Total pages in book: 401
Estimated words: 390373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1952(@200wpm)___ 1561(@250wpm)___ 1301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 390373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1952(@200wpm)___ 1561(@250wpm)___ 1301(@300wpm)
“Just like old times,” he said, straddling my hips as he winked an eye through the blood. He grabbed my hair, yanked my head up, and then slammed it down.
Starbursts exploded in my eyes as I swung out, eather pulsing through me.
He caught my wrist and slammed my head back down again, tumbling my already thoroughly scrambled brain. “Tell me, Sotoria.” He leaned over me as the air charged around us. A presence filled the meadow—a powerful, old presence that felt…vaguely familiar. “Tell me what you think I want.”
“How about I tell you?” came a deep voice with a melodic lilt, much like the Atlantians but thicker.
Kolis snapped the Revenant’s head up, and his bloody lips pressed into a thin line. “Of course,” he muttered. “It’s you.”
A blur of leather-encased legs passed my head a second later, and then a rather large hand gripped the Revenant’s throat. In the next heartbeat, he flew backward and crashed into the same tree I’d thrown and pinned him to earlier.
“Poor tree,” I murmured.
A tall and broad form in all black stepped into my line of sight. Dimly, I knew he was a god—a Primal god—as I dragged my dazed gaze up. A sheathed sword was strapped to his back, and a dagger to each hip. Gods, he was tall. Maybe an inch or two taller than Casteel. The breeze lifted strands of light or maybe dark-brown hair from the collar of his tunic as he turned to look at me.
“Poor tree?” he repeated, his silver eyes beneath a proud brow fixed on me.
I heard him.
I really did.
But I couldn’t respond as I saw his full lips part. His jaw flexed, the chiseled shape unsettlingly familiar. In the back of my mind, I knew I should get up or at least sit up, but I was frozen as my gaze lifted, and I stared at him. At the shallow scar cutting across his left cheek and traveling across the bridge of his nose to end at his hairline.
I blinked once and then twice as those features finally cleared and pieced themselves together. Or maybe it was my jumbled thoughts finally working together cohesively.
My heart started beating fast as my eyes locked with luminous, silver ones. His warm, golden-bronze skin paled, and he seemed as…stupefied as me.
I knew him.
Recognized him.
Not because he so clearly resembled Casteel—he looked more like Malik and was nearly the spitting image of their father.
But because I’d seen him before while in stasis, slipping…falling through countless images of places and people. And he…he had been one of those people.
“Attes,” I whispered hoarsely.
The Primal flinched.
Confused, I wondered if I had yelled his name.
A low, crackling laugh slithered out from behind Attes. “Shocking, isn’t she?”
Attes spun back toward the Revenant as I finally snapped out of my stupor. I scrambled to my feet, groaning at the wave of dizziness that joined the pounding in my head.
“Kolis?” Attes barked out a short laugh that sounded like one of Casteel’s. “You look…unimpressive.” He paused. “As usual.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he responded as I walked forward. “Just like you kept telling yourself that you’re not in—”
“Shut up,” Attes cut in, his entire posture stiffening as I skirted him.
The Revenant was still on his knees and listing to the side in an odd way that suggested something important—like maybe his back—was broken. That explained the crackling sound of his laugh.
I spared Attes a quick glance. “Thanks for…helping,” I muttered, my cheeks warming because I had needed help in the first place and because I didn’t sound even remotely genuine.
Attes didn’t reply.
Kolis did. “Are you really, Sotoria? Thankful?”
My hands balled. “I told you to stop calling me that.”
“Did you hear that, Attes?” He swayed forward, the crimson aura in his eyes pulsating. “She doesn’t want to be called—”
His words ended in a grunt as his body was pulled backward by the dagger piercing his chest.
I turned to look at Attes. I hadn’t even felt him move or heard him unsheathe the dagger. He was that fast. “That won’t kill a Revenant.”
“I know.” He stared ahead, one side of his lips curling up to reveal…a dimple in his left cheek, just below the scar. “Still felt good to do it.”
Dragging my stare from him, I watched as the Revenant coughed up blood…and something thicker. My lip curled as I advanced.
“You need to stay back from him,” Attes advised.
I ignored that. “I’ve got this.”
“You do?” he scoffed.
The Revenant let out another burst of crunchy laughter.
My spine stiffened. “It may not have looked like it when you arrived,” I said, keeping my eyes on the Revenant, “but I do.”
“I’ll take your word for it. So, no need to keep walking—”
I rammed my knee into the Revenant’s face, knocking his head back against the tree. “That was for the headbutt.” I grabbed the hilt of the dagger and tore it free. The milky-white blade momentarily surprised me.