Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
There’s a sharp crack and a flare of pain. It takes me a moment to realize where it came from. Bron. Bron hauled off and smacked me right across the face. Smacked me hard enough that my flesh aches.
“Don’t you dare talk about him like that, you idiot. How could you? After everything he did for you, you could say that to him?” Her eyes are bright with tears as she looks up at me.
I feel sick. What am I doing?
Lach, my brother, my other half, my protector, turns away.
I hold my hand to my cheek, a horrible wave of guilt crashing over me. “Lach.”
“Don’t,” Lach insists. “There’s nothing to say. I always knew it would be this way. Don’t you think I knew you were the better part of us? It’s why I couldn’t let you go. But you aren’t dead. I gave you some of my life or my soul. I don’t know how it worked. I just know I pulled every ounce of power I could and I focused it on you. Maybe you weren’t dead. Your power was still flaring. I only know that I focused everything I had on saving you. And I’ve done worse things, brother. Things you don’t know about. Things you and Duffy won’t ever forgive me for. But I did it because I love you both. I don’t know how to live without you. But I’ll figure it out. I’ll see Bronwyn home, and then I’m going to leave. There’s no place for me here.”
Lach stalks off. Shame rolls through me. Now all the memories are surfacing. How sick I was. How long I laid in an odd fugue state, somewhere between living and dead, and how my brother never left my side.
How could I say those things to him?
Bron gets out of bed, her every movement a brisk and angry testament to her emotional state. “I don’t know that I will ever forgive you for that.”
“Bron, I’m sorry.” The words sound stupid. Idiotic. Futile.
“You know how he feels and you still say such things to him? He was trying to save you because he thought he was worthless without you. He thought he was a dumb animal without your half of his soul.” She pulls my shirt over her head. “I have to find him.”
I get to my feet. So much went wrong. It should have been a beautiful thing, our true bond. It should have been followed with more lovemaking and the taking of her sweet blood. But it feels as if everything is ashes and I’m the reason.
And I forgot what I learned about Bron.
I saw her. I saw what a sweet child she was. Loved and coddled and slightly marginalized because her brothers were so much more important. I felt her overwhelming will to live, and not simply because it was an animal instinct, but because she wasn’t finished. She hadn’t done what she needed to do.
She needs to make a difference. She needs to matter in some tangible way, in some way past her soft body and sweet looks.
Bronwyn Finn McIver needs to fight.
I sit down on the bed, my head in my hands and my heart aching in my chest. I messed everything up because I refused to listen to the two people who matter most in my world.
Lachlan needs to protect his heart, and he wrongly thinks it resides in my soul. Bronwyn needs to matter and I locked her away so she can never be what she needs to be.
I fucked up.
And there is only one way to make it right. I have to talk to my brother, and I have to convince him that Bron’s fight is our fight.
If she wants a battle, then we will be right by her side. I won’t lock her away. The things I love most about her are her fierce heart and the love she is capable of. If I lock her away, some beautiful piece of her will die, and I can’t be the one who does that to her.
There’s a loud crack. I freeze in place because I heard it before. The sound of an eddy wind charging in.
I take off running because it looks like the battle has found us.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Lachlan
I feel the moment the eddy wind covers the air above me. There’s a split second before there are soldiers on the ground.
And my sword is back at camp. Gods, I walked off without my sword.
Immediately I reach out to try to find the dead and call them to aid me, but my power is so much weaker now.
Why can’t I call it?
“Lach?” Bron’s voice calls through the trees as the soldiers surround me.
How many? Too many. And I’m not sure where Bron is. I strike out, my fists my only weapon. There are dead around, but only animals, and small ones at that. I’m in a forest, far from the cemeteries and crypts that would bring me an army.