Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75457 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75457 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“What about me?” Nyssa asks.
Amell turns to her, shaking his head. “You can’t come.”
“Why not?”
He puts his hands to her face and pulls her in to kiss her forehead. “Because you’re too precious for me to ever put in danger. Besides… I need someone to maintain the peace here, and the citizens of the Underworld like you better.”
Amell kisses her mouth, and she nods with disappointed understanding.
“Now what do we do?” Finley asks.
“Zora’s not here in the Underworld,” Amell says confidently. “The Scryer said she was near the Crimson River, but I’ve had my fae search every square inch.”
“Then the Scryer is wrong?” Nyssa asks.
Finley shakes her head. “Not necessarily. The Underworld isn’t the only place the Crimson River exists.”
I blink in surprise that I hadn’t thought of it before. “Micah’s realm.”
She nods. “It’s completely uninhabited… desolate. The perfect place to stash some gods as hostages, assuming they haven’t already…”
Her words trail off because she doesn’t want to voice the one possibility none of us will accept. That they’re dead already. I have no clue if the Crimson River could destroy a god, but I’m not willing to entertain the thought.
“So, we go to Micah’s realm,” I say, ready to march through the veil right now.
“Would help if we had a plan first,” Carrick points out. “If we go in there, we have to follow the river toward the mountain caves, which is where they’ll likely be. They’ll see us coming.”
“Then we should enter where we went in the first time—the western side of the mountains,” Finley says. That was when they went in to steal the Blood Stone and lost Lucien in the Crimson River. “Boulders will shield us from sight.”
“And there’s a path upward into the cave mouth, assuming that’s where they are,” Carrick adds, kneeling onto the sandy bank and drawing a crude diagram.
Amell and I weren’t there when they went in. I’d been called away by Circe and Onyx to help them meddle in the fates in an alternate dimension that would most likely precipitate a civil war. Amell was still thoroughly on Kymaris’s side at that time and would have killed any one of us, not helped us.
For the next hour, we discuss how to enter the realm and the best way to attack. The main problem is, we have no clue how powerful the Blood Stone is or how it could be used against us. Rune was a mortal man while imprisoned, but he has to be juiced up by the stone. He could be as strong and indestructible as we are. Pitting him, Ariman, and the stone against me, Carrick, Amell, and Finley is still weighed heavily against us. At this point, we can’t rely on the gods being in the mix. We have to assume they’re incapacitated, if not dead.
I push down my feelings of grief at the thought Zora could be no more.
The stone—and all the unknown that comes with it—is the game changer. We don’t know what we’re walking into, and despite our immortal natures, there’s a good chance we won’t walk back out again.
CHAPTER 18
Zora
“Come,” Rune says, taking my wrist and pulling me from the ledge. My instinct is to resist and so I do, jerking hard to escape his grip.
If I’m a god still with my strength and he’s but a mortal man, I should be able to free myself. But his hand clamps so tight, I feel the pressure in my bones, and that tells me he’s not a mere human anymore.
He’s clearly been gifted with something from the Blood Stone, but to what extent, I don’t know.
I struggle the entire way back into the cavern where Ariman awaits. He seems so placid and accepting of his lesser role, despite the fact he has a snake that can render a god temporarily useless and the Blood Stone around his neck. Part of me wants to slap him—tell him to wake up and realize that it would be foolish to hand that power over to Rune.
Then again, better than anyone, I know how evil Ariman is. Not sure he’s the better of the two.
Still, if I could get them to turn on each other…
Rune slings me forward and I stumble. I can’t catch myself and my knees crack hard against the stone floor. Rolling to my side, I see my pants are ripped and my skin is scraped raw, although it doesn’t hurt. Before my eyes, the wounds heal in a matter of seconds.
Yes, I’m still a god, but a weak one. No internal powers, my strength no match for Rune’s, but I still have the ability to heal. I still feel indestructible, at least physically.
“Let’s begin the ritual,” Rune says to Ariman, who nods and strides toward me. I try to scramble away as he’s got the snake still draped around his neck and I don’t want it to bite me.