Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 106107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
It’s why the church and religion are so important to so many.
Why Larimar was so important to me.
She came into my life just as Abe left, showed me there was more than one way to truly connect with someone.
And now, she’s here, and I have to be ready for her resentment and her rage.
I have to figure out how to put my own aside at the fact that she left me and broke her promise.
I have to find a way to control my temper and my own feelings before I destroy this second chance with her.
God, help me do it.
Or the Devil will step in.
I touch the rosary beads around my wrist and try to count back from ten.
The crowd parts, and Maren stumbles forward, holding on to Ramsay for support as the ship slams into another wave. She looks exhausted but triumphant, and when she spots me, she has a keen gleam in her eye.
“Aragon,” Maren says to me before she steps out of the way, showcasing Larimar as Thane carries her. The volcanic fury inside me flares, wanting to erupt. She belongs in my arms, no one else’s.
Easy, Abe says, just in time for me to hold myself back. Easy, now.
“This is my sister, Larimar,” Maren says, eyeing me closely. “I request that you do your magic on her.”
“My magic?” I repeat.
I can’t keep staring at Larimar. She absolutely devastates me. Right here, as I stand, I see her, and I might as well be on my knees.
And she won’t look at me.
That one glance as she was hauled up the side of the boat was all I got.
Instead, she rests her head on Thane’s shoulder, staring at nothing.
Your reaction will determine our fate, Abe reminds me quickly.
“Yes, your magic,” Maren goes on. “I know your powers are strong, Aragon, strong enough to turn a Syren’s tail into legs.”
By now, the crew has gathered around us, eyeing me with this new information, whispering to each other.
I turn my fury to Abe, my eyes burning into him.
“It wasn’t me,” Abe says out loud with a display of his hands. “I didn’t tell her.”
“He didn’t,” Maren explains. “Sometimes, our seeing stone tells us a lot about what happens in the future…and in the past. It’s always nice if we can clarify what we see when we can.”
“And your stone told you I worked my magic on the Syren I caught?” I ask carefully.
She nods. “There’s a reason you were brought on board, Aragon. I knew you were a witch and a monster. I knew you had powers stronger than any of this crew could ever conjure. When the crystal let me glimpse what happened at Nombre de Jesus, I knew we had to have you. Abe’s correspondence with us was the sign we needed.”
I swallow hard, running my fingers over my rosary beads, not caring if the action seems anxious to some. I am anxious. I am wild.
“I won’t do it,” I say.
Everyone gasps, and Maren looks like I slapped her.
Then, Larimar raises her head and looks at me.
She really looks at me.
Her gaze no longer holds a blank stare; instead, those beautiful violet eyes brim with pain and anger and shame.
“It’s best you throw her right back in the ocean,” I say, switching to Spanish so she can understand me, the words like razors in my throat. “Seems that’s where she belongs, not in the world of men and monsters.”
Not in the world of men and monsters like me.
“Priest,” Larimar says reproachfully, hurt simmering in her voice.
She might have been told I was a priest, but it’s the way she says it, with so much weight behind it, that makes Maren frown.
“Wait but a moment,” Maren says, looking between the two of us. “Do you two know each other?”
“Seems your stone doesn’t tell you everything,” I say.
Chapter Thirty
LARIMAR
Icould kill him.
If the man holding me would bring me just a little bit closer, I would launch myself at Priest with the last bit of energy I have, my claws extended and aimed right for his heart. But if I reached into his chest, I’d probably find the space between his ribs empty.
The man has no heart.
The man is a monster.
He never loved me. Of course he didn’t. He never said he did.
He never had a heart to give.
There were many times during the swim with Maren and Nill that I thought about telling her, disclosing that I know this former Father Aragon and exactly how well I knew him.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Because part of me was ashamed. That I was captured by a rabid Vampyre turned priest, and I fell in love with him. That he kept me prisoner and had his way with my body over and over again, and I loved every minute of it.