Total pages in book: 248
Estimated words: 236909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1185(@200wpm)___ 948(@250wpm)___ 790(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1185(@200wpm)___ 948(@250wpm)___ 790(@300wpm)
My lips parted as he took his true form. Twin sweeping arcs rose behind him—as wide as he was tall. Solid, teaming masses of power that blocked out everything beyond him. I hadn’t been this close to him in the courtyard when he took this form, but I’d been close enough that I recognized the striking lines of his features beneath the churning, hard flesh: the height of his cheekbones, the lush, full lips, and thick, reddish-brown strands of hair that fell against the curve of his jaw.
“Whatever you think you need to do,” he said, his voice soft as a breath—it tripped up my heart even more—“whatever you believe you can accomplish, you are wrong.”
“How can you say that? I can stop him.” I trembled, the words spilling out of me. “You have to know that.”
“Turning yourself over to Kolis is not the answer.”
“You know it is!” I shouted. “Why else would your father put her soul in me? Why else would I have been trained to kill a Primal?”
His head was mere inches from mine, and the brightness of his eyes caused mine to water.
Instinct screamed at me to go quiet. That he was on the edge of losing whatever restraint he had. But I couldn’t. He had to understand that this was our only chance to stop Kolis. “I know what I’m facing.” I forced my voice to go steady and level like when I spoke to the wild kiyou wolf I had brought back to life in the Dark Elms. “But whatever happens to me will be worth it if I—”
Those twin arcs swept down, slamming into the ground and shaking the entire woods. Eather sparked from the tips of his wings, hitting the patches of dead, gray grass and turning it to ash.
“You h-have to understand.” I shuddered as frigid air blasted off him. “I’m his weakness. What I’ve been preparing for my whole life? It was for him. Not you.” My breath formed a misty, puffy cloud. “I can still try. Just help me get there, or…or let me go. Either one. I will fulfill my real destiny.”
Nyktos had gone silent.
I swallowed, hoping I was getting somewhere with him, praying to whatever Fates might be listening that he would understand. “You shouldn’t have to worry about hiding who I am. You’ll be free of me, and so will all those who seek shelter under your care. Everyone in the Shadowlands will be safer this way. You will be safer. No one else has to get hurt or die.”
“But you would be dead.” Nyktos spoke in a voice I barely recognized, his tone thicker and more guttural. “Kolis will destroy you.”
“That doesn’t matter—” I sucked in a breath when his wings lifted, whipping the strands of our hair across our faces as they spread out behind him.
“And you argue that you value your life.” A deep growl rumbled from his chest. “What little regard you have for it has never been more apparent than right now.”
“I’m going to die no matter what. The mortal realm will be lost. You can’t stop that. No one can. But I can at least do something about Kolis. Then, he won’t be able to hurt anyone again. He won’t be able to hurt you.”
He lowered his head even more, his mouth barely a breath away from mine. “I will gladly suffer anything Kolis dishes out as long as my blood is spilled instead of yours.”
I pressed into the ground, stunned. “Why? Why would you do that for me?”
“The embers of life and you—”
“Fuck the embers of life!” I pushed against his hold, getting nowhere, but something deep in me, something that had been there, tightening and building for fucking years, began to crack.
A messy knot of emotion seeped out, full of fear, need, shame, loneliness, sorrow, and a thousand other things I’d never been allowed to feel. Slices carved from me by all the times I’d been excluded by my family, treated like an unwanted guest, and seen as nothing more than a curse. Wounds made by my mother’s disappointment left to fester each time she looked at me as if she wished she never had to do so again. I was just a vessel full of deep scars left behind from the first life I’d taken and all the times after that, leaving the wrong kind of mark behind. I was nothing more than bruises on a blank canvas because I didn’t feel it. I didn’t mourn those losses. I didn’t care because no one else cared beyond what I could do for them.
My skin felt too tight and prickly. My chest throbbed, and that messy knot unraveled into rage, turning into something else that couldn’t be hidden or contained. I threw my head back, a scream of frustration and fury burning my throat. From inside the vast cavern that had shattered open, heat rose from within the emptiness. Power. It felt like it had always been there, bright and hot, ancient and unending. Power flowed through my veins. Silvery-white light crowded my vision—