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)
And then I saw the mist churning around my arms in a dizzying rush of shadows and crimson.
CHAPTER 1
CASTEEL
I stood in the bathing chamber, my eyes closed and hands splayed across the vanity’s cold marble top.
I had no idea how long I’d been standing there, but water no longer dripped from my hair.
The last thing I remembered before waking two days ago to find myself and Kieran lying in bed beside Poppy was seeing the Primal essence swirling around us.
Mouth dry, I’d turned my head to find fucking Emil Da’Lahr sitting in the armchair beside the bed, his head in his hands. When he realized I was awake, I half-expected him to start crying. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a man more relieved.
Kieran woke moments later, just as confused as I’d been. That’s when Emil keyed us in on how we’d ended up in the bed. Apparently, he’d found us out cold, slumped against opposite walls with pieces of the Revenant still scattered across the floor. But only after he’d seen me in the form of what resembled a gold-spotted black cave cat.
Fuck.
Emil probably thought he was hallucinating. Like he’d done when we consumed those wild mushrooms we found in the woodlands of Aegea when we were younger.
But, gods. He handled it, despite having no idea what was going on. Even though I knew that seeing his Queen in stasis and then finding his King and the Advisor to the Crown out of commission must have messed with him. He’d gotten Delano and Malik—of all people—to help get Kieran and me into bed with Poppy and then cleaned up the mess I’d made with the Revenant and made sure no one else knew anything was off. They’d covered for us the entire damn day we remained unconscious.
I owed Emil. I owed all three of them.
Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly, listening for any sounds coming from the chamber. Kieran had left a bit ago to check on things. And Poppy…
She still slept.
A surge of energy fueled by desperation and anger flooded my veins and hit the air around me, cooling the bathing chamber. I knew what the power was.
Primal essence.
I’d always felt it on some level. All Atlantians—especially Elemental Atlantians and wolven—did. But never like this.
I could feel where the eather was entrenched deep in my bones and fused with my muscles. I could feel it coursing through my veins, creating a steady hum in my blood. Opening my eyes, I lifted my head.
I saw it in my reflection.
Where the aura behind my pupils had always been a faint silver, it was now a bright glow. If I looked closely enough, I could see fine threads radiating out from the orbs of eather, piercing the golden hue of my eyes. I’d seen the same in Kieran’s, though with his already vivid, cerulean gaze, it wasn’t as noticeable. Still, what I was staring at right now, and what I’d seen when I looked at Kieran, was impossible.
At least it should have been.
Kieran and I had a pretty good idea what had made this possible. The thing that’d allowed me to not only heal from being stabbed in the heart with a blade that probably should’ve killed me but also shift into a cave cat. The same reason I knew exactly how worried Emil was when I woke, tasting the emotion in the back of my throat—thick like heavy cream.
The Joining.
It was the only explanation we could come up with. It made sense, but neither of us expected the Joining to do more than ensure our lives were tied to Poppy’s.
I knew in my bones that I wasn’t only an Elemental Atlantian anymore. And Kieran wasn’t just a wolven. We had become…something else.
What had that Rev called me? A false Primal? The bigger, badder version of a demis? I’d never heard of such a thing. Then again, apparently, there was a lot of shit I hadn’t heard of.
But I didn’t think that was what we were. I couldn’t say exactly why I felt that way, but it probably had something to do with the essence I could feel moving around in me. It was too powerful to be a false god’s or even a false Primal’s. It was cold and infinite.
Ancient.
Just like the Primal mist—the essence taking form—I’d seen churning around Kieran and me before we decided to take our power naps.
Concentrating on the hum of eather, I willed it forward. It pulsed behind my pupils and expanded until the strands churned through my irises, no longer just silver. My skin cooled and hardened, then thinned until I saw the essence gliding beneath it. My fingers slid against the counter as I tracked the swirls of eather. It wasn’t like the Primal mist I’d seen surrounding Kieran. His had been gold and silver. Mine was silver and crimson.