Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Not the pathetic punishment power of black bat wings.
The real power in these golden ones.
I reach around my shoulders, grab the feathers, and start pulling them out by the fistful. Pain shoots through my body like I’m on fire, but I don’t stop. I pull them out. Dozens and dozens at a time. I do it quick. Fistful by fistful, I pull them out and drop them into the fog all around me. They start piling up at my feet. And as this is happening, I’m practicing the spelling in my head.
I will do it right.
I will make it last.
I will send myself somewhere dark, and silent, and empty.
Because that is how I feel right now.
And I just want to forget.
But there are thousands of feathers in my wings. Tens of thousands. The big ones are easy, but I have to get every single one of them to do magic this big. I have to pull them out until my wings are bald.
It takes forever.
But that’s OK, I just happen to have forever.
I’m plucking the tiny ones that are barely shooting out of the bony edge of the top of my wing when I hear a noise.
I stop pulling on the feathers and lean forward a little.
It sounds like hooves clopping on a dirt road.
And then there he is. The dead beast himself. Smaller. No wings. But I would recognize those blue eyes anywhere.
“Eros?”
Callistina peeks out from behind his thick neck and I drop all the feathers in my hands. “Callistina?”
“Oh, my God.” She puts a hand over her mouth. “What are you doing? What have you done?”
“Callistina?” I say again. Then I blink my eyes and shake my head. But she’s still here. Off of Ire’s back and running towards me. When she’s close enough she throws her arms around me, hugging me tight.
I’m not sure what’s happening. “I killed you,” I manage to say.
She lets go of me, but grabs my shoulders and puts me at arm’s length like she’s trying to get a proper look. “Why are you pulling out your feathers!”
“Why are you wearing that ugly blue dress?”
We stare at each other for a moment. Unable to move. Like we can’t believe this is real. It can’t be real. I killed her. She’s not here. And if I move, whatever spell is happening or whatever delusion I have cooked up to ease my mind as I find my next ending will stop working. And I won’t even have this hallucination to comfort me into the nothing.
But then she laughs. “Oh.” And looks down at herself. “I was wearing it when she took me into some spell.”
“Who?” I’m shocked. She’s real? I’m not hallucinating?
“Pressia!”
“Pressia?” I blink and shake my head again, then look at the almost miniature version of Ire just behind her. When I look back to Callistina I say, “Did you just literally ride in on a white horse and save me?”
She looks over at Ire. “Is he white? Or is he silver?”
I grab her shoulders and shake her. “Callistina, what the hell are you doing here?”
“What do you mean? I was looking for you. Well, that’s not entirely true. I figured her out and then I just got put here.”
“Who?”
Callistina clicks her tongue at me in annoyance. “Pressia! Who else? She stole me, put me into some kind of spell, and then we went on that trip together.”
“Through the doors?” I say.
“Yeah. It wasn’t real. It was her and her stupid magic. But you know what? She’s wrong about you.”
“She is?”
“Yeah. Do you want to know why she’s been torturing you for all eternity? It’s because she saw you kill her as a baby in the future.”
“What?”
“Yeah. She traveled through some door and saw you enter her nursery at the Vinca Palace and kill her as a baby.”
“Wow. I did that?”
Callistina snorts. “No, you didn’t do that. You would never do that.”
Hmmm. I’m kind of impressed with future me.
“I told her that she was wrong. And she’s been torturing you, all this time, for something that never happened. Would never happen.” She says that last part with a lot of emphasis, squeezing my shoulders at the same time.
But again, I’m slightly distracted by future-me’s great idea. Kill her in the nursery. I’m a fuckin’ genius. Why didn’t I think of that earlier? I mean, going back in time is kinda easy, right? How hard would it be to find my way out of this fog and use that door on the hillside to spell my way into Pressia’s fuckin’ nursery?
“And do you know why that would never happen, Eros?” Callistina shakes me a little, so I refocus on her. “It won’t ever happen”—she says these words deliberately and carefully—“because if it does, you will lose me.”
I let out a long breath and fully internalize what’s happening here.