Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
“I don’t know? Maybe because I’m the Aza, and it’s not in my nature? Or perhaps it’s just because I like control and so do you, and we can’t both have it at the same time.”
“I’ll let you have control when I know you won’t get yourself killed.”
“It might make your life easier now, wouldn’t it?”
“It wouldn’t,” he surprises me by saying. “So, stop trying to get yourself killed.” He releases me and takes one of his damnable wide steps backward. It’s like he’s always pulling me close and pushing me away, and every time he does it, I’m reminded of the serpent he forgot when we were beside that lighthouse.
But he hasn’t forgotten now. Of that, I’m crystal clear.
It’s right then that a shadow encroaches from above, and my gaze jerks upward as darkness tugs across the skyline, drinking up the blood-ish red and leaving only impenetrable ebony in its wake. It’s suffocating and terrifying, as if the world of Elysium is being sealed off.
“Micah,” I whisper, a moment before there’s nothing but that ebony. I can’t even see my hand in front of my face. Oh my God, what is coming at us? Is it Jeremy? “Micah,” I call out urgently.
His arm slides around me from behind, and he folds me into his hard body, leaning in close, his breath a warm trickle on my neck. “It’s okay. Wait. Just wait.”
I swallow hard, hold my position, and will my sight to cut through the suffocating darkness. “What is happening?” I whisper. “Are we being attacked?”
“No attack. Every seven days, we have a blood-red sky followed by a two-minute blackout.”
Logically, I hear him, I do, but I’m essentially blind right after being attacked by a giant crab when I now know there’s more of them out here. I find myself trying to sink deeper into Micah, trying to ground myself in something other than the inky black surrounding me. “It’s making me want to scream or run for light. And that sounds really stupid.”
“It’s a different kind of darkness than you would experience on Earth. Everyone feels the way you do the first few times they experience it.” He reaches around me and settles his arm around my chest, holding me securely to him. “It’s strange at first, but it’s almost over. Look to the sky.”
I tilt my chin upward and gasp as I watch a red moon appear out of nowhere, and immediately after, stars splatter across the darkness as if thrown, settling into random clusters and illuminating the sky. Red stars that glisten like diamonds. “Why are the stars and the moon red?” I ask, not quite ready to relax into the incredibleness of the sight before me, my hands resting on his powerful forearm where he holds me.
“Even our sun is red, but it’s not easy to tell from down here, not until nightfall. I’ve always looked at it as if it’s symbolic of the blood of the humans we are tasked to protect.”
The blood of humans we are tasked to protect, I repeat in my mind. Now that I know there are demons in the world, I want to learn to fight. I want to do more than survive. I want to conquer, but if knowledge is power, depriving me of that knowledge is ridiculous and, in my book, dangerous.
I rotate out of his arms and face off with him. “Why am I the one?”
The glow of the starlight highlights the handsome hard lines of his face, his expression unreadable but no longer etched in reprimand and anger. “You were chosen. There’s no other answer. It was decided before you were even born.”
“There has to be a reason it was me.”
“You’re strong enough to find the light even when the darkness calls you, Ember, and you have to start believing that. And don’t say you do. If you did, you wouldn’t be asking me that question. Doubt is dangerous.” He doesn’t open the topic up for discussion, shutting me down with a motion to the left. “We need to leave. We have others waiting on us, two of whom just returned from meeting with Knowledge Keepers.”
I forget everything else. “Who? When? What did they find out?”
“I don’t know yet. They arrived right as you called me for help.”
“You actually heard me?”
“I heard every gut-wrenching scream. And the house needs to stay the fuck out of your training. Do what I say, and only what I say.” It’s an absolute command, and before I can bristle, he’s grabbed my hand, and he’s dragging me forward as if he now feels he needs to keep me under his thumb.
I’d be offended and fighting back, but I feel the burn of the real emotions in him. Under all the bluster of reprimand, I do believe I scared him, and maybe, just maybe, he really cares about me.