Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 229266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1146(@200wpm)___ 917(@250wpm)___ 764(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 229266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1146(@200wpm)___ 917(@250wpm)___ 764(@300wpm)
The Dark One wasn’t someone most would dare to anger. He was an Atlantian, deadly, fast, and impossibly strong. Hard to wound, let alone kill. And as I learned just recently, capable of using compulsion to enforce his will upon others. He’d killed one of the most powerful Dukes in all of Solis, thrusting the very cane Teerman often used on me through the Ascended’s heart.
But I felt no fear.
I was too furious to be scared.
Sitting on Delano’s left was the source of the laugh I’d just heard. It had come from the mountain of a man, the one called Elijah. I didn’t think he was a wolven. It was the eyes. All the wolven had the same wintry blue eyes. Elijah’s were hazel, a color more gold than brown. I wasn’t the only one staring at him now. Several gazes had landed on him. I took the opportunity to slide the meat knife off the table, hiding it under the slit in my tunic.
“What?” Elijah stroked his dark beard as he met the many stares. “She’s asking what most of us are thinking.”
Delano blinked and then slowly looked at Elijah. Casteel said nothing. His tight-lipped smile spoke volumes as the piercing weight of his gaze moved from me to farther down the table.
Fingers stilling on his beard, Elijah cleared his throat. “I thought the plan—”
“What you think is irrelevant.” The Prince silenced the older man.
“You mean the one where you thought to use me as bait to free your brother?” I demanded. “Or has that magically changed in the last couple of hours?”
A muscle popped along Casteel’s jaw as the full focus of his attention returned to me. “You should eat.”
I almost lost it right then and threw my scavenged knife at him. “I’m not hungry.”
His gaze dipped to my plate. “You’ve barely eaten.”
“Well, you see, I don’t have much of an appetite, Your Highness.”
His jaw tightened as his eyes met mine and held. The golden hue of his irises had chilled. Goosebumps prickled my skin as the air around us seemed to thicken and become charged, filling the room. There hadn’t been an ounce of respect in my tone. Had I pushed Casteel too far? If so, I didn’t care.
My fingers tightened around the handle of the blade. I was no longer the Maiden, bound to rules that prevented me from having a say in matters of my life. I would no longer be controlled. I could and would push harder than this.
“She asks a very valid question,” someone said from the end of the table. It was a man with short, dark hair. He looked no older than Kieran, who, like Casteel, appeared to be in his early twenties. But Casteel was over two hundred years old. The man could be even older, for all I knew. “Has the plan to use her to free Prince Malik changed?” he asked.
Casteel said nothing as he continued watching me, but the utter stillness that crept into his features was a far better warning than any words could be.
“I am not trying to question your decisions,” the man stated. “I’m attempting to understand them.”
“What do you need help understanding, Landell?” Casteel leaned back in the chair, his hands resting lightly on the arms. The way he sat as if completely at ease, raised the tiny hairs all over my body.
A tense moment of silence descended, and then Landell said, “We have all followed you here from Atlantia. We stayed in this archaic, cesspool of a kingdom, pretending loyalty to a counterfeit King and Queen. Because, like you, we want nothing more than to free your brother. He is the rightful heir.”
Casteel nodded for Landell to continue.
“We have lost people—good people trying to infiltrate the Temples in Carsodonia,” he said. I tensed as images of the sprawling, midnight-hued structures formed in my mind.
If all that Casteel had alleged was true, the purpose the Temples served was another lie. Third sons and daughters weren’t given over during the Rite to serve the gods. Instead, they were given to the Ascended—the vamprys—becoming nothing more than cattle. Much of the pile of lies I’d been fed my entire life was terrible, but that was possibly the worst of them all. And as revolting as what Casteel claimed was, I feared it was the truth. How could I deny it? The Ascended had told us that the Atlantians’ kiss was poisonous, cursing innocent mortals and turning them into these decaying shells of their former selves—vicious, blood-hungry monsters known as the Craven. But I knew that to be untrue. The Atlantians’ kiss wasn’t toxic. Neither was their bite. I was proof of both of those things. Casteel and I had shared many kisses. He’d given me his blood when I was mortally wounded. And, he’d bitten me.