Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 205594 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1028(@200wpm)___ 822(@250wpm)___ 685(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 205594 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1028(@200wpm)___ 822(@250wpm)___ 685(@300wpm)
More than anything, I hate that we’ve been abandoned.
“I do not feel any injuries,” Nemeth says, stroking his fingers over my stomach. “No lumps or protrusions.”
“What about lower?” I ask innocently.
He presses his fingertips to the spot just below my navel, worry all over his broad, stony face. “Here?”
“Lower.”
Just above my mound. “Here?”
“Lower.”
He realizes what I’m doing, and Nemeth gives me a cross look and lowers my chemise. “Candra, be serious.”
“Well, I do have an ache there,” I say, teasing. “And you asked.”
“I am going to have to research this,” he tells me. “And we need your knife so we can rule out any sort of illness with our questions.”
I nod, curling up in bed and watching him as he begins to pace in our room. Back and forth, back and forth, his wings flicking with agitation. He gets moody when he sees me sick, but today…I’ve never seen him so upset. If I didn’t feel so rotten, I’d be thrilled that he’s so worked up. There’s just something so delightful about seeing a big, tough male fretting over someone like me.
“I’ve decided something,” Nemeth says, pausing in his brisk steps to turn and look at me.
“Oh? What’s that?”
His eyes seem to glow a brighter shade of green than I’ve ever seen. “If it turns out you’re well…I’ve decided I’m going to leave the tower.”
Chapter
Fifty-Five
Ijerk upright, staring at Nemeth in shock. “You what? You can’t.”
Leave the tower? That’s utter rubbish. If he leaves the tower, he’ll earn the wrath of the Golden Moon Goddess, and she’s not the forgiving type. If he leaves the tower, the last two years we’ve spent here will be for nothing. If he leaves the tower…
He can’t. He just can’t. “No, Nemeth. You can’t do that. We can’t do that. Think of what will happen.”
He moves and sits next to me on the edge of the bed, his big body and wings taking up most of the space. I don’t mind it, though. There’s something about being squeezed in next to him, his wings falling over me, that feels pleasant and comfortable. “That’s just it, Candra. I have been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it a great deal. No one is coming after us.”
“You don’t know that,” I protest. “Let’s get the knife—”
“And see if it offers a different answer than yesterday? Or the day before? Or the day before that? We have asked it repeatedly, Candra, and every time, the answer is the same. No one is coming. Either they will not, or they cannot. All that matters is that we will starve to death in this tower if we remain here.”
I hate that he’s right. I hate that every option we have is a bad one. We can slowly starve to death here, serving the needs of our people and our goddess, or we can selfishly abandon the tower and hope we won’t be flayed alive for doing so. “You really want us to leave?”
“No,” he says slowly. “I will leave. You will stay.”
“B-but,” I sputter. “The goddess requires both of us to stay. The rule is broken if either one of us leaves the tower. Neither of us can leave.”
“I will not let you die,” Nemeth says, his voice low and deadly, his hand possessive as it rests upon my thigh.
I don’t want to die. Not in the slightest. Not when my life feels far more meaningful now that Nemeth is in it. But I don’t know that we have any other options. To leave would incur the wrath of the goddess. She would destroy our people with fierce storms, flooding our fields and striking villages down with plague. Everyone suffers if she is not satisfied with our sacrifice. So no, I don’t particularly want to die, but I don’t see what choice we have. “My life doesn’t matter in comparison to the thousands of my people—and yours, too—that will be affected—”
“I will not let you die,” Nemeth repeats. “It is not going to happen.”
“Nemeth—”
“If I leave, the pact is broken. That we cannot get around. But if it is only me that emerges from the tower, you will be spared. The anger of both of our peoples will fall solely upon my shoulders. You will be innocent…and you will be saved.”
“Nemeth, no.” My horror grows as I realize what he’s referring to. I’d forgotten that in the past, when someone has left the tower early, the people would take revenge on them. The second Vestalin to serve in the tower was martyred, stabbed a hundred and twenty times when he arrived in his homeland, his corpse hanged from an ash tree. One hundred years later, Tinaria Vestalin attempted to flee the tower to see her children, and was killed by an angry mob, her head placed on a pike at the gates of Castle Lios.