Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 146722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 734(@200wpm)___ 587(@250wpm)___ 489(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 734(@200wpm)___ 587(@250wpm)___ 489(@300wpm)
Diel shook his head. He avoided her gaze, but when he met it again, he confessed in a broken voice, “I’m scared she won’t be in there.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed along each of her fingers. “I’m just … I’m fucking scared she’s gone too.” Noa knew what it cost him to confess that. Diel, the manic spree-killer of the Fallen, half man, half monster, was terrified that his sister was forever lost. That she wasn’t in that ledger.
That she wasn’t on this earth at all.
“You need to look,” Noa said. “You need to know.”
He was silent for so long she didn’t think he’d answer. But then he drew her carefully to his chest with a tenderness that was almost her undoing. “When you’re healed.” He pressed a long kiss on her head. “When you’re healed, we’ll look together.”
Noa’s heart sang a Wiccan chant, a spell of only Diel’s name. Together. From now on, they would live like this together. Be together. Fight anyone in their paths together.
Noa thought back to facing Auguste and the twins, and decided to make a confession of her own. “I cast a spell,” Noa said softly. She felt her spirit rise, her aura of acceptance blaze in multicolored lights around her. “When they were coming for me—Auguste, the twins—I cast a protection spell.”
She waited for Diel’s disapproval, for his censure of her embracing that side of her soul. Her Wiccan blood. Giving in to the urge to call upon the Goddess that seemed so natural to her that, in that moment, it had been as easy as breathing. It had been a forsaken part of who she was for so long that she never thought she would find the path back … but when she had been surrendering her life for that of Diel’s sister, that path became clear, gleaming with light that drew her to its center.
Drew her back to who she inherently was … a witch.
Noa was a witch. She had always been a witch.
But there was no censure from Diel, no mockery or judgment. He just held her close and said, “Finally.” Even with the burst of happiness in her chest, Noa’s eyes began to close with exhaustion, her body needing time to heal. As she was drifting off, she heard him say, “It’s who you are.” She felt him smile against her head. “My Noa. My witch … My whole fucking world.”
As sleep dragged her down to blissful numbness, Noa smiled too.
Chapter 30
Diel clutched Noa’s hand as they carefully descended the stairs. Nerves threatened to take him down. Diel had felt more in the past few months than he ever had in his life. He still struggled with dealing with emotion. And right then it was the highest fucking emotion—fear mixed with hope and desperation. Noa squeezed his hands like she could sense the battle within him.
It was the first time Noa had been out of the bedroom in a couple of weeks. Diel had never once left her side. Her wounds had mostly healed after days and days of bed rest.
Noa was stiff and still in considerable pain, but nothing like how she had been when he had brought her home. Rage still glistened in his veins when he thought about what she’d looked like when he found her in that fucking iron maiden. Blood coating her skin, bruised and broken, but Noa staying strong to the fucking end.
Hello, pretty monster … Those words had never sounded so fucking sweet.
Now it was Diel’s turn to need her.
They reached the foyer, then walked into the Nave. All Diel’s brothers and the Coven were there. Maria sat beside Gabriel at the head of the table, the ledger open before them.
Diel’s heart beat at a furious speed at just the sight of that ledger open. Then Gabriel looked up at him, and Diel knew instantly by the expression on Gabriel’s face that his sister’s name was in that book. Diel couldn’t move. His feet were soldered to the floor. His breath echoed in his ears, and he felt every part of him fucking shake.
“Diel.” Gabriel got to his feet. But Diel was a fucking statue. He didn’t know if he could look in that ledger. He didn’t know what it meant to have Cara’s name in that fucking book.
What if it told him his sister was dead? He thought of Cara’s small, starved frame as a child, her bright blue eyes and the birthmark that covered half her face. But she was so beautiful. His little sister, who he had adored …
“Baby.”
Diel blinked, trying to bring himself back to the Nave, to his family.
“Baby.”
He followed that voice, the one that was an anchor to his heart, his fucking soul. He looked up, and Noa was before him. His brothers were waiting, as were the Coven.