Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Bakis, the eldest of the orcas, swam ahead of the others, always the quietest, always sensing my feelings even when I didn’t want him to.
“You’re back,” I whispered as the wind picked up, splashing more water against the rocks and against the large whale. “I’d say it’s nice to see you again, but…”
His thoughts were quiet.
Maybe that was his one kindness.
He was waiting for the question I always asked before and the question I always asked after.
How many more times would I need to ask? And how many more times would the despair threaten to swallow me whole?
Finally, I opened my mouth and whispered, “What do you see?”
He was quiet for a moment, then he broadcast his thoughts like a low rumble in the wind. “Carnage.”
I shuddered. “And the girl?”
“Dead,” he answered, not for the first time. Then, “Alive.” He grew quiet again. “I see many things this time.”
“You see many things every time.”
“Choices…” Delphi swam by and splashed the rocks. “Are ripples in time. This is your journey. You must travel it.”
“And if I decide I don’t want to participate this time?”
“We die,” they thought in unison.
What sort of cruel person had tied my fate to the ancient creatures’? To the last remaining oracles on earth?
With a heavy sigh, I stood up and held out my arms. “I guess I’m ready then.”
I peeled off my shirt, kicked off my shoes, dove into the icy water, and let the waves take over as I sank deeper and deeper. At the very bottom, twenty or so feet down, the box was glowing. I grabbed it as air squeezed out my lungs and shoved my body back up to the surface.
I was a soaking mess when I made it back to shore, and as expected, the orcas had gone out to sea.
Leaving me alone with my dark thoughts as I opened the centuries-old box and pulled out the ring the Matchmaker had spelled, aligning the families at Plymouth.
It was as black as death, but I knew soon it would change colors. I just didn’t know why because every time this happened, I remembered the beginning, I remembered talking to the orcas, I remembered the first touch, and then all I could remember was the end: the blood and the look on my love’s face as I failed her again.
I took notes every time she came back into my life, and every time, on that last day, with blood dripping from my fingertips, I would search the house and find nothing but my own paralyzing screams as they rained from the rooftops.
I pulled the ring out and squeezed my eyes shut as memories pounded into me.
“How DARE YOU!” the witch screamed, her eyes flashing from emerald green to white. “You think you know better than me to choose who you love when it has been ordained before the gods?”
My mother took a step forward, her arm outstretched as if to pull me back. My father’s eyes were cold as stone. The jewels around his neck turned black and swirled with red as his anger pulsed.
For no son had ever disagreed.
No prince would dare, would he?
But love asks us to do many things that seem wrong yet feel right, down to our very existence.
On one side of the fire was my betrothed.
And by my side—the one who held my heart.
“You want this one?” The old Matchmaker shot me an evil smirk. “Then have her… For eternity.”
And just like that, my life changed.
Damned.
I clutched the ring to my palm and slowly made my way back to the car, I wasn’t sure where I was driving. I wasn’t sure of anything other than I needed this time to be different. I needed to have faith.
But how do you have faith when both heaven and hell refuse to take you? When you served endless purgatory on an earth you no longer wished to claim? Next to humanity that grew stupider with each passing year?
A dark cloud of frustration seemed to follow my car as rain pounded against the roof, around and around I drove.
Until I reached the end of town.
I parked and stared at the long winding road that led away from here.
The pain returned full force, so debilitating that it was hard to breathe as I slowly turned my car around and drove back toward the house, past the orphanage and the old taffy factory.
Damned.
Why the fuck did I even try?
And just like that, I tucked the ring into my pocket and slowly made my way up the cracked stairs, clothing soaked. I went into the library, and I did what I always did.
I searched for answers.
I conducted my research.
And I prayed to the gods who’d abandoned me before I could even ask for help—to take pity on a man so broken and bruised that he was hardly living.