Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
A muscular shoulder shrugged. “She needs no help. She’s fine. The spell won’t harm her at all, and she’ll still have a babe.”
“With the wrong soul,” Lilith insisted.
“Then her witch friend should save her,” Lucifer countered. “I don’t have a hold on her. She can move at any time.”
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t force myself to move.
Because you’re weak, and it will be so much better to be back in the shadows. Where you belong. You are nothing, but the truth is you won’t care when you’ve taken your proper place again.
I lost my magic before. Lost my faith. Lost my light.
They didn’t have to stay lost.
What Lilith had said sunk into my soul.
This was a prison of my own making. Not the torture Myrddin had put me through, but the stubborn refusal to feel the pain so I could start to heal. I wanted an easy way and there was none, but I didn’t hurt merely myself. If I didn’t find a way to fix it, everyone would suffer.
I looked down at my best friend.
She wants to keep you down, Myrddin whispered in my head.
No, she fucking didn’t. She wanted me by her side. Kelsey had never done anything but hold my hand when we went through something terrible. I had been angry at the world, and I’d vented in the safest place I knew. My friendship with her.
She would forgive me, too.
Faith. I had it in her. If I could get that back, I could get it all back.
I watched as Kelsey tried to pull the necklace off, but she seemed weak.
I hated seeing her weak. She’d likely felt like this when she’d seen me on the grass dying that day twelve years before. And she’d been strong enough to help bring me back.
You are weak. I’ll make you strong again. I’ll make you Profane again. You can leave all of this pain behind. Leave your name behind and simply be my enforcer.
No pain. No guilt.
No joy. No love.
No Casey or Kelsey.
I felt my finger move.
Why would he pick me if I was weak? What would the point be? He wouldn’t. If I was a weak witch, he would have killed me, rolled my head to the rebels, and moved on.
Instead, he’d made sure to mold me into a killing machine.
Because I was fucking strong.
Because I was Olivia Carey, and he had no power over me.
Like I was breaking through ice, I felt the spell crack around me, fissures forming and allowing me to move. Power. It was there. It had been for a long time, and he’d tapped into it, using me like a battery. What they’d told me so long ago had been true. My magic had come back, and it was mine, not some borrowed magic. It had been tainted and twisted with the demon blood until I didn’t recognize it, but now I did.
And that collar couldn’t hold me. Nothing could bind my magic.
It raced through me, a wave I didn’t bother to try to tame. I felt the collar break, felt the pulse of power, and then my muscles moved and I did what I’d intended to do when I portalled into this place. I stepped in front of my best friend and protected her. Like she would have protected me.
I let go of all the hate I’d held in my heart when I’d banished the warmth because it had been too hard to hold on to. I let myself be that soft, loving Olivia Carey I’d been and found the fierce warrior I’d become despite every single thing Myrddin had done to me.
I found the stream Mama Sloane was sending and plucked it from the air around me. The magic. I could see it, could feel it in a way I never had before. I was connected to it, and I could command it. I pulled on that thread and did exactly what that bitch wanted me to do. I pulled her out of time and space and gave her corporeal form.
She fell in front of me, but she no longer looked beautiful and young. Her slender form was gaunt and aged, her blonde hair a sickly gray and thin.
“Mother?”
I turned and Gray was helping Kelsey to her feet. Fenrir bounded over, placing himself between me and the witch on the ground.
It was a sweet gesture, but I didn’t need it. “Watch over your mom, Fen. I’ll handle this.”
“Yeah, you will.” Evan had a big grin on her face. “I’m pretty sure you broke Lucifer’s hold on all of us. And in his own freaking realm.”
“She did not.” Lucifer was scowling, but I noticed he’d dragged Lilith behind him. “She broke the wizard’s hold and set her own magic free. When it was apparent she was going to win, I let everyone go. I thought it was perhaps the old Lord Sloane. He might have been easier to work with than the child.”