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)
A barrage of flames soaked into my dissolving chest. But they were like tiny candles compared to endless winter.
I tried to lift my hand to touch his cheek, but I had no arm, no fingers. Silver mist replaced my limbs, and my heart pumped its last.
I seized in his embrace.
“Fuck, don’t. Please don’t.” Pressing his forehead to mine, our energies mingled one final time—fire and ice, gold and silver, love and agony.
His lips landed on mine in a wicked kiss as if he could restart my already dead heart.
I tried to kiss him back.
To tell him I loved him.
But the pain ended.
My body vanished.
And then...nothing.
Chapter Thirty-Five
NO.
NO.
NO!
I curled over the reason for my existence as she died in my arms. I kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her ice-blue lips.
For a second, I was allowed to keep her, but then auroras screamed across the heavens with violent streaks. A shockwave of raw power tore through the night.
The earth shook, the stars shivered. And the rest of her body shattered like spun glass.
I couldn’t breathe as she exploded into a cloud of tiny silver stars and snowflakes, scattering through the night like glimmering ashes.
My arms went from holding her to being empty.
I-I couldn’t believe it.
She couldn’t be gone.
It...it just wasn’t possible.
I stared at the empty space where she’d been.
Waiting.
My arms stayed curled around nothing, not daring to move just in case.
She’d come back.
Any second now.
The fire always brought her back. It’d woken me in time to come for her. I’d felt her pain even in the depths of mine and I’d come for her. I’d stopped dying for her.
Why wasn’t it enough?
Why wasn’t she coming back?
She’d survived laboratories and torture, disasters and nightmares. She’d survived things that should’ve killed her a thousand times over. This was no different.
Come back...
You have to come back.
I scrambled forward on my hands and knees, grabbing at the stars dissolving into the darkness. She’d simply fallen apart. That was all.
“Stop scaring me, Rook.” A manic laugh escaped me. “This isn’t funny anymore.”
Nothing answered.
No tug on the bond.
No whisper in my heart.
Empty silence stretched.
For the first time since I’d met her, I couldn’t feel her.
And that fucking ruined me.
No.
I crawled faster, searching for her, begging her.
“No, no, no.”
Any moment, she’d return. The fire would bring her back. It couldn’t end like this.
It can’t.
It had to be a cruel joke. A test to see how far I would go.
That was easy.
I would trade any life for hers. I would trade a million lives—
The thought had me casting out my awareness, hunting for anyone close by, ready to feed on them to save her.
Whisper groaned as his powerful thrumming heartbeat filled my head.
I yanked on his lifeforce.
He stumbled.
And...I couldn’t do it.
An inhuman roar ripped out of me as I slammed my fists into the glacier.
I would kill for her.
I had killed for her.
Yet I couldn’t hurt Whisper.
Rage smashed into me. Fury. Hate. Injustice. Grief.
Every emotion added fuel to the fire chewing its way through me, and...I couldn’t exist anymore.
What was the point?
Why should I even try?
If she was truly gone then—
A cataclysmic burst of flames erupted from every inch of me. Pillars of fire screamed into the sky as I reached the tipping point between fighting to live and surrendering to die.
The fire answered instantly—almost as if it’d been waiting for this moment. The moment where I finally gave in.
Titan-level power surged through me like a god awakening—ancient and limitless and utterly merciless. My veins burned with liquid starfire. My bones ignited. Every cell in my body screamed.
I threw my head back and roared.
The glacier answered with an avalanche of cracking ice and thunderous booms. The sky split open as golden flames wreathed my body in a blazing corona of raw, apocalyptic power.
I felt unstoppable. Eternal. A force of nature reborn in fury and loss.
Pain unlike anything I’d ever endured blinded me. My ribs shattered. My spine splintered. Every heartbeat was agony. Every breath was lava.
The fire used my mortal corpse to fuel its immortal rebirth and I couldn’t stop it.
Didn’t want to stop it.
I wanted to go where Rook had gone.
I wanted to find her before it was too late.
Flinging my arms wide, I gave in.
Fire raged higher, wild and untamed. I kneeled amid an inferno and burned.
The crevasse she’d caused deepened with a deafening crack, revealing sections of the lab far below. The sky throbbed red as distant volcanoes answered my grief, erupting in the distance with plumes of fire and smoke.
I screamed her name as the power reached critical and my heart wrenched to a stop.
I collapsed sideways, clutching my chest.
Whisper snarled and nudged me onto my back, shoving me so hard he shunted me across the ice—
The world tore open.
Another deafening crack as reality broke.
I wrapped my fist around density and rewrote it, forcing fate to deliver a new ending. A better ending. An ending where—