Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119694 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
A slow, awful realization crawls through me.
“Which cell?”
“Which cell?” he repeats stupidly.
“Yes!” Reaching down, I grab him by the collar and yank him upright. I lean down, glaring into his idiotic face. “Which…cell?”
The guard swallows hard—he won’t quite meet my eyes.
“The…the one at the very end. The one with…with the Wraith.”
My stomach drops like a stone.
“You fucking idiot.” My voice is flat, lethal. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
The guard’s face goes slack with fear.
“M-my Lord, I thought—”
“Thinking clearly isn’t your strong suit,” I snap, striding past him. My polished shoes strike the marble with sharp, ringing cracks. “You didn’t just lock up some random glamour-user. You threw my Queen into a cage with the most dangerous thing in my dungeon! If something has happened to her, I promise you that you’ll be the next one in that cell.”
The guard staggers back, eyes going wide. He is wisely keeping his mouth shut.
I leave my office at a near run—it’s not dignified but this is an emergency. I reach the special elevator and jab at the button. The black doors slide open with a hiss.
Inside, the mirrored walls show my reflection—hair immaculate, tie perfectly knotted, eyes burning scarlet. I look every inch the Don of the Crimson Syndicate. But beneath the suit, a monster is snarling.
Mine, she’s mine and if the Wraith so much as touches her—
The elevator lurches into its descent. Too slow. Too fucking slow. My chest burns and my jaw is clenched so tightly it aches. I will it to move faster…faster. Every second Julia spends in the dark with that thing is a second closer to death.
Or worse.
“Hold on, my Queen,” I mutter, fury and fear tangled in my chest. “By the First Chalice, just hold on. I’m coming.”
16
Jules
Cold. I’m so horribly cold.
The chilly damp isn’t just clinging to my skin anymore. It’s inside me, sinking into my bones, threading through my veins. Like I’ve swallowed a mouthful of ice water and it’s spreading everywhere, freezing me from the inside out.
I try to gasp but my lungs don’t want to work.
Something coils around my waist—thick, slimy, and writhing. I jerk back, but it slithers higher, sliding over my ribs, crushing me like a python made of rot and smoke. My skin crawls—it’s wet and sticky, yet somehow weightless. I can’t fight it and it smells so bad—like a pile of garbage left to fester in the sun. Like something dead and crawling with maggots.
I feel like I’m drowning in filth.
The voice rasps in my ear again, low and intimate, as though it’s whispering right inside my skull.
“Your grandmother never loved you. She raised you out of duty, not affection. She cursed the day she took you in and she died wishing you had never been born.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. My breath hitches, a strangled sob rising to my throat.
“That’s n-not t-true,” I whisper hoarsely. The cold has leaked into my bones now. My teeth are chattering. “She d-did love me.”
The Wraith laughs—a sharp, scraping sound like glass shattering underfoot.
“Your friends will suffer too. The bold one who hides behind her laughter? She will burn alive in her fancy law firm. The rich one will hang herself with her pearls. The shy one will waste away, forgotten even by those who once swore to love her. None shall be spared—all are doomed! Just as you are doomed.”
“No—stop!” I shake my head violently, hot tears spilling down my frozen cheeks. The words are too awful and they form pictures in my head—pictures of all my closest friends I can’t unsee.
“Oh yes, I see them—all of them,” the thing hisses in my ear. “Their fates are sealed. And it will be your fault. You brought them together. You led them into the path of ruin. They will die screaming…and you will die knowing you doomed them.”
The coils constrict. My chest is squeezed so tight I can’t breathe—can’t breathe. Black dots dance in my field of vision. The stench intensifies, overwhelming—grave dirt…mildew…blood turned rancid…corpses left to fester in the midday sun. My stomach heaves and bile rises in my throat.
“Please…” I croak. “Please don’t—”
“You will die as you lived,” it hisses, “alone… unloved…unwanted.”
The cold spreads deeper, seeping into my marrow. My knees buckle and my arms go limp at my sides. I can feel myself slipping, all the warmth leaking out of me…no joy left…my life unraveling thread by thread…
This is it, I realize. This is how I end.
Suddenly, the door slams open.
A shaft of torchlight cuts into the cell, illuminating the swirling coils of smoke that bind me. And in the doorway stands Lucian.
“Get the fuck away from her!” he growls, his voice deep with menace.
The thing clutching me hisses, the coils constricting one last time. My vision narrows, collapsing to a tunnel. I can’t breathe!