Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 137017 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 685(@200wpm)___ 548(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137017 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 685(@200wpm)___ 548(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
I told God everything. How different Kalon was, how the timeline was messed up, how I’d exploited my knowledge to make connections in order to survive later on. Everything I’d wanted to rant out over the last few days exploded out of me at him, and when I was done, I dropped back onto the lounger with a big huff.
“Interesting. Do you feel better now?” He looked slightly bemused by my outburst.
“Yes, I do.”
“Allie, I believe the answer you’re searching for is a lot simpler than you think it is.”
I rolled over and met his golden gaze. “Really?”
“Yes. What changed everything in this timeline?”
“Me.” I gripped the edge of the lounger. “It’s my soul existing there. I knew that already. I was the one deciding what to change, but… That doesn’t explain Kalon’s difference in personality, does it?”
“Sure, it does.” God shrugged a shoulder. “You’re a different person than the soul who resided in this body previously. It makes sense he’d treat you differently.”
“No, I…” I frowned.
That didn’t seem right.
It was almost as if… As if…
No.
It wasn’t possible.
Was it?
“You want to ask me something, don’t you?” He smiled.
“I don’t think it’s something you’ll answer, though.”
“Try me.”
“Okay, fine.” I sat up and crossed my legs once again, turning to face him. “Have I… No. Has my soul existed in this world before? In one of the forgotten timelines?”
He swung his legs around and leant towards me, and his eyes sparkled with a childish charm. “Would you like me to tell you the answer? Or would you like me to show you?”
Something told me I would regret either one of those options.
“Show me.”
Chapter Thirty-Six – Kalon
The Link
“I can’t believe it’s taken you three days to find a cheap mercenary,” I said, staring at the rugged man behind the bars of the dungeon cell.
Rugged was an understatement. He’d been thoroughly beaten if the swelling and bruising on his ugly face was anything to go by. His arms were bound behind his back, but his right shoulder hung at an awkward angle as if it’d been popped out of its socket.
I couldn’t find it within me to care.
Hayes coughed into his hand. “If it weren’t for me, Your Highness, we still wouldn’t have found him.”
“Why do I think I insisted that you be part of the investigation? I don’t trust the Imperial Knights.”
Sir Chester cleared his throat. “You can’t say that out loud here, sir.”
“I can say what I want. My lack of trust in anything related to the Empress is hardly a secret, least of all to you and my father.” I motioned to the lock. “Open it.”
He stepped forwards and unlocked the cell door, pulling it open for me.
I stepped inside the musty box of a room and glared at the man before me. He really was nothing special. There were mercenaries like him riddled through the empire, and he didn’t seem to have any special talent that set him apart from anyone else.
He was, in a word, disposable.
“Roderick Coleman, twenty-six-years-old, born in the town of Lurdnors to a prostitute mother and unknown father,” I said, reading his profile off the report Ezra had provided me. “Grew up in the red-light district and apprenticed as a blacksmith as a teenager before being kicked out for stealing. You’ve drifted from job to job ever since.”
Roderick tilted his head to the side and peered at me through a swollen eye that was coloured with shades of blue and purple. “Yeah, and?”
I chuckled. “You’re pretty cocky for someone who has no control over his life right now.”
“What does it matter? I already know you’re going to kill me.”
I was.
And it was going to hurt.
He was going to beg me for every last miserable second of his pathetic life.
I shrugged and leant against the bars behind me. “Maybe, maybe not. That depends how much information you’re going to give me. If you talk, I’ll let you have a fair trial.”
“If you don’t kill me, she will.”
“Who’s ‘she?’”
He said nothing.
Ha. So, that’s how this was going to go. “Let’s talk about the wraithhusk. Where did you get it?”
His shoulder twitched. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“I don’t believe you. I’ll ask you again—where did you get the monster?”
“It was there when I arrived.” He coughed, leaning as far forwards as his restraints would let him.
“You expect me to believe that you, a man with no particular talents, was able to coerce a wraithhusk into doing what you wanted it to?”
He shook his head. “It was knocked out. All I had to do was wake it up at the right time.”
“What about the mudlung blood? Are you the one who marked out the path to the rest area?”
Roderick nodded. “I didn’t know where it was leading to. I was given a hand drawn map with it on and told to put it on the trees on that path.”