Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Volcanic power.
The same power that dwelled in me.
The edge of the parchment curled with smoke as every droplet of my burning blood fixated on the east.
To the mountains that swallowed souls.
To where Lao Li heard the wind screaming...
Chapter Sixty
“AGAIN.”
“Ugh, you can’t be serious.” I groaned and flopped onto the ground beneath the gnarled tree growing in the centre of Lucien’s courtyard. My eyes strayed to the closed gates. The gates Dillon had locked—keeping us trapped and hidden behind the stone wall.
Dusk had fallen.
Dillon had physically hauled me back ten times already—stopping me from racing through Ashfall Cliff to find Lucien.
Wherever he was, he was burning.
I felt him.
That bond around my heart sizzled and tugged.
He needed me just like I needed him, but...Dillon had taken Lucien’s command to protect me far too literally.
“You can’t keep distracting me like this, you know.” I calculated my odds of bolting to the gates before Dillon could get up from where he’d sprawled on a rattan lounger.
“If you don’t want me lurking around and getting in your way, then prove to me that you can protect yourself.” Wolfing down the tray of fried wontons, meat bao buns, and custard tarts that Auntie Mei had delivered, he pointed at the dead piece of grass where I’d been ‘training’.
The grass was dead because I’d killed it by accident.
“Again.”
“I hate you.”
“Don’t care,” he mumbled around a mouthful. “Do it.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Licking his fingers, he leaned forward and watched me haul my very heavy, very exhausted, very grumpy body off the ground.
“Does it look like I’m afraid of a little cold?” He snorted. “I grew up in the Westfjords. Your little parlour tricks barely qualify as weather. Winter tries to kill you before breakfast there.”
My gaze went to the gates again.
“He’s fine.” Dillon rolled his eyes. “His room might look like an overdone steak, but nothing else has caught fire, which means he’s controlling himself. Just like I want you to do. So go on. Do it.”
I glowered at him, a cold misty ribbon playing around my wrists. “I told you. I don’t know how. The ice responds to Lucien. I can’t wield it. I—”
A small dagger soared straight toward my face—
A blast of hoarfrost detonated from my chest in a violent shockwave, turning everything into frozen glass. The dagger never landed—it hung suspended in midair, trapped inside a casing of ice, inches from my nose.
“There. Finally. That’s what fear can do.” Dillon leapt to his feet, smacking at his frozen trousers, brushing frost off his eyebrows and eyelashes. “It’s emotionally triggered like you said. Good. Again.”
“Are you trying to kill me?” My breath fogged with white plumes even as the courtyard thawed as quickly as I’d frozen it. “Throwing knives at me now?”
“It was a gamble, I agree. See? I ran the risk of being murdered by that psycho you call a boyfriend just to prove you can wield it.”
“He doesn’t like that word. Makes him feel like he’s ten.”
“Certainly acts like it sometimes,” he muttered under his breath.
“I heard that. And if he does, you’re in trouble.”
“His little pyro tendencies don’t scare me. Just like your impression of a fridge doesn’t.” His grin fell as his gaze landed on my balled hands. “Eh, you’re glowing.”
Swallowing hard, I spread my fingers and glowered at the white-blue etchings that looked like snowflakes stamped my skin. “It’s a hazard.”
“Alrighty...well.” He clapped his hands. “Doesn’t matter. I won’t judge and no one is here to see you. Again.”
My gaze flicked to the gates as the bond tugged hard.
Lucien.
What was taking him so long? What was he doing?
“I need to go to him,” I argued. “He’s burning up.”
“Then learn how to use the gifts you’ve been given so you can help him.”
“How are you so rational about all of this? Don’t you find everything crazy?”
“Fuck yes, I do.” He chuckled. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve seen in my life, and I’ve worked at Snowflake Corp for years.”
“Not even going to try to assure me I’m not a freak, huh?”
“It would be a waste of breath.” He shrugged. “You’re the daughter of two of the most renowned scientists of this generation. It’s almost a given that you would turn out...odd.”
Slipping his hand into one of his many vest pockets, he pulled out a small glass vial holding large silver pills. “You’re like these Cryolyt pills. Something that never existed before yet is now mainstream in warfare. They’ve helped countless injured soldiers, just like you’ll—”
“Wait.” Cutting across the courtyard, I snatched the vial out of his fingers. I gasped as the same silver pills that Lucien had used while escaping Cinderkeep rattled behind the glass.
“I was right,” I murmured. “I had seen them before.”
“Your mother was the one who came up with the final recipe for those, I think.” Dillon snatched the pills back, shoving them into his pocket. “All I’m saying is, if they were willing to create and manipulate things in a jar, why would they stop at creating and manipulating you in her womb? You were their greatest experiment.”