Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
An instinct raised up in her so fiercely she almost didn’t move out of the way, just managing to deflect the hit. She’d always had to let Jason abuse her without retribution. But no longer.
Jason had done irreparable damage to her life. And if she let him go, he’d kill Maya. He might have already killed Walter. He’d go through anyone he could to get what he wanted. He’d combine with a sacred tree to steal its power. He would do it to her tree and to all the other ones he found from opening the Ash Door.
She had told Maya that she wouldn’t kill Jason because he was connected to Sansara. But letting him live would be worse for the world. She’d known that for a long time. Known it her entire life. And yet she regretted that it would come to this.
“You nosy little bitch,” Jason said, throwing another punch and connecting with her cheek this time.
Something exploded in her vision, and she cursed as she doubled over. It wasn’t the worst hit she’d ever taken from him, but she was past letting him put his hands on her.
“I should have finished the job that day,” he snarled.
His next shot didn’t connect, and Kierse deflected the hit. She was not the little girl he’d first taken advantage of. She wasn’t the girl who had let him push her off a building to get rid of her fear of heights. She wasn’t the girl in the alley that he’d beaten to within an inch of life.
She was the last will-o’-the-wisp. The only Fae left in their world. She was legendary, and she wouldn’t go down like this.
“Fuck you, Jason,” she said, throwing herself at him.
His look of surprise was satisfying. Her fist connected with his jaw, and his head whipped to the side, the opera mask crashing into the bushes and exposing his malevolent face. But she didn’t stop, having sparred enough since leaving him to know that if she gave him an inch, he’d take a mile.
She followed her hit with a punch to his gut, driving him backward toward the street. The only problem was her dress. If she’d had a split second, she would have ripped the thing in half to give her better access to her limbs. Medieval dresses sure were restricting.
Jason ducked and rolled as she pressed toward him. His cane was discarded a few feet from him. He wobbled slightly without it but held his feet. Years to heal himself hadn’t been enough to keep him from continuing to have a memory of her driving a knife through his back.
“Kierse,” he pleaded.
She narrowed her eyes as she closed in on him again. He was doubled over, as if her punches had done real damage. She was sure it was a trick. Jason didn’t show weakness. And if he did, she was planning to use it.
As she went to throw another punch, he grasped her wrist as fast as a cobra and the grip hard enough to bruise, hard enough to break. She tried to use the weight of it to swing toward him with her nondominant side, but he stomped down on her dress, preventing her from continuing forward.
Then something cold and hard clinked onto her wrist.
His smirk was victorious. “Gotcha.”
Iron.
The shackles were pure iron.
They burned. Holy fuck, they burned.
Iron hurt all Fae, but since she was half, it had never really hurt her to the magnitude that had always been described to her and read in all her stories. Even when Jason had chained her up with iron last time, she had been able to slow time enough to phase her body out of the iron. It was how she’d escaped him at the solstice.
But this time, when she reached for her magic, it was silent.
Utterly silent.
There was no well of power. No access to Lorcan’s powers. She called out for Lorcan to beg him to get here quicker. But there was only the silence she had known before the spell was broken on her.
No magic. No bond. Nothing.
Her eyes flared in horror at his widening smile. “What have you done?”
“So the bastard was right,” was his only response.
He jerked her forward, and she barely suppressed a scream as the iron dug into her skin. Tears came to her eyes as the cuff blistered the skin on contact. Her lungs seized and vision dipped as if she would pass out from the pain.
Then a second cuff was slapped onto her other wrist. She had been so focused on avoiding the pain of the first that when it redoubled with the second, her knees gave out.
“None of that,” Jason said with a laugh as he tugged her upright. The pain kept her on her toes as she tried not to pass out. “We’ll keep you in line this time.”