Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Now I have them. “Tell me more.”
The sluagh sighs, leans in, and begins to speak.
Hours later, I feel the weight of all the planes on my shoulders. Torin is coming. He won’t stop until all the planes bow to him.
The sluagh leaves, racing away to the caves where his brethren hide. Now all around me is quiet. The Seelie kings speak to each other in whispers, Dante at their side. The rest have an air of shock surrounding them.
War is coming.
“Son, you did well.” My father sits beside me, his weathered face a mask of care. There is a long pause, as though he doesn’t wish to broach the subject but knows he must. “How did you do it? How do you raise the dead? Is it a spell?”
Shim’s eyes roll. “He did it the same way I call forth fire. It’s inside him. It’s the powers we came into thirteen years ago.”
“King Fergus,” Beck interrupts. “I may not know the Unseelie, but grant that my brother and I know what it means to be symbiotic twins. Neither Cian nor I had a whisper of power before we bonded. Not a hint.”
“Yeah, Beck here told everyone it was a myth,” Cian adds. “He still owes me a thousand gold on that bet.”
The warrior king slaps at the Green Man. “Hush. This is no place for sarcasm. Tell them, Ci.”
Cian becomes serious. “I would bet the kingdom I don’t have yet that they’ve bonded. They’re what? Thirty? By the time we turned thirty, we were beginning to fade. These boys aren’t close to fading. They’re powerful. What happened to your bondmate?”
I take a long breath, knowing what I’m about to get into. “She was trapped on the Seelie plane.”
Beck nods. It’s probably a story he’s heard before. “She must be strong if you can still feel the bond.”
“We’ve never met her, but we’ve dreamed of her since we were children.” Shim watches the Seelie kings.
The Seelie kings turn to each other, a silent conversation happening in their heads. I know because it happens between me and Shim. After a long moment, Beck looks over, his face tense. “How would you bond with a woman you’ve never met?”
“I don’t know what it was like for you two,” I admit. “I only know that since I knew what the word love meant, I loved her. She came to me and Shim every night.”
“In our dreams.” Shim takes over. “At first we simply played because we were young. We couldn’t hear her. We just felt. She talked. She talked a lot, but we simply felt her presence. It calmed us each night, and we knew she was the one.”
I remember those times. Bronwyn was a comfort even then. “We could see through her eyes. She’s a strong broadcaster. Sometimes, even during the day, Shim can see her. It’s how we figured out who she was and where she lives. When we were young, we would see and feel her when her emotions were strong. There was a river by her house. Full of fish. She would swim with her brother, her mother watching on. She would strip down to her shift and throw her body in, a wild cry on her lips. She would look up as she floated on the water and wonder where her other brother was.”
I’m well aware of what I’m doing. I’m pulling from her memories. I’m baiting the Seelie kings. But I must prove this truth or they’ll side with my father. Bronwyn has to be saved before the war breaks out.
Cian’s body tenses. “Tell me more about her.”
Shim seems to understand what I’m doing. “She’s the loveliest thing in all the planes. Brown hair and brown eyes. A sweet laugh.” He turns to Dante. “You pulled her pigtails and called her a brat.”
Dante’s mouth drops. “No.”
I don’t wait for further denials. “We bonded with her on the night she died. We felt it. Shim could see it.”
“I saw her run to her mother’s room. She was so scared. I tried to reach out, but she’d taken a knife to her gut.” Shim’s hand drifts to his side, where he felt the knife sink into our mate. “She thought she was dead, and then you came, Cian. You held her. You told her you loved her. And she died.”
Tears fall from Shim’s eyes. He feels it more deeply because he was there with her. I often wish I was there, too, but someone had to ground us all.
Cian shakes his head. “She died. Bron is dead. I couldn’t save her.”
The words slip easily from my mouth. “But we could.”
The Seelie kings stop, their jaws tensing. Their expressions are utterly identical, pained and haunted, and beneath all of it, a breath of hope.
“I don’t believe it.” Cian finally moves, pacing the floor. He runs a hand through his hair. “I felt it. She was dead. I wouldn’t have left my sister. I couldn’t. I couldn’t have left her.”