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)
“Is there a way out of here?” Karine asked.
“If there is, we’ll find it,” Grigor assured her.
Afanasiv was watching his face. His expression said he didn’t believe that for a moment. He moved away from the two cells and hurried past several unoccupied cages. Rounding a corner, he came to a long cage that had a few more amenities in it than the one Karine was in. This one had a chair and what looked like a mattress rather than a cot. There was a privacy curtain around the bucket where one relieved themselves—far more than what Karine had.
Although the cell looked as if it were housing an important prisoner who was treated like a princess, the woman lying on the bed looked to be in far worse condition than Karine had. She moaned continuously. The moaning wasn’t an affectation, either. She was clearly in a great deal of pain. Outside her cell, a very worried demon with cloven hooves and even a set of horns paced with another demon.
“Lilith will kill us if she dies,” the one with the horns announced. “You have to do something. Can you get Gaia here? Maybe she can save her.”
“She was really mad at us the last time. She said if we ever hurt anyone like that again, she would let Lilith skin us alive,” the other demon whispered, looking around her.
Afanasiv gave his lifemate the information as quietly as possible, just by thinking of it. Gaia was a Carpathian child stolen from her family when she was about ten. Already she was showing promise of speaking with animals and taming beasts. Xavier traded her to Lilith in exchange for parasites he needed in his experiments to cause our women to miscarry. Gaia was taken to the underworld and raised by Lilith.
Although Vasilisa didn’t make a sound, he felt her question. Why would Lilith need a small child to talk to beasts for her?
Behind the four gates—each positioned north, south, east and west—is caged the biggest beast of all. He was a Carpathian male who had lived too long in the world. He had served his people with honor but had not gone quietly into the next realm when it was his time, nor had he succumbed to the temptation of losing his honor. Like me, he remained in the world for centuries, and the scars began to develop, marking him a beast. A demon. He became too experienced in battle to ever have hunters take him down. He is a legend in the Carpathian world, but he does exist. Should he ever escape, he would wreak havoc such as the world has never seen. Lilith hoped Gaia could control him. Through Gaia, Lilith would control him. His name is Justice and he is very real.
Afanasiv detested the fact that Justice had lived such an honorable life and that his ending had come to this—existing in the underworld. Kept behind four gates made of safeguarded wood. Even his last act as a Carpathian had been to sacrifice for his family. He fought the demons back, giving Sandu, his parents and sister the time to run out of the underworld and close the portal behind them. Justice had always been a man of honor. Now he was a raving beast who, by all accounts, had moments of clarity, but they were few and far between.
Gaia is grown now, and although she’d had an opportunity to escape the underworld, she refused, choosing to stay with Justice to try to keep him as sane as possible. She isn’t his lifemate, but they formed a friendship of sorts, and she fears if she leaves her post, he will be completely lost. Her brother recently went to see her in order to try to persuade her to leave, but she still refused.
Afanasiv felt a little sorry for Gaia’s brother, Tiberiu. He knew Tiberiu had searched for his little sister for centuries. It had to have been painful to finally find her only to lose her again to the underworld. On the other hand, Tiberiu was an ancient Carpathian male and didn’t have emotions. He had a sense of duty. Leaving his sister went against that sense of duty more than anything else.
“We’ve got to do something,” the demon with horns snapped. “Gaia can heal her. Otherwise, we’re both dead. And Lilith won’t let us die easily.”
The smaller demon threw her hands into the air and then hurried off. The demon with horns unlocked the cell with a giant key that was on a chain around her neck.
“Lada. We have a healer coming to look at you,” she crooned. Only her voice was very low-pitched, and it came out more like growls instead of the reassuring way she was trying to speak. “She’ll fix you right up, and you won’t hurt anymore.”