Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
“Father,” I say in a commanding voice. “Come unto me now.”
In response, I hear the laughter of a sadist.
And then the voice that I have known in my dreams for as long as I have been hidden among the humans.
“Sorrel.”
Ninety-Three
The Dark King.
My father comes out of a fissure in the spoiled ground, rising up from the red dirt, surrounded by an aura of the black fire that spits and hisses like vipers in a pit. His evilness is breathtaking, his energy so awful that a wave of sickness goes through me, affecting not just my stomach, but my head. And oh, he is horrific looking. The Dark King is a horned monster who stands upright on two powerful, trunk-like legs, the skin over his musculature red as the landscape, his hideous hands sporting talons sharp as knives, a flowing black mane sweeping out behind him in a wind that seems to blow against only him, for there is not even a breeze around me. There are no weapons upon his body, nothing holstered or tied; then again, he needs nothing of conventional armaments, does he. And he’s clothed only by a black cape that billows from his massive shoulders, and a binding to cover his loins.
His eyes are all black, the gaze a void that has a pull to it such that I’m careful not to dwell on his stare, and his smile carries the stinking sweetness of death’s decomposition.
“How I have missed you, daughter mine.”
The voice is utterly captivating, a seductive purr that weaves into the syllables the promise of riches to the greedy, love to the obsessive needy, sex to the ugly and unwanted, power to the pitiful and petty—if only you are willing to give your soul in return.
“She hid you from me, all these years, hundreds of years. But that makes our reunion all the better, does it not.”
Now his smile widens, revealing black fangs like those of the ogres, like what is in the mouths of the black spiders. I see now that those are his creatures, breeding in their prescribed territories, locked into that valley by the dragons that sail high above and keep the populations in check.
As with that contaminated red acreage, those beasts are the remnants of something that once was, just before he was imprisoned.
“Your mother is the evil one, you know. To keep a father from his child. It is unconscionable.”
I’m only half listening to him. I can see it now, the statues outside of the ruins of that city, the woman looking away, the man jealously captivated. He built that all for my mother, whoever she was, set those temples and the statues as a lovely trap, the center goddess what he worshipped and sought to keep in place.
A pampered cage, for a twisted love.
“She needed to hurt me.” He puts a clawed hand over his broad chest. “And she knew that the two of us together, you and I, are a force unconquerable. But I took care of her. Where she is now is a fitting punishment, worry not. You have been avenged, my daughter, and now we are reunited—and I am free. Thanks to the magic in you.”
I snap to attention. “I am not getting you out of here.”
“Are you sure about that.”
“Very.” As a welling enmity boils up within me, I realize for the first time that love is complex. Hatred is not. “And you can’t kill me for a second time.”
“Oh, I was not the one who did that.” That smile lingers like a curse. “And what if I told you that if you give me what is required to release me, I would give you something in return. A familial exchange, the one thing that you want most for the one thing I need most.”
“I require nothing—”
“You are lying to yourself. What of that man I sent to you.” The words flow through the air toward me like a banner announcing safety, like a heat source in the winter, like a balm for pain. “He was right, you know. Everything he said to you was his truth. He fell in love with you.”
“As if I’m going to trust you about anything—”
“But what if you could believe him again. What if you could go back and have what was lost. Do you mean to tell me that isn’t of value to you.”
For a split second, a yearning claws into my chest. He’s right. I only want to return to that place I was in, when the only danger that mattered was the physical kind, when I was united in purpose with a man of strength and protection, the other half of my whole by my side with me none the wiser about what is coming.
What did Merc tell me, though … if you enter the Fulcrum, remember that not all is what it seems.