Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
My gaze jerks toward the door, where Micah is stalking this direction, an unnerving realization considering I wasn’t aware of him entering the room, but then I was just a little focused on the intimidating process of slicing my hand open. He’s in front of me in a blink, capturing my wrist as he tugs me roughly toward him. “Drop the crystal,” he orders.
I blanch, stunned by the fierceness of his anger. “The spellcast book said—”
“Drop the damn crystal, Ember,” he orders again, his voice pure steel.
I drop the crystal. His hand flattens on my hand, and there’s warmth there that becomes heat for a sizzling second before he releases me. I glance down to find my hand fully healed. I blink at it and then him. “You…How?”
“What were you trying to do, Ember?”
Anger radiates off him, a hot furnace threatening to burn me alive. “I…You left the book, and—”
He catches my shoulders, and not gently. “Release the serpent? Is that what you wanted?”
All of a sudden, I’m aware of his accusation, as if I was trying to set free an enemy inside his garrison. “No. God, no. I mean, yes and no. I just…I wanted to prove my familiar isn’t that thing. Isn’t him. I swear to you, Micah, you left the book, and I found the spell, and I thought…we both need to know.”
He studies me with cutting eyes, his fingers digging into my flesh. He’s trying to feel me, to read and understand the good or bad of me, and it scares me that he’s not convinced one way or the other.
“Go in my head,” I say. “Do it. Go into my head and see the truth. I have nothing to hide.”
The Sacred Book of Nephilim
Magic sparkles in brilliant colors, alluringly beautiful, enticingly powerful, but in the light, there is darkness. And in darkness there is—death.
Chapter twenty
Micah’s grip on my wrist is a vise, and his eyes are crystal blue blades cutting through me. He thinks I’m with Jeremy. He thinks I’m one of them, here to betray him and hurt his people, and it’s killing me. “Whatever you think I planned, I swear to you, I did not. Read my mind,” I demand again. “Do it now. Do it and stop doubting me.”
His chest lifts with a breath, his jaw a tight band about to burst, but he does nothing, says nothing. “Micah,” I plead.
Abruptly, he releases me and turns away, pressing his hands onto the counter, his fingertips splayed just beyond the blood splattered there, the knife I’d used to cut myself in his direct line of sight. “Damn it, Ember,” he curses, rotating to face me. “Do not fuck around with magic you don’t understand.”
I bristle at his bullish tone. “You told me to embrace what I am, but I can’t do that when there’s a serpent showing up in my head. I need it to be gone. And what if it’s Jeremy and he’s killing my true familiar? What if too much time has passed and it’s too late—too late for it and me?”
“You wait on me. You wait until you learn. You have twenty-seven years of learning to do. Wait on me,” he repeats. “The end. You wait, and you do it right.”
“You don’t trust me,” I snap back, “or you wouldn’t have come in here and all but ripped my arm off.”
“Holy fuck, Ember, I want you to run with anything you’ve mastered, but this, this is magic those who’ve trained for generations have not mastered. You have not mastered. If you’d finished that spellcast, Jeremy might be here right now, ripping pain and death through my entire garrison, Ember. You listen to me. You do this my way, the right way.”
“My God, you’re arrogant. How did I not get that until now? Oh wait. I did. You’ve been an arrogant ass from the moment I met you. I guess everyone bows to the great and grand Overseer and Crystal Seer. Well, guess what? I am not everyone else.”
“I’m quite clear on that point.”
“A familiar is not a reptile. It’s in all the books. And my familiar could be dying right now, suffocated by Jeremy.” My hands are shaking, my voice lifting with emotion, with my fear of where my story ends. “And then what? Do I die? Does he take me over? Do I become like him? I don’t want to be one of them. I won’t be one of them.”
“Your familiar cannot die,” he says, his statement absolute. “It’s a part of you, woven into your soul. It’s been with you from the day you were born, and at some point, I know you’ve felt it there, felt it with you, helping you. If that had been a serpent, I believe you would have turned out a much different person.”