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)
“You bring it out in me,” I say, then regret how flirtatious the words sound.
Misha closes his eyes for a beat, and in the next the wind in the trees outside grows both louder and more comforting, the leaves rustling in a way that’s almost their own song.
The tension in my muscles releases and my eyes float closed.
I part my lips to tell Misha how nice this is, how relaxed I feel, but I hate to interrupt the lovely melody that’s washing all my cares away. I’ll tell him in a moment. Just one more moment.
Chapter Fifteen
Jasalyn
The three-headed beast snarls, long streams of saliva dripping from its lips.
Die before you can fix what you broke or die taking Mordeus with you.
I don’t let myself think. I plunge my hand into the flame and grab the Sword of Fire.
Flames snap at my flesh, devouring it and incinerating skin, but I force myself to hang on.
“Take me to Mordeus,” I demand of the sword with the last of my will.
A swirling black vortex opens as the beast lunges toward me. I hurl myself into the darkness and the old blacksmith’s hut disappears.
I drop the sword to the stone floor and clutch my ravaged hand to my chest. It’s bright red and raw and already covered in blisters and pustules. Seeing it makes the pain scream louder in my head. I tear away part of my shirt and wrap it up.
Blood oozes from my thigh onto the stone floor and my hand pulses with pain. The agony and the despair work together, trying to pull me under, but I fight it. When I draw in a breath, putrid rot hits my nose, and I jerk into awareness, blinking as I look around.
The smell is sickening, a scent so thick it shoves itself into my nostrils and clings to the back of my throat, threatening to make me lose the contents of my stomach.
I’m in a dark room open to a long corridor, and moonlight pours in through a high window, illuminating a corpse on a stone bed. Mordeus.
I push off the ground, stumbling when I try to put too much weight on my injured leg. Weakness from blood loss threatens to pull me back to the floor, but I limp deeper into the room, following the scent every instinct tells me to turn away from.
The sight of him is worse than the smell. His flesh hangs from his skeleton as if it’s no longer properly attached. The bone of his left arm protrudes from where the flesh has been cut away—or maybe even eaten.
His cheeks are gaunt and when I get close enough to look, there’s nothing but squirming maggots where those horrible silver eyes used to be.
He’s not resurrected. This body is the picture of death. How could any magic, great or small, bring him back in this vessel?
The moment I’m convinced that’s impossible, I realize his chest is moving. Barely. But slowly—lifting and falling with the telltale movement of shallow breath.
He lives.
A shudder racks my shoulders. He lives. How can such a horrific, pathetic creature make me want to run? Want to curl into myself and hide?
I don’t let myself back away or even take my eyes off him. Because his hands are folded across his stomach, and on one finger is a ring that’s a match to mine.
He orchestrated all of this. He’s been using me and manipulating me every step of the way.
I reach for my blade with a shaking hand. Maybe I should go back for the Sword of Fire, but I don’t think I’m strong enough to pick it up, and I can’t risk sacrificing my remaining good hand. There’s no way a body this ravaged, this weak, could survive my iron-and-adamant blade.
I might not understand how this corpse can ever become the fearsome faerie who will steal the throne from my sister and rule the shadow court, but I don’t need to understand. I will end him before he has the chance.
Every muscle in my body trembles as I lift the blade over my head, prepared to strike, to cut out his wicked heart and toss it into the sword’s flame so it can never be used again.
I swing the blade down, and it sinks too easily through rotted flesh and decaying bone.
Laughter sounds behind me, low and devious.
I yank my dagger from Mordeus’s chest and spin around, blinking as the shadows part to reveal a laughing fae male. His face is so familiar, but I can’t place him. He strides toward me, gobbling up the ground with his long legs until he stands before me.
“You can’t kill something that’s already dead,” the faerie says, nodding to the corpse behind me. His white hair is tied back, and he smiles as he watches me clutch my blade, adjusting my grip on the cool metal hilt, preparing to strike.