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)
Pretha shakes her head. “None of the strategies we’ve used thus far have worked.”
“She needs a break,” Kendrick says.
Fast, thudding steps sound in the hall and another sentinel rushes into the room. “Your Majesty,” the male says, “General Hargova sends word from the palace gates. There are soldiers approaching the capital now.”
Brie frowns. “The general is at the palace gates? When did he . . .” Her face goes pale, but she wastes no time before turning away and sprinting down the hall.
I grab Kendrick’s hand and we follow her down one corridor and into another sitting room, where Misha and Felicity—in my form—are standing and seem to be having a silent conversation.
“Where’s the general?” Brie demands, scanning the room.
Felicity pales. “He needed to use the facilities. The handmaid took him.”
“How long ago was that?” Brie asks.
Felicity looks to Misha, panic all over her face. “I’m not . . .”
Brie turns to one of the sentinels standing by the door. “How long ago did Hargova leave this room?”
“It’s been maybe a quarter of an hour, Your Majesty. The maid took him toward the lavatory around the corner.”
“What is it, Brie?” I ask.
“General Hargova just sent word from the palace gates. Which means the General Hargova I met with this afternoon was someone else.” She looks to each of us before turning her full attention on the sentinel. “There’s an impostor in this palace disguised as the general, and we need to find him.”
“A shifter?” the sentinel asks. “I apologize for not noticing, Your Majesty. Next time, I’ll—”
“Not quite a shifter,” Felicity says, voice weak. “He’s an Echo. You couldn’t have known.”
“I’ll sound the alarm,” the sentinel says, and within seconds the halls are filled with guards searching for our intruder.
“Erith?” Misha asks Felicity.
“I think so, yes.”
“Aren’t you the only one who can kill him?” I ask Felicity. “Surely he knew you were staying here, even if he thought I was the one in the meeting. Why get so close to the only person who can kill him?”
“Because we took back the Grimoricon,” Brie says. She rushes from the room and toward her office, and I follow after her, Kendrick following after me.
“Jasalyn,” he says. “We need to get you somewhere safe. Erith is incredibly dangerous.”
“Brie!” I shout, but she turns the corner to her office before skidding to a stop, frozen.
I see why a moment after she does. In the hall in front of Brie’s closed office doors, four sentinels and a handmaid lie pale and lifeless—looking every bit like victims of the faceless plague.
I check my hand to make sure the ring didn’t come back somehow.
“This was Erith,” Kendrick says.
Brie reaches for the door handle and is thrown back against the wall. “Wards,” she seethes. “Wards around my own damned office in my own damned palace.”
Screams tear through the air and echo through the palace halls, so loud and piercing they mask the ceaseless thunder rolling overhead.
Confused, I look back and forth between Kendrick and Brie. “What is—”
Three males come around the corner, blades drawn. Their eyes go wide when they spot us—or rather, when they spot the shadow queen, who is still scrambling to her feet after being thrown by the wards.
Blades sing all around me as the males lunge for us. Kendrick shoves me behind him and plunges his sword through the chest of the first in line. The other two roar, and charge.
Brie throws out her hands and shadows wrap around them, holding them in place while Kendrick slices his sword across their throats.
They fall to the floor with a wet thud that turns my stomach, but I make myself look. At their drab olive uniforms, at the upturned crescent moons tattooed on their necks.
This is the consequence of me not finding my powers. Mordeus’s forces will attack my sister and her people until the palace is theirs.
Kendrick takes me by the shoulders and turns me to him. “Are you okay?”
“Kendrick!” I try to shove him aside as the next attacker turns the corner and throws her dagger, but Kendrick is faster and puts himself between me and the flying steel.
It hits him in the side of his arm, making him drop his sword.
As Kendrick crouches to retrieve it, his opponent lunges with her own sword, only to freeze mid-swing, then fall to the ground.
Remme’s chest heaves as he scans each of us—looking his king over twice. “You’re hit.”
“I’m fine.” Kendrick rises, sword in hand. “What is happening, Remme? Where did they come from?”
“Portals are opening all through the palace, and dozens of these assholes are pouring out of each one.” He looks to Brie, who’s leaning against the wall as if wielding enough shadow to paralyze those two fighters used up all her magic.
“Brie, are you okay?”
“The wards,” she says, nodding to her office door. “They zinged my power a bit, but it’s trickling back.”