Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 123190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
“I have friends who will come for me,” Crissa whispers. “Will someone come for you?”
Her sister will. No one is braver than Brie. But why is it taking her so long?
Crissa crawls across the cell on her hands and knees and touches two fingers to the back of Jas’s hand. Jas sags in relief. It feels like a lifetime since anyone touched her with kindness.
“You aren’t hurt?” she asks, scanning her face.
Jas hesitates. There are no marks on her skin, no bruises on her face. Even the spot where the king sliced her hand open is completely healed. So completely that she’s not sure if it really happened or if it was a dream. “No.”
“You are very pretty,” she says, stroking Jas’s hair. “I’m sorry you’re stuck here.”
“My sister will find me. She’ll find me and take me home.”
She gives me a sad smile. “She will rescue you, but you’ll have to find yourself.”
Jas doesn’t know what that means, and she’s suddenly too tired to care. There are places so dark, you can never find your way back.
“Bakken, please take my sister to Castle Craige,” the queen says. “We will send her things along after her.”
The goblin arches an unruly brow at Abriella before turning and looking me over. The shadow queen’s personal goblin knows that I am not the princess.
When transformed, I am an exact replica of my subject the moment they shed their hair—and that includes scent. No keen faerie nose will ever sniff out an Echo as an impostor. But goblins always know—which would’ve been fine if I could’ve called Jasalyn’s goblin, who she’s asked to answer to me, but the queen called hers.
“This girl here?” he asks the queen.
Abriella frowns. “Yes, Bakken. Misha is expecting her.”
I do my best to silently plead with the drooling, bug-eyed creature. Don’t tell her. Let this be.
“As you wish, Your Majesty.” He offers me his hand and I take it, heart pounding wildly as I mentally give thanks to the bond whatever long-ago ancestors formed between Echoes and goblins.
In the next moment, we’re nothing. Spinning and turning and frozen all at once. Until we’re standing at the base of a set of polished wooden stairs in the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.
“Thank you, Bakken,” a husky voice says behind me.
I spin around and find myself staring at a broad chest cloaked in a viridescent tunic. I crane my neck to see his face. “King Misha.” I sound breathless. Maybe I am.
I’ve only seen the golden-skinned male in paintings and heard him described in stories, and yet in person he’s even more stunning and handsome than I could’ve prepared myself for. He’s not just tall and broad. He has a presence that seems to take up the whole room. His black hair is silky and long enough I can imagine running my fingers through it—the gods certainly know most of the marriageable females in this realm have been imagining just that since he and the Wild Fae queen dissolved their marriage last year.
“King Misha now, is it?” He turns his head side to side, inspecting me. The silver webbing on his forehead glows with the same intensity as his upturned russet eyes. They’re certainly peering into me right now. I can feel his talons digging into my mind, trying to get inside as he examines every inch of my face. When his eyes meet mine, I hold his gaze as steadily as I hold my shields. When it comes to mental shielding, I have more experience than the princess. And more to lose if I fail.
I meet his scrutiny with a stubborn lift of my chin.
He gives me a tight smile and a sharp nod. “Welcome to Castle Craige, Princess.”
“Jas,” I correct, just as Jasalyn would. I don’t know why she objects to her title or if she’s even conscious of it, but she made it clear she prefers her given name or Jas for family and friends.
His jaw is tense, making me wonder how he really feels about having the Unseelie princess in his castle. “It’s past time you visited my lands.”
Bakken looks me over one last time, shakes his head, then disappears.
Misha waves a hand to indicate the space around us, which feels simultaneously like the hall of a grand palace and the center of the wilderness. A burbling brook runs through the center of the flagstone floor, and the stair rail is a formation of branches and bows that seem to have grown from the earth for that very purpose.
The evening sun plays off the colorful autumn leaves in the woodland canopy covering the open-air hall, casting dappled shade all around us.
“What happens when they shed their leaves for winter?” I ask without thinking.
“Just when the air cools enough to bite, the leaves make way for the sun to warm these halls,” the king says, studying the canopy. “Mother Nature tends to us when we let Her.”