Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Rook panted hard, her thoughts wriggling into mine. If he knows how to stop it then...he might be our only chance.
Betrayal cut through me before I smothered it with understanding.
She loved me. She wanted to keep me. But we both knew I was on borrowed time.
I hugged her and pressed a kiss to her hair.
Her wonderful scent filled my nose with frosty cherry and ice-cream. A part of me wondered if the heightened senses—the way I could smell her, taste her, hear her, were yet another gift of this awakening.
I smelled her very spirit instead of her body. Which meant...hopefully, I would be able to find her in another life. I’d track her across whatever realms or afterlife existed and make her mine again.
Lucien... Her horror echoed through me. But I couldn’t look at her anymore.
Marcus called me a god.
He made me sound invincible, yet I was still at his mercy.
I was still that pathetic child who had no one.
But I would never, fucking ever, let him put his hands on her which meant...he has to die. Immediately.
“Ah, ah, ah.” He waggled his finger as fire coiled around my neck. “Do you really want me to punish you again? Have you not learned your lesson?” He pouted as he pointed at Rook. “Do you really want her to suffer because of you?”
I bared my teeth, smoke coalescing into ember wings. “She’ll suffer if I don’t kill you.”
He laughed like he’d done for so many years.
A sarcastic arrogant chuckle and...
I snapped.
My skin split with snarling gold.
The air combusted in expanding rings and the trees protecting Marcus and his men ignited into hot torches.
I flung open my heart.
I gave the fire everything.
Kill them.
Kill every last one of them.
Marcus raised his arm again.
The harmonic wave slammed into me. Agony detonated. My spine arched as the last dregs of blood sprayed from my mouth but...the pain wasn’t enough to stop me.
I was too far gone.
No longer human.
Flaming fingers of fire wrapped around the men’s throats. Every last one of them—including the ones who’d held me down on the table for surgery and forced needles into my veins.
One by one, their howls lit up the night.
The fire pushed them toward that inescapable edge where flesh and bone turned into a rain of blood and brain.
A single decision and they imploded.
Marcus stumbled back a step. “I-Impossible.”
Rook yelled something.
My eyes locked on the trees where Whisper had vanished and...the fire just kept burning.
The crater I’d caused widened as molten fissures cracked through the mountain.
Pure anarchy tore free as Marcus went to run.
It caught him in an updraft.
Held him aloft as his skin charred to a crisp, his bones shattered one by one, and his heart—that twisted, rotten heart—flew from his chest and sizzled into nothing.
The fire took all my fantasies of torturing him and made it a reality.
His dismembered corpse smashed against the ground.
Rook gagged and another wash her ice tried to stop me.
This time, I reached for her.
I wanted her to cool me.
I’d done what I needed.
These men were dead—
I jerked as the power that’d lifted Marcus into the air lifted me. The smoke behind me erupted into thicker, larger wings, wrapping me in thermals and making me weightless.
Rook cried out as I grabbed her.
The higher we rose, the lighter my body became. My skin thinned, revealing glowing bones. Light poured through the cracks in my flesh. Flames spiralled higher, causing a hurricane of cinders.
“Lucien!” Rook clung to me. “Stop. You have to stop!”
I tried.
Fuck, I tried.
But I was no longer in control.
Below us, the world cracked open. The forest ignited in a roaring wave.
We kept rising, lifted by pure power.
The entire mountain range began to glow.
Heat rolled outward in catastrophic waves, feeding on darkness and death. In the far distance, a dormant peak cracked open with a thunderous roar.
A volcano erupted.
Fire met fire.
And I was no longer whoever I’d been.
I was...free.
The sky glowed a violent red. Clouds burned. Fire rained. Lightning bolts cracked the heavens. And birds took flight with smoking feathers.
And in the midst of such chaos...I felt what I did when I set Uncle Wen’s bonsai alight.
I felt the world breathing. Trees growing. Wind blowing. Every little thing and every tiny heartbeat fell into the palm of my hand.
With a single squeeze, I could slaughter everything.
With a single thought, oceans would boil and continents would fracture.
I gagged on such power.
I choked on such anarchy.
I tried to pull back.
To take control—
The fire swallowed me.
The earth quaked, spewing magma into the sky. Mountains that were never volcanoes turned into lava funnels, making the entire valley come alive with ancient candles.
On and on, it roared.
Scraping me dry, killing me.
The peak where we’d stood suddenly folded in on itself. Brimstone board members were swallowed whole. The bodies of those I’d failed to free sank back into the cave’s belly as it belched with sulphur.