Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 127026 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127026 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
“That isn’t how your visions worked in the past. What did you see?”
“You,” she said slowly. “I saw you in the snow.”
He arched an eyebrow, intuitively knowing she was holding something back.
Her breathing hitched. “With a knife in your chest and blood in the snow, dead.”
Fordham went preternaturally still. “I see. Then, the curse has caught up with me.”
“No,” she said fiercely. “You don’t know that. I am here to stop it.”
“We both know that isn’t how it works. Your visions rarely make sense until they happen, but if I’m dead, then I’m dead.”
She shook her head. “We don’t know that.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. I have to go up the mountain.”
“I’m going with you. You can’t stop me after my vision.”
He looked at her with a resigned look in those eyes. “I suppose that is true.”
Silence lingered between them. Kerrigan reached out and threaded their fingers together. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Not when she was finally here with him again.
“So,” she said, smiling deviously, “when were you planning to tell me you were marrying an Erewan female?”
Fordham shot her an imperious look. “I had no such plans.”
Kerrigan could barely hold back a laugh. “She seemed pretty set on it.”
“You’re as insufferable as ever. Your mouth is the end of me.”
“Then, maybe you should make me be quiet,” she whispered.
He smirked and then tilted her chin up, up, up. He was so much taller than her that she could stand on her tiptoes and still not meet his eyes. They hung in that moment, together again after so long. The kiss they’d shared in the Draíocht was a dreamlike haze in memory. It couldn’t compare to here and now with their bodies nearly pressed together and their breath intermingling.
Fordham drew a line down her jawline, down her neck, and across her collarbone. “You are temptation incarnate.”
She leaned forward into those words. Her chest against his. Her lips ready and waiting. “I missed you too,” she teased.
His mouth dropped until he was nearly upon her lips. She whimpered with need at the intimacy of the moment. The heat radiating off of him. She’d wanted this for far too long.
“After the mountain,” he promised.
She dropped backward against the cave wall. “Ford …”
“When we’re safe and the curse is broken, I am yours.”
“I’m holding you to that. You’re not allowed to die before.”
He nodded once. “As my lady wishes.”
29
THE SNOW
Kerrigan bedded down in a separate bedroll. She’d reached out to Tieran on the spirit plane to explain the situation. He scouted the rest of the way up the mountain but could only go so far before it was too cold, even for him. They’d agree that he should find Netta, who, Fordham had confessed, had been fending for herself during his time in Erewa since they were unwelcoming to dragons, and she would reach out again when they completed their mission.
Between the anxiety, the hard ground under her back, and every little unfamiliar noise jolting her up, she slept horribly. Her magic appreciated even the small amount though. She felt much more herself in the morning. She would need every drop of her magic by the end of this.
She ate leftover boar, packed her bags, and was provided all new clothing for the hike. Enta laughed at her meager cold weather gear. Apparently, what she was used to in the south was nothing compared to this. Her thanks were met with more disdain, and Kerrigan left off.
“Tie this around you,” Mendy said, offering a rope.
“Uh … why?”
“It is to make sure we don’t lose anyone.”
“Comforting,” she grumbled as she knotted the rope around her.
Mendy grinned. “The mountain we climb today is so old that its name has been lost to time. We simply call it the witch’s mountain or the mountain. No one climbs it lightly, and few have made it past the barrier. Fewer have lived to tell the tale. If you wish to reach the top with Ford, then you will follow our every word and try not to upset Enta.” Mendy looked back to her fellow and shrugged.
“I’ll try,” Kerrigan said nervously.
She had never made a climb like this. She had no experience. She could keep her tongue under control long enough to let their guides get them to where they were going.
“And put on these.” Mendy gave her a pair of almost flippers that were flat and attached to the bottom of her boots. “You’re lucky we had an extra pair after Hornace didn’t make it back from his last leg up the mountain.”
Kerrigan gulped. But she added the odd snowshoes to her feet and then got into line behind Fordham. They were tied together. He shot her a grim look, but it was laced with excitement. All of his time here in the mountains had been leading up to this moment. Now, they were finally going to get there.