Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Vasilisa attempted to pull her hand away. She wanted to curl up into herself and escape the scrutiny of Ivory and Razvan. She wanted to go outside and allow her wolf the freedom to run as far and as fast as she could. Anything but stay and listen to Afanasiv confess to those in the room things she knew were going to be terrible for her to hear.
Let go of me please.
I cannot. I need your courage to do this, Vasilisa. Stay with me.
You have no idea what you’re asking of me.
I do know. And yet I still ask.
His thumb slid along the back of her hand. His gaze never left hers. She was drowning in him. Surrendering to his will. Weak with the need to help him when she really needed to help herself. She stopped trying to pull away and nodded.
Thank you, lifemate. You are beloved, whether you agree to stay with me after this or not.
He continued to look at her for another long minute, as if memorizing her. “We found a portal and made our way down through the labyrinth. I was very young and had not quite lost all emotion. The depravity and tortures sickened me, and yet I still had the arrogance of youth. Lilith had taken my mother, believing a female weaker than a male and that she could control her, but it wasn’t so. My mother was extremely strong. Lilith had her tortured. The things done to her were unimaginable.”
Tiny beads of blood dotted his forehead and trickled down his face. They caught glimpses of flesh being torn from a body and demons gathering around a woman they could barely make out to abuse her flesh in the worst ways possible.
“We had to bargain for her. For every hour of bargaining, the tortures worsened. Lilith agreed to give her to my father if I stayed with her for a specific period of time as her lover. She wanted my blood and a child. If she wasn’t with child by the end of that time, I could leave but had to return at least one more time to try again. My father and I went over the contract word for word. It would be binding. I wasn’t about to give her a child, and she couldn’t have our blood. We knew she wasn’t going to allow my mother to go with our father. He would have minutes to take them away from there. But we had to make certain I didn’t sign anything I wouldn’t be able to live with. In the end, we signed the contract. She brought up my mother, but she was already dying. I lost both of them.”
Vasilisa couldn’t conceive of the horror of watching both parents die with the woman who had them tortured and murdered waiting to be serviced. She could feel the absolute loathing and repugnance he felt. He wasn’t emotionless at that point. He had still retained some of his feelings. He must have wanted to kill Lilith, to kill all of them.
“The bodies were of no use to them and vanished immediately. Lilith acted outraged that my mother was in such a bad way and berated the demons who brought her to us. She kept trying to tell me how sorry she was. She evidently didn’t—and still doesn’t—realize we can hear lies.”
Afanasiv’s voice was so low Vasilisa felt she had to strain to hear him speak. She realized she not only could hear him, she also caught images of the empty spot where there was only a dark crimson pool left behind where his parents had been. Fire glowed around him. Not the flames of a purifying fire, but muddy flames that threw off a bloody coppery shadow.
Lilith sidled up to Afanasiv and attempted to run her fingers down his arm in a show of sympathy as she smiled up at him. “Come with me. I’ll make you feel so much better.”
“I told her we had rituals when warriors had fallen, and I had to attend to them. That gave me two days of reprieve before I had to fulfill my part of the contract.” Afanasiv’s voice had gone back to strictly expressionless.
Vasilisa let his statement actually sink in. The contract he signed to get his mother back included him being Lilith’s lover. Giving her blood. Giving her a child. His child. Afanasiv’s child. The child that should be theirs.
There was a strange roaring in her ears. He’d been lovers with Lilith. What else could he have done? But a child? His mother would never have agreed to such a contract. Thoughts rushed through her mind fast, and she couldn’t slow them down. Her emotions were all over the place. Anger. Sorrow. The need to cry.
“How long were you in the underworld before you were allowed to leave?” Razvan asked.