Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 123477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 617(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 617(@200wpm)___ 494(@250wpm)___ 412(@300wpm)
“What are you talking about? What is Moon planning to do?” Chen demanded.
“There’s this spell…” Moon paused and licked his lips.
Sky shoved to his feet. “So…I’m going to walk over and play in the snow with Greg. You two discuss this. And I mean really think about it, Moon.”
He could only smile at Sky’s back. The necromancer was a total romantic, but he could also be annoyingly levelheaded.
Chen squeezed Moon’s hand, drawing his eyes to him. “Will this spell hurt you?”
“No! Not at all, I swear,” Moon said. “It’s a spell I stumbled across in my mom’s journals a few years ago. I’ve never tried it myself…for good reason. It’s a blood spell that would tie our souls together. It pissed me off when I initially found it. My mom performed the spell a long time ago after she and my father were married. I kind of wonder if it’s the reason they died at the same time.”
Strong fingers tightened around his, and Chen lifted their hands up to his lips. He brushed a kiss across their entwined knuckles, his dark eyes full of worry. “You think if she’d never performed the binding spell, you might not have been alone after the accident?”
Moon huffed an uncomfortable laugh and shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. But then, the spell might have had nothing to do with them both dying. And later…I realized that even though they both loved me, it would have broken whoever survived the accident. My parents were so hopelessly in love with each other. The survivor would never have been happy again.”
“I’m sorry.” Chen’s soft voice was a gentle balm spread across old wounds.
“Thanks. But the point isn’t my parents. It’s tying our souls together. I don’t know what that could mean for us afterward. I don’t think we’d be able to read each other’s thoughts. We each would probably be able to sense how the other person is feeling. My dad always seemed to know when my mom was happy or sad. He especially knew when she was pissed and he was in trouble. But I believe if I bind your soul to mine, the underworld can’t keep you unless they agree to take me, too.”
“You’re not afraid of that?”
Moon smirked. “Nope. Everyone has a time, and it’s not mine yet.”
“Sounds like you’re planning to piss off some demons.”
A low chuckle left Moon, and he rocked on the ground. “Maybe a bit. Think about it; how often do you get the chance to fuck with the demons running the underworld? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“What about after? When we’ve escaped the underworld. Can you unbind our souls?”
His giddiness fell away, and his shoulders slumped. “No. This is permanent, as far as I can tell. We’d be bound for the rest of this existence. Maybe when I died, you’d get pulled down as well.”
Moon picked up a small, thin stick and poked the end into the dirt, drawing circles. It was easier than looking at Chen.
“It might make things a little complicated if you were to fall in love with some hot guy, because you wouldn’t be able to bind your soul to his,” he continued. He tried not to sound like his heart wasn’t in his throat. “This is a ‘one soul binding per customer’ situation. It’s not a big deal when you go back to China, though, because there’s no limit on how far the tether connecting our souls stretches. Even half a world away, I’d know what you’re feeling. When you’re happy, or sad…or if you met someone else—yeep!”
Chen released his hand, only to grab him by the shoulder and haul him over into his lap. The vampire had not lost one bit of his impressive strength because of his injury. Moon tried to catch himself and ended up with his hand pressed to Chen’s chest, right over his racing heart.
“Listen to me, Moon Mullins, Blood Witch of Connecticut,” Chen snapped. His dark eyes shifted to shades of icy blood, making Moon’s heart skip. He was figuring out that Chen’s eyes changed color when he was worked up or tapping into his icy powers. Moon would put his money on pissed in this instance. “We have much to discuss and figure out in our future, but I believe it wasn’t that long ago when I said ‘every second of every day.’ I meant those words. I want to be near you every second of every day. That is the only way I can know you are safe, comfortable, and happy. There will be no meeting anyone else. And when I leave for China, you will be at my side. Do you understand?”
Moon swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry. He nodded once. “Yes, Chen-ge.”
Yes, to all of that.
Sure, Sky had a point that this was all happening so fucking fast. But after a lifetime of being lukewarm toward every person in existence, Chen Bo Cheng was the very first person to light a fire within him. He wanted to spend the rest of his existence chasing Chen’s smiles and driving the vampire insane.