Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
But all those thoughts of Shadow’s End bring a darkness back to my heart, as elated as it’s been this evening.
By the time we get back inside our hotel room, turn off the lights, and crawl into bed, I already feel pulled under by worries again.
“It’s going to be okay,” Hanna says to me with her head on the pillow, reaching over and brushing a strand of hair off my forehead.
I capture her hand in mine and kiss her fingertips. “I’m supposed to be the one telling you that.”
“Then we can take turns,” she says with a soft smile.
I sigh heavily and stare up at the ceiling, the enormity of where I am and what we need to do to get back home feeling heavy. “We need to get back,” I say quietly. “Tomorrow, we need to go to wherever you first went through the portal, the one your father would use.”
“We will need my father for that. We need to find him first.”
“Even if we don’t, we need to try anyway.” I roll my head to the side to look at her dark eyes. “I know you want to find him, and you will, I just…”
“What?”
“Perhaps it would be best for you to stay behind with your father and let me go back to Tuonela.”
Her face blanches, and she flinches like I’ve just struck her. “What? No!”
“Hanna,” I say, my voice low with conviction. “This is your world. You entered a marriage bargain with me in exchange for your father’s life. I don’t want to hold you to me anymore. I don’t want to be that burden.”
Her mouth drops open for a moment as she sits up. “Tuoni, please. I just told you I love you.”
“I know you love me—”
“You don’t know!” she cries out. “And you don’t…” She trails off and shakes her head, holding the sheets over her naked breasts. “No. I am with you because I choose to be.”
“I don’t understand why you would choose this. I look around, and I see your world. I see all the things you’ve had to give up. Don’t you see the things you gave up because I captured you, because I forced you into marriage? I made you become a queen; it wasn’t your choice.”
“But I like being a queen now,” she says adamantly. “I think I might even be good at it. I’m the chosen one, for god’s sake.”
“Not the sake of this god,” I tell her. “You had a life before me. I didn’t let myself think about it, but now, I see it. I see it when you look at your phone, at your mother and your father and your friends. Your old city, your old job. Before you met me, you would have had plans and dreams. You would have imagined meeting a nice man, getting married to him, having his children, living in a nice house by the ocean. Those were your dreams.”
She looks away. “You know nothing of my dreams.”
“I know that you had ideas of how your life might have gone, and then I took that all away from you. I took you from your home, your world, and I bent you and shaped you until you fit into mine. I can’t…” I take a deep breath, my heart pounding. “I can’t live with myself if I know I’ve prevented you from living the life you should be living. I can’t afford to be so fucking selfish all the time.”
She’s quiet, looking down at her hands, and deep in the darkest parts of me, I fear I struck a nerve, that maybe she didn’t think that way before, but now she’s thinking it. Feeling it. Considering it.
Oh fuck, what have I done?
I want nothing more than to take back those words. Perhaps I could use my mind control on her too.
“Is that what you want?” she asks quietly.
“Me? No,” I tell her. “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to lose you. If I lose you, I lose everything.”
“Because of the prophecy,” she says with a slow nod.
“No,” I say, reaching out and putting my hand at her cheek, forcing her damp eyes to meet mine. “I lose everything because you’re my everything.”
Her mouth quivers, and she blinks at me, a tear spilling down her cheek.
“Fuck, the last thing I ever want is to make you cry,” I say to her, wiping the cheek away with my thumb, reveling at the feel of it against my bare skin. “But you’re so damn beautiful when you do.”
I exhale heavily, my heart still heavy. “Listen, Hanna, my queen. You will never stop being my queen, nor will you stop being my prophecy, but I no longer wish to keep you bound to me. I want to let you go so you can be free to fly, to be that little bird you are.”