Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
My dragon rose howling. I dropped low, slipped beneath Jokull’s guard and unleashed a torrent of fire hot enough to melt everything it touched.
Argh! Skin bubbling, bones melting, while the primordial simply rebuilt himself as fast as I destroyed him, continuing to fight Sebastian without a pause in his strikes.
Jokull’s shadow-whip caught me across the ribs and threw me the length of the hall into the sideboard.
“That looks like it hurt,” Harpa said from the cage. “I’d come out and help, but it’s not my time to shine yet.”
I ignored the pain. Ignored her and climbed back to my feet.
I went left when the shadow came again, my broken ribs grinding. The manor kept coming down around us. A slab from the ceiling crashed where I’d been only seconds ago.
Sebastian drove Jokull toward the east wall, away from me. But did he do it because of me, or because the east wall was better ground? Guess we’d find out. Ignoring every burst of pain, I hurled myself back into the fray.
Jokull fixed on me as if Sebastian wasn’t even in the room. Before I landed my second strike, a black arc of shadow came down on my chest with the whole weight of the primordial behind it. No time to slip free. A tentacle shot down my throat, snuffing out my fire, filling my lungs with water.
I fought, I fought so hard. But nothing helped. My lungs screamed for air. My dragon clawed at my mind. My vision dulled, and realization sparked. Dying?
At least Jokull would die with me. Despite my haze, I could see Sebastian had a clean strike. With Jokull focused on me, another watery shadow already forming, preparing the blow that would end me, his flank remained open. There was no better time for Sebastian to act. Saving my life wasn’t the objective, after all. But…
“Save her!” Harpa shouted. Jokull glared at her, his grip loosening.
“Come back to me,” I called to him as blessed oxygen filled my lungs. But Jokull squeezed again. Harder this time.
Sebastian’s arm lifted, a deadly shadow tentacle aimed at Jokull. Then he stopped.
My husband’s head turned. Toward me. Something had disrupted that terrible nothingness. Broken through. His fingers flexed and muscle jumped beneath his eye.
Sebastian looked at Jokull’s exposed flank.
At me.
Back to Jokull. Then the kraken king crossed twelve feet of rising water and tore the tentacle from my throat, pulling me into his chest. Because he hadn’t just considered the east wall better ground. Or so I reassured myself, even as the flat gray of his eyes told me otherwise.
As I coughed up brine, he turned his back to the primordial and folded himself around me, taking the next blow with his spine.
He staggered, the shadow slicing through him, tearing a piece of the rune stone from his chest. I screamed, but he made a small sound. Then Sebastian Mórisi, King of Krakenströnd, crashed to his knees in the water, his arms still sheltering me, blue blood pouring from his mouth and his wound.
He looked at me. No recognition. No farewell. No final flicker of love. Just a man’s eyes, flat and gray and emptying, fixed on a face as if it belonged to a stranger.
“Stay with me.” I tried to patch his wound. Tried so hard. “Stay with me, stay, stay—”
His eyes closed. His chest went still. And the brand on my chest snuffed out.
“Nein,” I said, shaking my head. “Nein. Nein.” He couldn’t be dead.
“All is not lost for you, girl,” Jokull announced behind us, horrifyingly smug. “Not yet. Not until I tear out the rest of it.”
The rest of it. Understanding. The biggest part of the rune was still lodged in Sebastian’s chest, where his heart should have been. I could feel it even now, cold and enormous and already looking past the ruined body it had lived in for six days, hunting its missing piece.
I realized then that simply getting through to Sebastian never would have worked. Whatever I did, the rune would’ve only put itself back together, the same way Jokull did with his body.
Because the ancient artifact wanted what we all wanted. To belong. That’s why it asked permission. Now, surrounding a heart, it could only act as a barrier. And it craved more.
Its pull intensified until the fragment flew from Jokull’s fist and came home. Sebastian’s chest lifted. Color returned to his cheeks. His eyes opened. Flat, gray, empty. Alive, and still gone.
I could think of only one thing to do. If the rune needed to belong, it longed for a family. And if it wanted a family with Sebastian, it was getting me, too. “I love you,” I told my husband. Then I leaned down, pressed my lips to his, and poured liquid fire down his throat.
He jerked as if preparing to fight me. But he didn’t. He gripped my shoulders and let the lava flow. Fire ringed his irises and charred his chest until I saw the rune stone in its perch, right where his heart resided.