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)
There’s no lust or desire for my body and I’m grateful. Rather, there’s an unholy light in his blue eyes making him seem a bit unhinged.
Except he’s not. He’s rational and confident in his course. The glow of the Blood Stone dims and brightens, dims and brightens, as if he’s hungering for something.
I’m startled when one of Ariman’s hands moves from the side of my head, fingers trailing down my neck until they press over where the snake bit me. The puncture wounds have long healed, but the minute he touches that spot, my skin burns.
Ariman lifts his gaze to Rune. “Are you ready?”
Panicked, I demand, “Ready for what?”
I’m ignored, and Rune nods. The gem in the center of his chest glows more intensely, no longer dull in its rhythmic beat. It gets so bright I can’t look at it directly.
That’s okay because I’m sidetracked by a sensation within my body. It feels like an awakening and at first, I don’t recognize what it is.
But then, it slowly clicks into place.
My powers are returning and Ariman must be doing something to reverse the effects of Valshour’s venom. I don’t know if he knows that’s what’s happening, but I’m not going to worry about what-ifs. I’ll be ready to launch whatever I can as soon as it’s available to me.
I was with Finley once—back when I was human—and she stopped at a gas station. I stood outside with her while she filled up the tank, explaining to me how such things worked, given I’d lived my entire life without ever seeing a single car. I remember watching the numbers tick upward in price and gallons as the gas siphoned from the pump into her tank. That’s how it feels to me now—that inevitable waiting to get maximum achievement before I’m willing to turn the key to ignite my powers.
“Now,” Ariman says, and I think he’s talking to me.
But no, his gaze is on Rune and the unthinkable happens. As my powers flare to life within my body, an incandescent beam of light the color of the Crimson River shoots from the Blood Stone and into the center of my chest. It feels as if someone has driven a spike into my sternum and my back arches in pain.
And then I feel my powers slowly rippling through my body, congregating in my core and expelling through my chest. A thin stream of smoky white light travels up the red beam, moving from me into Rune.
“Yes,” Rune whispers as he tips his head back in ecstasy. His mouth slackens as the first wave of my godly powers enters his body.
“No!” I scream, the piercing word ripping out of my throat with such violence, it feels like I swallowed razor blades. I thrash against Rune, but he’s too heavy.
My eyes roll back to look at Ariman, who wears a victorious smile. He senses my stare and returns it with triumph. “Remember when I used to funnel dark magic into you?” he taunts softly, his fingertips gently rubbing at my neck. “Now I’m taking it away from you and I’m not sure which feels better to me.”
A tear slips out of my eye, running over my temple and disappearing into my hair. When I was a child and Ariman performed his rituals, I would sob my heart out because it hurt so much. As I got older, I learned to control my emotions because I knew how he relished hurting me.
I blink hard, refusing to let another tear slip. I’ll not give him that pleasure.
If I die, I’ll do it bravely.
CHAPTER 19
Maddox
Carrick and Finley have to lead Amell and me through the veil into Micah’s realm. They’ve been here before… that fateful trip where Lucien lost his life in the Crimson River but Carrick came away with the Blood Stone.
Now he’s here again and the Blood Stone is in play once more. It’s the single-most threatening opponent we’ve ever faced.
I look around the barren wasteland of this alternate dimension, not surprised we don’t see Ariman, Rune, or Zora. Carrick said there was a cave Micah lived in and if they’re here, we assume that’s where they’ll be. It’s dark, cold and without color, nothing but endless black sand that Carrick said used to be an ocean but now extends to the horizon, punctuated with large boulders dotted over the landscape, some the size of buses.
In the distance, the Crimson River flows from the farthest point, over the dead sand sea and right up the side of a craggy stone mountain, in defiance of physics, where it disappears into a crevice.
“That’s where it happened?” I ask, nodding at the molten lava ambling slowly up the mountainside.
Where our brother died?
Carrick lifts a finger and points away from the mountain, at least a hundred yards. “Over there. We fought Micah on the beach.”