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)
The invisible hand releases from my neck, and I drop to the ground and gasp for air.
Every inch of me burns and I’m not sure I have the strength to stay on my feet through the pain.
Mordeus licks his lips. “There’s the power I’ve been waiting for.”
“The power you’ll never touch.”
He stalks in a circle around me and looks me over. “I don’t think you understand what’s happening. There are two of us here—two souls entangled in a battle for a body that cannot hold us both. Not fully. And I am unable and unwilling to live on scraps anymore.”
“If you want a second life so badly, you’re going to have to live it in that rotting corpse.”
Shadows dart forward and shove down my throat, so much like the food he forced me to eat to sustain me. I choke and gag. “This is not a battle I will lose, little human.”
I hurl my shields—my power—toward him. It’s energy and I feel it, feel its potential and its magic, but all I can do is blindly shove it in his direction. His shadows surge to deflect as easily as swatting a fly, dancing around his fingertips as he circles me, but I’m no longer the little mouse who can do nothing but run. I circle him too, hands raised in front of me, open and ready to strike.
“You are a disgrace to faekind,” he says, sneering. “Rejecting your magic, rejecting your immortality, hiding from darkness. Mab must be rolling in her grave to have the world connect your weakness to her strength.”
“You’re the disgrace,” I say, letting my power fill me. “You were born with great gifts. Magic that could change the world and you used it for greed and power.”
He strikes, a ball of darkness plunging into my belly. The air rushes out of me as I’m thrown back. I teeter, struggling to find my balance when my lungs refuse to take a new breath.
“You’ve come a long way.” He looms over me. “The little girl from my dungeons would’ve been begging for death by now.”
A jerky inhale finally gives my lungs the air I need, and I roll to dodge his next strike. Anger boils inside me, and I hurl amorphous power at his face, completely missing when he spins away. “I’m not that little girl anymore,” I shout.
“What do you want to live for anyway?” he asks. “I watched what was happening at the palace. Everyone you care about is dead. There is nothing and no one left for you.”
“Liar.” They aren’t dead. Not yet. I can’t believe that. “They are going to fight and they are going to survive. Unlike you.”
Shadows swirls around his feet as he cocks his head to the side. “Your pretty Eloran male is dead, is he not? Because you drove your blade into his chest.”
Grief and panic steal my breath—the memory of Kendrick on the ground, blood oozing from his chest. I shove it aside. Mordeus is trying to make me give up. If I have nothing to live for, he wins. “If he’s gone, I fight for him. I will defeat you to honor him.” I gather my power, preparing for my next attack.
“That’s so sweet. And your sister too?”
I freeze. “What about my sister?”
He waves a hand and an image appears behind him. Abriella’s body, strung up at the gates of the Midnight Palace, her neck snapped, her head hanging limply at an unnatural angle. “While you’ve been here, fighting for a life you don’t even want, my army finished the job. The revolution is here. You’ve already lost.”
His shadows fill the room, stealing all the air and pressing in on me. Darkness deeper than anything I’ve ever seen. This is the darkness that will swallow me. This is the night where I’ll meet my end.
I fight to breathe, but there’s nothing there. My lungs ache, compressed and empty and desperate for air.
“Surrender.” The word is a scream that comes from between my ears. It’s a plea that comes from the little girl who didn’t know how to fight the monster who was torturing her. It’s there before me, a path, after so much pain and suffering and fear, to the peace I’ve craved.
And I don’t want it.
I strain to push my power back against his darkness, but I can’t. There’s nothing for my fire to feed on. There’s nothing but shadow and night and fear.
You can’t win unless you accept who you are. Karmyn’s words come back to me. Not the phoenix. You’ve always appreciated fire. You have to be all of who you are. Even who you don’t want to be.
I thought she meant I needed to be fae, but maybe she means I’m more like Brie than I ever thought. My sister embraces the darkness and manipulates shadows like they’re her own personal infantry. I, on the other hand, have always run from the shadows and cowered from the approaching darkness.