Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 104729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104729 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
She lifts her shoulders. “Maybe I won’t.”
That makes me chuckle. “You most definitely will.”
“If there’s no more lesson … good night, Alaric.”
“Good night, dove.”
“With this new truce, you can call me Phoenix,” she states.
“But what fun would that be?”
29
Phoenix
I’m shocked by how relaxed Alaric seems. Playful, even. This is a different side to him.
Without his men around, he’s lighter. Funnier. He was always sarcastic, but before, he had a huge chip on his shoulders.
And now, with each day that passes on this tropical paradise, he seems to change.
I wonder if this is the real him. If this is who Alaric Prince truly is and the rest is a front.
Or maybe the actual world is so bad that he had no choice to be any different.
I guess as the saying goes, Only time will tell.
For now, we’re stuck here. I can’t even try to unravel or understand how much I like this unlikely alliance between Alaric and me. But what will happen if we live long enough to be free of this life?
What happens if we make it back home? Will he go after my father again?
I shouldn’t think about it. Right now, the chances of us even … my mind starts to go dark, and then I’m biting down hard on my lower lip.
Maybe I’ll think about it later.
Just not now, when we have finally found a level of peace between us.
I lift a berry I found. “What about this one?” I ask.
“Unless we are planning on a joint suicide, that’s a no.” His words and grim joke have me staring down at the berries in my hand, the ones that look yummy and delicious right now.
The perfect killer. Like Alaric—beautiful to look at but lethal if you take a bite.
But like the glutton for punishment that I am, why do I still want to know this?
“Yeah, I’ll pass on that. How do you know so much?” There is a sick need inside me to find out everything about this man.
“Now, that is a long story.”
I lift my hand and gesture around us. “Does it look like I have anything better to do?”
“Pick berries.” He dismisses my comment with a shrug.
“Since I’m doing such an awful job, you might as well tell me.”
He looks up and to the left as if thumbing through files in his memory before his gaze drops back down and into my eyes.
“I guess.”
He’s quiet for a bit, and when he kneels before another bush, I think he’s not going to tell me, but then I hear his voice.
His low timbre.
I should probably continue to look for food, but when he speaks, I’m too enthralled to do anything but listen.
“My knowledge for the great outdoors is all my father’s doing. To be a man, he believed you needed to be able to survive on nothing.” He looks up, and his eyes scan the surrounding area. “This isn’t my first time stranded on an island,” he says, and I can feel my eyes widening at his admission.
“What do you mean?” My voice cracks with confusion.
“My father was a strict man. He thought a man needed to be able to survive anything.” He stops talking, and I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs. “Alone.”
My stomach muscles tighten, and I can’t even figure out what to say. “How old were you?” I finally squeak.
“The first time he tested me or the first time he dropped me on an island?”
“Both?”
“When I was ten, he left me in the woods alone to find my way. By twelve, I was expected to last a few days. Four, to be exact. By fifteen, I was left for seven days on an island.”
“But why? I don’t understand.”
He stands from where he’s crouched and paces.
“This business was his. To survive in this world—his world—I had to be indestructible.”
“No one is indestructible,” I whisper.
“I know,” he responds, his voice lower and filled with pain. I want to ask him about that pain. Is this about his brother? The brother he thinks my father killed? But at the same time, he’s finally opening up to me, talking to me, and I don’t want to go back to him hating me. If I’m going to probably die in ten days, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a war.
“What was it like?” I ask, still staring at him. I’m still trying to understand this man and what made him who he is today.
“When I had to find my way home, it was horrifying. Again, I was ten. I vaguely knew where I was. I walked for what seemed like hours, and I didn’t eat because I didn’t know what would kill me.” He looks up from the fruit he’s picking and begins to list toxic fruit to me. “Like this. At ten, this would have been the first thing I would have eaten. Lucky for me, I hesitated. I fought past the pains in my stomach and didn’t. Later, when I sat down to prepare, I learned that the fruit I had seen in the woods in the European forest he left me in that day would have killed me. I later referred to them as beautiful small red pods of death. If I had eaten them, I would have vomited, become dizzy and disoriented, then died.”