Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 132625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
He studies me for a long time, his expression solemn. “You aren’t allowed to give up on me. Just because she couldn’t tell you something you could offer Erith doesn’t mean there’s no way out of this.”
The grief in his eyes breaks my heart. I take his face in both hands and hold his gaze. “There is no point in me surviving all of this if everyone and everything I care about are destroyed along the way.” I drop one hand to his chest to feel the steady thud of his heart. “We start here, with protecting the people we love and a future worth fighting for, and the rest will work out as it should.”
“What about me? What can I say to make you find a way to survive for me?”
My mind flashes to the battle the oracle showed me. The bodies littering the corridors of the Midnight Palace. Was that Kendrick among the fallen or is my mind playing tricks on me? Is my panic making me imagine he’d been part of the carnage?
“I have to warn my sister and Misha, but I promise I won’t stop looking for a solution. Not until this body is no longer mine.”
He draws in a breath, and I realize he hasn’t since he asked his question. “Thank you.”
I swallow. “Kendrick, I need you to make me a promise too.”
I can feel how intently he’s thinking, plotting, planning a way to get around my fate. “Anything.”
“The moment he takes over and I’m gone, I need you to end it. To end me.”
He drops his hands from my face and steps back. “Anything but that.”
“I know it’s not fair to ask you, and if we weren’t so close to my birthday, I wouldn’t. But there’s no one else here right now, and in case something happens and we can’t get to the others in time, I need to know it will be taken care of.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t do that. Don’t ask me to do that.”
I close the distance between us and this time I take his face in my hands. His facial hair tickles my fingers. “I’m not asking you to kill me. It won’t be me in here anymore, and when that moment comes—when he has taken over this body, I need you to kill him before he can use me more than he already has.”
His face crumples, and he squeezes his eyes shut and leans his forehead against mine. “How am I supposed to know that you’re gone for good? How am I supposed to be sure that you aren’t still in there somewhere?”
I thread my fingers into his hair and hold him close. “You’ll know. I trust you to know.”
“I can’t.” He cups my face and drops his mouth to mine. His kiss isn’t tender or giving. It’s hard and demanding. This is the kiss of stay with me, the kiss of please don’t go, and it fractures something inside me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper against his mouth. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt my sister. But none of that mattered when I made this deal with the witch—with Erith. I just wanted . . .”
“You wanted to stop hurting.” He nods, and when he brushes a kiss over each cheek, I realize tears have slipped from my eyes. “I wish we could go back. I wish I could change so much.”
I search his face—taking in all the emotions living there. The love and sorrow and fear and desperation. I recognize each one because I feel them myself. “But we can’t. The only moment we can change is this one.”
Gommid is his usual grumpy self when he deposits us on the back lawn at the Midnight Palace. “More wards are about to go up,” he says, sniffing like he can smell them in the air. “You’ll have to go beyond the gates if you call me again.”
“Thank you, Gommid.” I reach into my pocket and hand him the nail clippings I gathered from the trash at Amelia’s. I shuddered in revulsion as I did it, but I knew they’d come in handy.
As soon as he disappears, Kendrick and I head into the palace and straight for Brie’s study, where we find her—as I thought we might—poring over the Grimoricon.
Her head snaps up as if she senses me. She hops out of her chair and runs around her desk to pull me into a hug. She squeezes me and I squeeze her—so tightly that I believe, perhaps more than ever, that if love were enough, we wouldn’t have to carry a single worry for what’s to come.
“I’ll be just out here if you need me,” Kendrick says, and I nod into my sister’s chest, not bothering to release her as Kendrick leaves and the door shuts with a soft snick behind me.