Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
“He used a stone?” I’m slow. I had my dose of demon blood a few hours before and while Myrddin promises it will make me strong, I often feel weak, a bit out of myself after I’ve taken it. I’ll get better. I’ll handle it better as my system gets used to it, or so I’ve been told. But now I don’t understand why he would use a stone on the love of his life.
“Shut up, Olivia,” he spits my way, and his face looks different, like the mask slipped for a moment. Myrddin always looks perfect.
Except when the mask slips and I can see that part of him that scares me, the part I try so hard not to think about.
“Olivia, I need you to get behind me,” Nimue says, holding out a hand. “I know he seems to be your friend, but he’s not.”
Myrddin wasn’t a friend. He was…everything. He was like a father to me. So much so that I no longer needed my own dad. I didn’t need my mom. I didn’t need Kelsey or Casey. I just needed to do what he told me to or he would hurt me.
I’m afraid of him. I realize it in the moment. This feeling I have, this instinct that nothing he shoves into my system can quite get rid of, tells me he hates me. He uses me. Everything he says is a lie.
“Do you know what a thrall stone is, Liv?” Nimue moves around the room cautiously, her eyes never leaving Myrddin.
I shake my head.
“It’s a piece of a demon he put in my head so I’m easily influenced by him. He’s doing the same thing to you by forcing you to take demon blood,” she explains quietly.
I know she’s right, but that’s not what comes out of my mouth. “I take it so I’m strong.”
“She won’t believe you.” Myrddin watches her, too. Like she’s a snake who will bite him.
Or maybe like she’s prey he needs to take down.
I do. I believe her, so why can’t I make myself move toward her? She’s trying so hard to help me. Why am I not taking her hand?
“Olivia is fully under my influence. She’s a good girl,” Myrddin says.
“She’s a terrified woman,” Nim corrects. “Olivia, you need to understand that he’s planning on convincing you to let him use your body. He wants to kill the children. He’s the one who sent the Hunter through the painting. I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to come back. Come with me and we’ll look for her. Don’t let him use you. He wants your familiar face. He’ll convince you all he wants to do is talk to them, but he’s lying.”
My hearts thumps in my chest because even as slow as I am, I feel the tension. While Myrddin looks calm, I feel his power growing. Nimue should run but she doesn’t. She keeps her hand out, keeps offering me help.
“If I can’t have you, Nimue, no one can. Olivia, let this be a lesson to you. Learn what happens to women who defy me.” Myrddin holds his hands up, and I feel him pull power from me. It straightens my spine and makes my every bone ache.
When he brings his hands across his body, Nimue stops. She stills, and her eyes widen right before her body crumples to the floor.
Her head goes another way, and Myrddin catches it with a sickening thump.
My vision goes watery. Blood. It’s everywhere, and yet Nim’s eyes are open.
“You’ll forget everything but the lesson, Olivia. Now clean this up, you dumb cow.”
I want to scream but my body moves.
The lesson is learned.
“Liv?”
I pushed out against the arms that held me because the vision had been so vivid.
Myrddin had separated the legendary Nimue’s head from her body, and he’d had me place her in a box where she couldn’t regenerate. Every day for a long time he tried spells to make her forget, and I believed some of them worked, but she didn’t forget she hated him.
I forgot everything. Everything. I’d been so weak.
“Your friend is coming out of what feels like years of suppression spells,” an unfamiliar voice said. “I can sense the spells that were used on a being. She was tortured. I can feel it on her soul. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you. It’s a particular talent of mine. I can’t read her mind, but I can read her soul. There’s a piece of it missing. It’s ragged and torn. Whatever happened to her, it was violent.”
She sniffled like looking at my soul hurt her own.
“She’s my wife.” Casey sounded like the one who’d been tortured.
I started to come out of the vision. No. The memory. Not the false ones he fed me. The reality of the last twelve years of my life.