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)
Natan pushes his glasses up his nose. “It might not be you,” he says. “We’ve seen Mordeus take over from time to time, and he will have to use your gift to take over your body completely. You need to be prepared.”
“We’ve dedicated a lot of our time in the last few days trying to work around the bargain—to get you out of it entirely,” Pretha says. “Even if you find a way to be released from your deal with Erith, Mordeus may still have access to take over your body through the power of your phoenix. If we don’t find a way out of the bargain, he will take over on your eighteenth birthday by burning to ash and rising again. If we do find a way out, there’s no guarantee he won’t still take over.”
“How?” Brie asks.
“Through the blood magic Mordeus used on her,” Natan says gently. “So long as he lives in any form, they are connected. Every one of those scars is evidence of that.”
“He has to be stronger than you—in will and in desire.” Pretha folds her arms across her chest and hugs herself tightly. “I imagine that’s why he worked so hard to break you. So that letting go wouldn’t just be a relief when you were faced with the flames, it would be a gift.”
Tears brim in Brie’s eyes and one slips from the corner. “This isn’t fair.”
The despair in her voice rips through me.
“The moment you decide”—Pretha taps her temple—“that life, that your very existence isn’t worth the pain, that it would just be easier to stop existing, you lose to the phoenix. In any other person with this gift, that would be it. That would be the end. But in your case, if you surrender and he doesn’t . . .”
“Then he wins,” I say, my blood turning as cold as it did when I first got the ring. “And if Mordeus wants to claim my body as his own, if he wants to steal my life, then all he has to do—all this male who has already died once has to do—is make me burn and endure the pain better than I can.”
“That’s right,” Pretha says. “You have to want to live. Want it so much that every moment of suffering and agony is worth it.”
The fires around the perimeter of the palace lawn are spelled to enhance the wards. I stand in the back garden, transfixed by the sight.
Abriella must’ve understood that I needed to be alone because she didn’t try to come after me when I excused myself from our conversation with Pretha in the sitting room. I’ve been out here for hours, watching the flames dance and flicker, licking at the night sky. For years, I dreaded the end of day, cowered at the encroaching night. Then I got my ring and I relished it. Vengeance. Murder. Justice. I craved them more than I feared the darkness.
The soft scuff of boots on stone tells me I’m not alone anymore, and I know without looking, know even without those keen fae senses the others have, that it’s Kendrick.
He wraps something around my shoulders. I close my eyes against the warmth of it, the subtle smell of laundry soap, the comforting brush of his hands as he adjusts the blanket around my neck. “It’s getting cold out here.”
I twist my neck to meet his eyes. “Thank you.”
“May I join you?” he asks.
I shrug, then take a breath and force myself to say what I feel instead of what feels safe. “I thought I wanted to be alone, but I think I’d rather be with you.”
He wraps his arms around me from behind, his hands clasped just beneath my breasts, his chest warm against my back. “You never have to be alone so long as I’m around.”
I don’t bother to bring up Crissa or the fact that I only have one day left. I know his words are a promise he’ll keep as long as he can, and for now, for tonight, that’s enough.
“I was never afraid of fire,” I say, eyes on the crackling piles of brush before us. “I nearly died in a fire when I was a little girl, so perhaps it should’ve occurred to me sooner that there was some uncommon connection between me and flames, but I never gave it much thought. It’s not all that strange to find fires a source of comfort. To want to step closer when they’re near or to find peace in the crackle of burning wood. And then, after Mordeus, I was so afraid of the dark, and fire gave me light. It broke the thing I dreaded so deeply. So I never questioned this pull toward flames.”
He bends down to rest his chin on my shoulder. “And now you think it’s because you’re a phoenix.”