Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Torra tipped her head back and took a good, long breath of fresh air. “I never thought I’d see the sky again.”
Kierse frowned. “I’m so sorry, Tor.”
“But you saved me. You got me out,” she said with a harsh inhale. “I’ll never be able to repay that.”
“No repayment needed. This was righting a horrible wrong.”
“And he’s really gone.”
Kierse nodded. “He’s really gone.”
Torra swallowed back tears. “Hard to believe.”
“What are you going to do?”
Torra smiled, and it was the first happy expression Kierse had seen on her face since they reunited.
“Whatever I want. I’m free.”
Torra pulled her into a hug. Kierse held her tight, relieved that she had saved at least one person in all that madness. She hoped Louis’s downfall would put a stop to the Men of Valor’s machinations, but she didn’t know that it would for a fact. At least he wouldn’t be able to prey on innocents anymore.
“You could come with us,” Kierse said. “Graves could help you.”
Torra’s eyes went to the monster waiting at the black car. “I don’t think that’s my path.”
“Then go to Colette,” Kierse said when she pulled back. “Nate is on lockdown for another night of the full moon. He can help you after that.”
She swallowed. “You think they’ll still want to help me?”
“We’ve all missed you,” Kierse insisted. “They’ll help whatever you decide.”
“Thank you, Kierse.” She started to take off Graves’s jacket.
“Keep it. I’m sure he has a million of them.” Torra nodded. “Are you sure we can’t drive you somewhere?”
“I think tonight, I just want to walk,” she said, and then, before Kierse could utter another word, Torra turned and headed the other direction.
Kierse hated letting her go, but she knew a freedom walk when she saw one. She’d done what she had set out to do. Torra was free.
Graves pulled the door open for her without a word as she headed his direction. They climbed inside, and Graves said, “Drive.”
The car lurched forward. And the silence was filled by the sounds of their heavy breathing. Kierse set the spear carefully in her lap. She was glad to not be holding it, but a part of her wanted to pick it up again. It was a sickness.
“Let me see it,” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t think it wants me to let it go.”
“It speaks to you?”
“If that’s what you call it.” She shivered. “It seems to want to impose its will on me.”
“That is the essence of the spear. It derives from the story of Lugh himself, who was so skilled that he outsmarted the doorkeeper to be allowed into the court of the Tuatha Dé Danann,” Graves explained. “Only when the gods were outmatched in a great battle did they appoint Lugh their commander. There, he used the spear to slay their enemies.”
“Well, it would certainly like to do that right now,” she said, her fingers grazing the long handle.
“Then it is alive as well.”
She raised her eyebrows as a sinking feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean, ‘as well’?”
His eyes were still on the spear as he spoke. “You already know that of which you ask.”
Kierse racked her brain. “You have another one.”
But he didn’t answer that question, to which she surely already knew the answer. Instead, he said, “There are four magical objects—the spear, the sword, the cauldron, and the stone. After the gods left, the artifacts were thrown across the world, their locations unknown for centuries. Only whispers popped up about each of them. The spear was always the loudest, as it is nigh unstoppable. I have been searching for them for many years.”
“For all four of them?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “They belong to me as much as any other. My mother was descended of the magical line who worshipped the Tuatha Dé Danann. Anyone who is of the line could lay claim to them. Why not me?”
She remembered him saying that he had gone to Ireland, to the people of his mother’s line. She hadn’t realized that he meant this line. Magical worshippers of ancient Celtic gods.
Frankly, she couldn’t process that at the moment. What was important was that he had another object than the spear. He was halfway to his goal.
“Which one do you already have?” she asked.
“The sword,” Graves said. “You hold the spear. There are two more out there yet to be discovered.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
He considered for a second. “A spell.”
“And what does this spell do?”
Graves’s expression went perfectly flat at the question. “Very powerful magic.”
And that was all she was going to get.
Despite everything that had happened between them over the last couple of weeks, he still didn’t trust her with the full truth. She had known from the beginning that this was how it would be. She had wheedled answers out of him the entire way, but he had been keeping his actual intentions close to the vest the entire time. She shouldn’t even have been surprised, but somehow, she was.