Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
I staggered to my bodyguard’s bones and dropped to my knees.
“Rook?” Lucien chased after me, standing behind me and resting his hand on my shoulder. “Are you alright?”
More whispers filled me. Entire scenes of Dillon and Whisper becoming such good friends after Lucien and I passed away. How they’d leaned on each other. Loved each other. Died with each other.
Lucien sucked in a breath, picking up on what I’d seen. “Those bones belong to Dillon?”
I nodded as tears poured down my cheeks. I had no explanation for how we’d died that night on the glacier. How I saw Lucien reaching supernova heat and taking the lab with him. How I saw every year where Frank ran Snowflake Corp, only for him to die and be scattered in this very spot. I knew that his children and then grandchildren ran my parents’ company until other forms of energy replaced it, and it was shut down and forgotten about.
I could see through time as easily as if staring through a mirror. It rippled under my stare, hinting I could twist it, tweak it, do whatever I wanted to it, and it would obey.
The enormity of that level of power.
The blinding, blissful energy that no longer tried to break me but had become me.
It was terrifying and thrilling and...my gaze locked on Whisper’s corpse.
I searched once again for his soul.
I begged him to talk to me, but...nothing.
Just emptiness...a pause. Almost as if he—
Leaping to my feet, I grabbed Lucien’s hand. “Help me.”
“I’ll help you do anything.” He frowned, his eyes dropping to Whisper as he lay looking like he’d just fallen asleep. “Help you do what?”
Whisper’s pelt still dripped with water and his face was wizened with age but...his body had remained.
Dillon’s had returned to the earth because his soul no longer needed it.
I could feel him out there...somewhere.
But I couldn’t feel Whisper.
“Look.” I waved at the oasis surrounding us—the fact that we’d caused life to sprout. “Remember when we combined our blood? How we seem to reincarnate and rejuvenate when we blend our lifeforce together?” Words tumbled free. “We destroyed the riverbank that night, but we were able to make everything sprout and flower again. We just did it again without any thought.”
Hope flared in his eyes, knowing where I was going with this, but he gritted his teeth as if fighting against it. “But he’s been gone for centuries. His body will be rotten. There’s no way we can bring him back...not after so long.”
“His body will heal if we make it, and...I can’t hear his soul.” I strained to hear the other world layered over this one. Still nothing. “I would be able to hear him if he was free. Just like I can hear Dillon...faintly but I know he’s out there.”
Lucien trembled. “Are we breaking some kind of balance by tampering with things we shouldn’t? What if I lose you again? What if—”
“You won’t lose me.” I grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I think we’ve proven that, haven’t we? We died, Lucien. We’ve been dead and gone for hundreds and hundreds of years. Yet...here we are. We woke together. Found each other. And Whisper is here too. Let me try...”
He stared at me so long, I feared he’d say no. But then he bent over, grabbed a sharp rock from the ground, turned my palm up, and sliced my skin open.
I expected to see blood. To see strange silver liquid—or at least it had been before it’d turned black. Instead, light seeped free. A ribbon of iridescent moonlight, pooling in the centre of my hand.
Without a word, Lucien cut his palm and freed a spool of golden light. It waited like shimmering mist, pulsing with energy. Whatever stuff flowed inside us was no longer human and it would take a millennium to come to terms with that fact.
Tears stung my eyes as I looked at Whisper again.
I gasped as Lucien pressed our palms together, then ducked to place them over Whisper’s heart.
A punch of power barrelled down my arm, pouring into Whisper like silver moonlight. Lucien grunted as if he felt the same tugging deep inside. Leaning against me, he kept his eyes locked on the panther as sunlight soaked from his fingers.
We didn’t move, transferring a combined synergy of power into the third member of our little family. We had no idea what we were doing or if it was right or wrong, but...we tried.
And slowly...Whisper began to change.
The silver around his muzzle and eyebrows returned to jet black. His body warmed; his muscles filled in. The gaunt fragility of age slowly reversed, returning vitality to a long-dead corpse.
My heart quickened as his joints realigned with wet cracks. His whiskers twitched. His chest swelled with a heavy breath.
Tears tumbled down my cheeks as the cloudless sky flashed with a bolt of lightning as if we’d ripped his soul back from the ether and stitched it back into his body.