Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 53433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 267(@200wpm)___ 214(@250wpm)___ 178(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 267(@200wpm)___ 214(@250wpm)___ 178(@300wpm)
I swallowed a lump in my throat. What was Ansin up to?
Ansin went on, “And, since I would never allow that evil fuck, King, to occupy my skin, I’m left with very few options.”
Ansin looked at me.
“No. You can’t use me,” I said.
“You’re right. I cannot. King would fling you both off the nearest cliff.” Ansin looked at Niko. “That just leaves you, Mr. Spiros.”
Niko shook his head and mumbled. I still couldn’t understand the words, but I got the gist.
“You want to break the curse King placed on the Spiroses or not?” Ansin asked Niko. “Because if you truly care for your entire family, this is what you must do. I have no other choice.” Ansin sliced through his hand, producing a thick puddle of blood in his palm. “Let us begin.”
King
“Yes. This is it.” I pressed my index finger over the words on the ancient scroll. “The afterlife is infinite but limited to one’s own memories.” That was what the text translated to. So the problem was I’d chosen a place that represented a moment in time precious to me.
If I wanted to find my wife, I had to select a place near and dear to her heart. However, if I was limited to joining her in our shared memories, would she be waiting for me in one of them? Or would she have chosen something completely isolated from me?
Only one way to find out.
I closed my eyes and imagined when she and I met. The first few days had been rough. For her. Not for me. She’d claimed to be my pregnant wife from another time and that the baby boy in her arms was mine…
“You.” I pointed to Mia from across the table in the great hall, where my guards had brought her in the middle of a meeting with the Seers. “Your clothing and manner of speech tell me you are not from anywhere we are familiar with. So tell us who sent you.”
She hugged the sleeping baby in her arms. “My name is Mia, and this is not the first time I’ve been here.”
She spoke for over an hour, telling me how we’d met. She said that I was the ghost of an ancient, cursed king looking for salvation. She claimed me to be tormented and evil and that she’d come from the future to escape my cruelty. She wanted to change our fates.
After she was done, I laughed at her. “You truly think any of us believe your wild tale?”
She looked down at her bare feet. “I do not.”
“Leave us. I wish to speak to my king alone,” one of the Seers said to Mia.
“I need a place to lie down,” Mia said.
“You can go lie with the slaves. That is generosity enough for someone like you,” I growled.
Mia shot me a scathing look. “I’m not subjecting our child to those conditions.”
“Take them to your guest chamber,” said the eldest Seer.
That was the room next to mine, overlooking my favorite beach. “This dirty, vile little gypsy woman with her mutt will not stay there. I am the king, and no one tells me—”
“I am your wife.” Mia scowled, demanding my respect.
I leaned onto the table with my fists planted. “You are a crazy witch who will be executed if she speaks out of turn again.”
Not my finest hour. Though more stunningly beautiful than any woman I’d ever seen, I thought Mia was mad. Until the moment Hagne came after me with a knife. That was when everything changed. This beautiful woman—feisty, smart, and determined—threw herself in harm’s way to save me.
That was the moment I realized Mia was not insane. She spoke the truth. I knew of no woman who would risk not only her life, but that of her unborn child, to save a man. Unless she loved him.
Later, as Mia’s injury took a turn for the worse, she would admit that had she been thinking, she would not have acted. She would not have risked our unborn child’s well-being. But in that moment, it had been her heart acting. She’d protected what she loved. End of story.
And once I saw the truth, the gates opened up. I felt our connection. My love came hard and fast. A lightning strike. But to save our unborn child and herself, she had to return to her time and get to a hospital. There, they would have a chance of surviving. In my time, my world, they would not. Unfortunately, due to Mia’s injury and weakening power, I could not travel back with them. It would only be her, the baby, and the child on the way. So if I hoped to ever see them again, I would have to live long enough to make it to her time.
I did.
But while for Mia time passed in the blink of an eye, where I was waiting on the other side, I’d lived through hell. Thousands of years of chaos, anguish, death and rebirth. I’d lost my mind so many times, I lost count. Only one thought brought me back to reality and carried me through: knowing I would see her again.