Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 42412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 212(@200wpm)___ 170(@250wpm)___ 141(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 212(@200wpm)___ 170(@250wpm)___ 141(@300wpm)
My mouth dried as I searched the form before me, looking for his golden eyes. I couldn’t find any hint of them. The fractured beams of light seemed to bend away from him, leaving only a silhouette that was more starlight, dusk, and crimson smoke than man.
“Cas,” I tried again, shivering as the icy-hot tendrils whirled around me.
He remained silent.
I wet my lips, searching for something—anything—to say that would reach him, because he was here and he also wasn’t. “I love you,” I told him. “Always.”
The smoke and shadows throbbed and flickered, thinning until I saw the well-formed shape of his mouth, the fullness of his upper lip, the sharpness of a cheekbone, and his eyes. Gold, like polished citrine laced with silver, dipped in crimson. The mist slowed—
Casteel’s head suddenly jerked to the side, and those lips curved up on one side into a smirk I normally found infuriatingly charming. Now, it carried a blade-like sharpness that promised devastation for whoever it was directed at.
He was waking.
“Cas—”
It was too late.
The churning shadows retreated, slipping back across the frozen waters. The ice cracked and melted into the rising steam.
Cas’s head turned back to me, and I felt his piercing stare for just a second more before the shadows and smoke fragmented.
Then, he was gone.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off where he had stood. Not even as a white, cloudy film descended on the cavern, the walls began to fade, and I could no longer feel the water I stood in or the humid air against my skin.
And then I, too, was gone.
AND FROM THE ASH OF THE FIRST FLAME
Casteel
I was consumed by two things only…
Finding her.
And ending Kolis.
He could only hide for so long.
And her? I’d searched for her in the realm of the waking and knew where she was. But I couldn’t get to her.
Yet.
I did not rest. Not as the days passed. Not as the weeks came and went. I waited with the choking desperation, bitter panic, rage, and guilt that had coalesced into an even tighter knot in my heart. It lodged itself behind the icy mass that had already encased my chest and would not thaw.
And from that frozen abyss, it grew.
It started like a whisper in the night that couldn’t be found, constant and inescapable.
It reminded me of being on the verge of bloodlust, where the skin itched and jaw ached as the mind tunneled to a focus on one need and one need only. It reminded me of the long nights when drinking, fighting, and fucking wouldn’t stop the memories of being chained and taken. My flesh crawled just like then. Pressure coiled tightly within my chest as it had when nothing silenced the taunting laughs.
But this was different. It didn’t feel unfamiliar, though. Almost like it had been there before Pensdurth. Before her Ascension. Even before her. Maybe it had always been there, and it only now had woken up, becoming a fire in my bones and smoke in my veins. It haunted the edges of sleep and whispered while I was awake.
It wasn’t a want nor a need. It was an urge, one that demanded to be unleashed.
To upend the order of things.
To undo.
Unravel.
Unmake.
It was relentless and nearly impossible to contain, quieting when I let it take over. When I hunted. When I destroyed.
And this? Stillness and silence? It was agony and torture as I held myself immobile and made no sound. I let it gnaw at me as I willed myself to slip away into dreams, where I had a chance to find her.
I hadn’t found her yet, and that…
Fucking terrified me.
But I was relentless. With sheer will, I forced myself to sleep and into the dreamless nothing. And I stayed there.
It began with a slow drift into awareness. Then came a tug at the center of my chest, pulling me from somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.
Casteel.
Her voice found me, echoing like an incantation in my blood and carrying the faint, sweet, and heady scent of jasmine. Fractured sunlight pierced the dark, churning, muddy darkness, chipping away at it in sections until I saw gray stone and clusters of lilacs smothering the rock ceiling and hanging from it. Through the cascade of lavender-hued blossoms, I glimpsed the pool of white-tipped, frothing water, and hair the color of polished garnet…
I saw her.
The sight of her stopped time. Crushed me under the weight of relief. Choked me with the desperation I still couldn’t shake. Shredded me with a rage so cold and unyielding that the icy knot throbbed in my chest. I was furious with myself. With Kolis, the Fates, and the very realms themselves for separating us. For stopping me from finding her. For everything she had been put through. For what I knew she suffered, and for the unknown that threatened to drive me insane. And I was furious with her. With her choices. Her decisions.