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)
I’m back in Mordeus’s dungeons. The knives and cuts and blood and pain.
I’m in the dark. And I’m all alone.
I can’t make myself look around. Can’t make myself confirm what I knew the moment this place appeared around me.
I can’t stop the sobs that tear from my chest. Because of the pain consuming every inch of me. Because of the terror. But mostly because I’ve come this far, and I still don’t know how to win.
This is just another one of Mordeus’s games.
No. Abriella killed him. I was freed from that horrible place, and Mordeus is nothing more than a rotting corpse now.
I open one eye, angry with myself for the way I’m already shaking—a trembling that starts in my gut and radiates out to my fingertips.
His boots are in front of my face. How is he standing? How is that body supporting him? Was it healed? There is nothing weak about that voice or about the presence of the male in front of me. And I know as surely as I knew it back in his dungeons that he could obliterate me with his magic if he wanted to.
I push myself off the floor and force myself to look at him—to face the male I fear most—but before I can get my feet beneath me, a wave of shadow sweeps through the room and grabs me by the throat. I gasp, choke, splutter. The grip is too tight and when I claw at my neck to pull the squeezing hand away, my fingers sweep through nothing but air.
The shadows throw me against the wall. My head snaps back against the stone and pain sears the backs of my eyes. Burning. Why is everything burning?
Ignoring the ringing in my ears and the terror in my blood, I meet his eyes. The maggots are gone, and the silver is back. The decay is gone, his face as healthy and unmarred as it was the day we first met.
“Such a sweet little human. So full of power. So ignorant of how to use it.” His repulsive chuckle sends a dozen spiders crawling up my spine. “This doesn’t have to hurt,” he murmurs, stepping closer. And closer. He lifts his fingers to my cheek, and I am frozen. I am paralyzed like I was during all our visits. Unable to control my own body like I was when he forced food and water down my throat. “I don’t need your suffering any longer, little human.”
I need to think. Where are we? What’s happening?
His soldiers captured me, and I pretended he was in control, and then . . .
“Let me help you,” he says, and the hands of the shadows that hold me ease up a bit. “I don’t need to hurt you anymore.”
I don’t bother to control my glare. “Then why?”
His eyes flash. “I didn’t say I won’t hurt you. I said I don’t need to. Not if you make this easy for both of us.”
“I don’t understand.” Where we are. What he means. How this is even happening.
“Don’t you? All you need to do is surrender. Surrender and there’s no more pain. Surrender and all of this goes away.”
Because he’ll take it. He’ll take my body and my life. “Never,” I breathe.
“Never?” He laughs. “Says the girl who was all too eager to hand over her life to the Eloran witch. Says the girl who prayed to her gods’ deaf ears for death when she was living in my dungeons.” He scoffs. “Never. You don’t have the backbone for never.”
But that’s just it. We’re not in some stony dungeon, and Mordeus isn’t up and walking around in his old body. He hasn’t been magically healed and we aren’t truly in this room.
None of this is real. Except maybe this unceasing agony.
This is some sort of limbo. Some between one future and another. The fact that I’m with him and not dead proves I just might have more backbone than he ever anticipated, proves I wasn’t too late, proves I have a chance.
All I have to do is take it.
“None of this is real,” I snap.
“What is real, little human?” A shadow darts out and wrenches my arm behind my back, twisting until my shoulder feels like it might bust out of my skin. “Is this not real? Or do I need to make you bleed to believe it?”
The pain isn’t just in my shoulder. It’s everywhere. And it burns and I want it to stop—need it to stop.
I don’t know how to wield this phoenix that lives inside me, but I’ve been taught how to shield by the best. If none of this is physically happening, maybe, just maybe, I could use those mental shields to gain an advantage. I gather my power, coiling it tight, until it’s too big to hold, until it’s vibrating with the need to be free. Then, like attacking with a shield, I scream and release it, shoving it toward his shadows.