Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Ditch stared at her with raised brows.
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
Raised brows and a flick of a demonic tail.
If Ditch had slayed Lazara, a warrior witch of no mean power, she could murder Meera without blinking those pale eyes. “I can make people angry.” At Ditch’s spark of interest, she quickly added, “It’s very inconsistent. I can’t control it at all.”
“When has it arisen, Meera?”
Now you remember my name? “Whenever I am angry. Which means I just get myself into huge, unproductive rows. The madder I get, the madder another gets, and we just feed into this awful cycle.” Singlehood forever! Good thing few witches cohabited with others.
“You think this is a curse?” Dramatically biting her knuckle, Ditch cried, “Because fighting is wrong.” Her drama evaporated. “Are you a placater? A yes woman? Do you always say yes when you want to say no?”
Meera’s lips thinned because only one answer fit. She miserably answered, “Yes.”
“Imagine using your gift on the battlefield,” Ditch said. “If you developed your ability, you could madden opponents and make them attack—themselves.”
What if I madden the wrong ones? Meera swallowed thickly at a memory, and the demon-witch noted the motion of her throat. Meera longed for Lazara’s no-pressure, you’ll come into your powers when you’re ready approach.
Ditch continued, “I look at you, and all I see is potential wasted in this job. I’m inclined to fire you, starting fresh.”
Let her! Meera didn’t want to work for this lethal female and get embroiled in some Rider plot. “If that’s your wish, I understand—”
“But I’m equally inclined to use you for my own ends.” Ditch rapped her black claws together and said, “There. I’ve decided that you won’t escape my clutches so easily. I have another plan for your destiny.” Her grin was pure devil. “How wicked can we make you, witch?”
Chapter 4
King Thane
Castle Craigdúr
“Wake, my liege!” Lowell yanked open the chamber’s heavy curtains. “Look at that view! The Twilight Sea is shimmering a’plenty for the coming sunset.”
Irritating light glared past Thane’s eyelids. Lowell fucking knew better than to get him up before moonrise. “Go to hell.” He dragged the covers up, whiskey churning in his gut.
“Meeting at dusk,” Lowell called, far too cheerful. Only his right hand would dare.
Seneschal, steward, governing adviser, spine—Lowell Nightclaw kept Craigdúr upright, and he knew it.
“Cancel.”
“Canna. And you would no’ want me to. Could be the most interesting talk you’ll have for an age.”
Interesting? Could anything dent Thane’s ennui? He pulled the covers down. “Who am I meeting?” Maybe the fey game warden to talk about increasing stock across the highlands of Craigdúr. Or a demon king to co-plan a tournament for their people.
“New leader of the House of Witches. Rumors reached us through the nymphs that she’s a demon-witch.” The nymphs carried all manner of Skein gossip, sung so prettily.
“Pass.” Though a shower wouldn’t go amiss right now. He reeked of perfume.
After Thane’s last night of debauchery, even his beast—the inner wolf spirit that each Lykae possessed—seemed disgusted with him. It all but growled, The hells was that, son?
Thane relied more and more on liquor and vice to fill the gnawing emptiness that grew inside him. Always hungry; never sated.
Lowell went on, undeterred: “She hails from the ghostly hills of Akelarre. Word says she slew the last leader.”
Thane was fifteen hundred years old. Leaders tended to come and go, yet he endured. “The last? Lazara?” Even-keeled, for a witch.
“Aye, Lazara the Worthy. No one knows how—she just vanished.”
Odd. Just like Thane’s last seneschal had vanished decades ago.
Damn Lowell for provoking his Lykae curiosity. If this glass-half-full warlaird got his way, Thane would climb the Mount of No Swords to have it out with a demonic witch.
Gods deliver him from bloody Wiccae. Their Red Riders constantly aggressed against the Lykae.
“I ken the script.” Thane sat up, biting back nausea. “I command, she refuses, and we all bleed through the Accession.”
The witches were formidable, the Riders particularly so. He still couldn’t wrap his head around how wee women could take on Lykae, the strongest of the sentient beings in the Lore, but their magic beams—those diabolical hexshots—were a nice little taste of hell.
Unnatural females. The worst of the worst.
He should bind tighter to the Berserkers and break the Riders’ momentum. Yet Queen Yrsa hesitated to war, which made no sense. Her people starved for kills.
“Likely that’s how the meeting will go,” Lowell said. “But you still will attend.”
“And if I doona?”
“That would be a problem.”
Thane shook his head. “At my age, there are no problems, only fewer boring stretches of eternity.”
“Are you no’ dying of curiosity? I bloody am.”
“Or mayhap you want another gander at Lazara’s buxom assistant. Think she kept her post?”
Lowell waggled his eyebrows. “A wolf can hope.”
Thane scowled at Lowell’s never-ending optimism. He didn’t believe the glass was half full; he believed it was broken, forever leaking from a fracture no one could locate.