told me to go home and to…” I started shivering, and I couldn’t stop. “To take what was mine. And that I would learn the truth.”
“It’s okay,” Casteel assured me, but the look he exchanged with Kieran said the exact opposite. “Let’s head back to camp.”
“You didn’t see her?”
“No, Princess.” He kissed my forehead. “I only saw you about to—” He cut himself off. “It was only you.”
As Casteel helped me stand, I knew the dream had been peeling back the layers of time, revealing pieces long-buried under trauma. And I knew I hadn’t been alone. Someone…or something had stopped me from walking off the side of the mountain.
We started to—
The rumble I heard earlier returned, this time louder. Kieran cursed as Casteel whipped toward me. Before I could say a word, he lifted me in his arms and ran—ran as far as we could make it before he seemed to lose his balance. My heart seized as the mist scattered. Thrown to the side, Casteel’s arm tightened around me as we fell into Kieran. He grabbed me—grabbed us—as we pressed into a tree that vibrated and rattled like a child’s toy. Golden leaves shaken free drifted down to us, down to the earth that shook and groaned.
“What is happening?” I gasped, a hand clutching both Casteel’s and Kieran’s cloaks.
Casteel turned to me, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the rumbling. At any moment, it felt like the entire mountain would rip open and swallow us whole. My wide eyes met his as my heart thundered.