Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
“Rest assured, G’Jell, we will be utilizing everything we have to eradicate this creature from Triton,” Cassius told him.
Jellan nodded again.
“Except you,” Cassius finished.
Jellan stood frozen before them.
He also felt his bladder begin to loosen when Cassius’s eyes became what True’s were.
Except black.
“How many women was it, in the end?” he asked softly. “Do you even know?”
“It was not the Society who roused the Beast!” Jellan exclaimed. “It was Marian! The sacrifices…the terrible things they did to those girls…it was not that. It was her.”
“So, you know of the sacrifices?” Cassius asked.
Gods damn it!
If this did not get better, he might have to expose his magic to get him out of this place.
“I read it in a tome,” he only partly lied, but went on to fully do just that. “When…when we journeyed to Wodell for King True’s wedding, I remembered the reading of them. I had an idea. I went to inspect. Came upon them performing their ghastly ritual—”
“You are aware that lying will not change matters for you, no?” Mars asked.
“I do not lie!” he cried. “And I am here to help. I know what he looks like. I know where they wander.”
“As do they,” Mars pointed out, indicating the highwaymen.
Gods damn it!
He started to call upon his magic, just in case.
“They don’t know where they wander,” he pushed.
“They are good trackers. They will find out,” Cassius said.
His eyes were back to normal, as were True’s.
But even so, Jellan did not get the sense this indicated good things for him.
“I am a priest of the Go’Doan,” he stated.
“You are a priest of The Rising,” Cassius stated in return. “A priest who murdered countless women, one of them the mother of a queen, and conspired to subjugate citizens of four realms to your beliefs.”
“I cared naught about The Rising,” he spat.
After all he’d witnessed, all he’d endured, being repeatedly raped, watching the deaths, experiencing the fear, the maltreatment, something inside him snapped, and he could not control his words or emotion, even if he had tried.
But he no longer had it in him to try.
He drew upon his magic as he asked, “What man needs religion when he controls omnipotence?”
“So, it is solely for you, you sought to rise him,” Queen Ha-Lah spoke for the first time.
“I go about the unpleasant business of bringing him forth, why would I hand him over to others?” he asked snidely. “Especially for them to use it to force people to serve their paltry gods. If you have that power, you are a god.”
“And Marian?” Elena also entered the conversation. “Does she desire to control omnipotence?”
“The bloody fool, a half-trained witch who convinced herself she’s powerful when she doesn’t even know how to read the veil,” he snapped. “She simply wanted the rituals to stop. But he liked her, so he took her and now he’ll use her as he sees fit before he destroys the lot of you.”
This was met with silence.
Jellan found himself breathing heavily.
And as he did, he realized he’d been calling on his magic, but…
It wasn’t there.
“You might wish to know at this juncture, Hera bound you when she met you downstairs,” Cassius said.
Jellan blinked and tried to pull up his power again.
He could not access it.
Her movement, with her arm.
The chill he felt.
His stomach clutched so violently, he feared he’d be ill.
He then watched as Cassius slouched in his chair, stretched his long legs before him, and crossed them at ankles.
The Regent then linked his fingers over his flat stomach.
“There is a man,” he began, as if he were settling in to tell a story. “Most odd. Here in Sky Bay.”
Jellan glared at him.
“When Mars’s men’s reports started coming in, I remembered talk of him,” Cassius shared.
“If you are to jail me, jail me,” Jellan ordered tersely. “At least if you did that, I’d be closer to a meal.”
“He collects snakes.”
Jellan froze, his mind doing the same, to the point he did not feel the warm trickle running down his leg.
Cassius’s gaze dropped to the floor, and his lip curled before it came back to Jellan’s face.
“True’s men have made inquiries, just in case,” Cassius told him. “Just in case we were to find you, or you were to seek us. This man, he has never seen his pets at work. He was quite keen to be of service, if he were called.”
The room filled with the noises of the air rapidly going in and out of Jellan’s nose.
“It might not be of interest to you, but Mars wishes to keep you alive,” Cassius informed him.
Jellan’s gaze jumped to Mars before returning to Cassius when he spoke again.
“He felt, if we were to lose anyone else who had meaning to us, that you should be breathing so we could share with you the fullness of our ire. True, however, disagrees. And although you committed at least one crime on Firenz soil, you committed incalculable on Dellish. Thus, we’ve decided True gets to do what he wishes to you,” Cassius concluded.