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 stumbled and coughed up blood, fighting with the enormity of trying to force the galaxy to bow to me.
And I paid for it with my own disintegration.
My arms began to dissolve.
My hair turned into crystals.
The human shell I’d inhabited for a mere twenty-two years unmade itself, just like Lucien’s had.
I only had seconds.
A single moment to make a choice.
I reached with my heart. I clung with my soul. And I felt him.
Felt his heat, his aura, his spirit.
And I did the only thing I could.
I reversed the meagre moments of his death. The only moments that truly mattered.
With every ounce of love and desperation, I reached across the veil and yanked him home. Ash reversed into flesh. Embers became bone. The empty space where his heart should’ve been began to beat again, weak and struggling, but real.
I lasted long enough to witness his chest rise with breath.
To feel him living—
And then dropped to my knees in the snow and collapsed.
Chapter Two
I WOKE WITH A VIOLENT COUGH.
Air scraped down my throat like broken glass. My entire body convulsed as if my bones were being forcibly rebuilt, my skin stretched too tight over newly formed sinew, and organs rearranged as if they’d been tossed out and replaced.
Every breath was agony...
I tried to move but a bolt of electricity ripped down my back as if my spinal cord wasn’t properly attached to whatever nerve endings existed.
I groaned as everything flashed hot then cold then heavy. So, so heavy.
Opening my eyes took a herculean effort. Trying to focus took far too much energy. My sight flickered and fritzed, behaving as if it wasn’t just my spine that’d forgotten its purpose, but my pupils too.
What the hell is going on?
Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to focus and—
White.
Dense, swirling white as the fiercest blizzard howled around me. I quaked as icy cold cut into me with venomous teeth, stealing what meagre strength I had and making me shudder. My bare skin burned from the cold. My fingers and toes ached with frostbite.
I couldn’t understand.
Why was I naked in a storm? How did I get here?
I fought to sit up. My heavy, sluggish limbs reluctantly obeyed but my mind stayed sticky with confusion. The lingering exhaustion felt as if I was either dying or coming back from the dead—
Something rolled off my chest and into my lap, wrenching my eyes downward.
My heart stopped midbeat.
For the worst second of my existence, I didn’t recognise her.
I had absolutely no recollection of the woman sprawled over me. A woman with blue lips, frosty eyelashes, and a naked body that seemed to be half in this world and half somewhere else.
My inherent dislike of being touched by others made my skin crawl as she lay unmoving across my lap.
No breath. No heartbeat.
Who the hell was she? Why would—?
I cried out as my skull suddenly shattered with memories.
The chaos, the fire, the volcanoes, the burning.
Grabbing my temples, I rode through an implosion of excruciating pain as everything returned.
Falling in love with her in Cinderkeep.
Healing her when she fell over the falls.
Taking her virginity as our energy merged.
Destroying everything when I went up the mountain alone—
“R-Rook?”
Her head lolled as I sat higher. Turning her over, I tipped her up to face me. “Rook?”
She looked so serene, so...dead.
Bone-tearing pain fisted my heart. A breathless howl escaped as yet more memories tore through me.
All the prisoners I’d failed to save.
Whisper running away.
Marcus screaming as the fire tore him limb from limb—
“Rook!” I snatched her with wobbly arms. “Open your eyes.” Cradling her close, I couldn’t fucking breathe. Half of her was real, but the rest...
Fuck, what had she done?!
Her left arm still looked marginally human but the other...that had dissolved into a cloud of hovering snowflakes, becoming one with the swirling storm. Her hair was no longer black, but shock white as if she’d used every dregs of power, leaving her with nothing.
Pressing my fingertips to her throat, I begged to feel a pulse.
Nothing.
Savage guilt broke me as her skin turned translucent, revealing the ivory of her ribs, the tapestry of her veins. Flecks of frost broke away from her cheekbone, slowly erasing her, piece by piece.
“Don’t you dare.” My arms tightened as I hauled her higher into my embrace. “Don’t you dare fucking leave me—”
A tremor ran down the visible beads of her spine. Her left collarbone fractured like fragile glass.
“Rook!”
Instinct had me reaching for the fire that’d tortured me all my life. To slam heat into her and erase the cold stealing everything but...
Nothing.
Not a single flame or spark.
That...wasn’t possible.
It had to be there. It had to be. It was the only thing that could save—
A concussive blast exploded from her.
It slammed into me with a teeth-rattling punch, knocking me flat on my back.
Scrambling upright, I grabbed her close again. Her skin broke apart with the brightest light. Silver and white, sterling and blinding. The hair on the back of my arms stood up as she seized in my embrace. Another shockwave of power escaped as her hair twirled, unravelling like ribbons, vanishing into the arctic wind.