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)
to live inside its foggy walls.”
For a moment I think it’s not going to work. Callistina too. She’s just getting ready to open her mouth and ask me something when everything around us shifts.
There’s no explosion. No bright light.
It’s just there. The hallway. Like we’ve been in it this whole time, but it was glamoured from us.
The entrance back to Savage Falls is directly to my left. So close. But before I can take a step and lead Callistina to it, I fall forward. Right back into the ordered list.
I am running. Hard. My breath coming out fast, almost in gasps. My legs leap over tree trunks and my feet find purchase in the mud. I’ve got my bow out, loaded with a bolt. And I’m chasing something up ahead. I can’t quite see what it is, just little flashes of something moving through the thick leaves.
Something is running from me.
“Pressia.” Her name comes out as a hiss through my teeth. It’s her. I know it’s her. I run harder, gritting my teeth as my lungs burn and my legs ache. I’m running up the hill, watching glimpses of a woman weaving her way in and out of the trees.
But slowly, over the course of the long climb up the mountain and through the jungle of underbrush, I get close enough to hear her gasping for breath.
I force myself to go faster, chasing the glimpses of the sand-colored dress flittering through the leaves.
Then a mistake. Hers. A loud thump as a body hits the ground.
She fell! She tripped and fell.
But in the same moment that I’m realizing I’ve got her, something happens. My head is pounding and my vision goes blurry. Suddenly, I’m on the ground too.
Only… I’m not. I’m still running.
But it’s not me, running. It’s… someone else. It has to be.
But he looks like me. Bare-chested and with a complicated tree tattoo covering his back as he leaps over a tree trunk and disappears into the bushes, loaded bow in hand.
I scramble to my feet and follow, running hard because he’s caught her. He’s got her and he’s not allowed to get her.
She’s mine.
Then from up ahead, a scream.
“Callistina?” It’s her. I would know her voice anywhere. She screams again. “Callistina!” I yell again. Then I push harder, ignoring my own gasping and pain in my lungs. “Callistina!”
She screams again, only this time there is a whoosh of a bolt flying through the air. And the next time she screams, it’s the sound of something dying.
“Callistina!” I continue running, but then stop short when I come around a large boulder. A large, flat boulder. With Callistina lying face down on it. Antlers growing out of the top of her head, right before my eyes.
And me. Standing behind her. Her hair wrapped around one fist while I saw the still-growing antlers off with the knife in my hand.
“No.” This word doesn’t come out like a man in denial. It comes out like a man who just found the truth. “No. No. I didn’t do this. I wouldn’t do this!”
But it is me, standing over her, sawing off her power. Blood is pouring out and he—me—I’m catching it inside a skin. Still holding her hair in my fist to somewhat direct the flow of a river of scarlet that is pouring out of the top of her head and flowing down the side of the rock.
That’s when I hear the crashing of hooves through the forest. The other me is just as surprised as I am when Ire come into view. In a full-on charge like he’s about to take me out.
Eros pulls the bow out, loads it with a bolt, and shoots the beast in the chest.
It knocks him backwards and he goes rolling. Eros has let go of Callistina and is now charging at Ire with the bloody knife.
“No!”
But it’s too late for that. Eros cuts off the beast’s wings, then leaves him there, struggling to get to his feet. Which Ire does not manage to do. He simply collapses into the heap I found him in when I first came through the last door.
My attention goes back to Eros—to me!. I’m pulling feathers out of the wings I just stole, then I spit a spelling out in between the moaning of the pegásius and the gryphon chimera.
Callistina is her old self now. I think the bolt did it. I was doing some kind of magic and she got away. And Ire… I don’t know where he came from. But it was all big magic to get to this one point in time when, from Eros’ back—from my back—wings sprout!
Giant, golden wings.
The very ones I had when I came through the last door.
He tilts his head up to the sky, laughing. His wings—my wings— spreading wide in victory.
And at the same time I watch. Separate from what is happening, but obviously not. I am crouched behind the boulder, as the winged god cleans his knife and sheaths it. Then he stares down at Callistina’s lifeless body, his head slumping forward.