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)
“Fuck, Whisp...” My throat closed over as I studied my friend. Even frozen in ice and preserved in death, I recognised every line of his massive frame.
This was Whisper.
My oldest friend. My constant shadow. The one who stayed with me through every hell.
A broken sound tore from my throat as I dropped to my knees, landing in a puddle of water from his thawing. Grabbing his back paw, I pressed my forehead to his hock. “Wake up, you stupid beast. Come back to me.”
Centuries of grief and loneliness tore through me.
The fire answered with a roar—surging outward, hot and wild and angry. Golden flames exploded across my skin, smacking into the ice encasing Whisper. The glacier melted, hissing and cracking, thick steam billowing into the sky.
Whisper’s frozen body tumbled outward in an awkward sprawl, landing on top of the human skeleton.
I bent to shift him off the bones, but the flames in my blood had a different idea. A funnel of golden fire spiralled toward the sky before exploding like a giant firework. Tendrils of power darted across the landscape as if hunting...searching.
I collapsed as the fire woke up the final piece of me.
The vault of memories that my heart shielded me from because remembering fucking broke me.
Rook.
The rest of my past came back. The dreamscape. Rook’s final sacrifice. Her body shattering in my arms—
“ROOK!”
I spun around, eyes darting across the valley, searching every shadow and nook.
If Whisper was here...she had to be.
She has to be.
“Rook!” I bellowed, voice raw and echoing off everything. “Where are you?!”
Fresh fire erupted in violent waves, shooting in every direction, lighting up the valley like a second sun. It scorched the stone, melted the rest of the ice, and hunted for my other half.
But no pain. No struggle. The fire obeyed me instantly, doing my bidding with a single thought.
“Rook!” My knees buckled as another memory hit—the way the shadows had stolen her from me. How I’d found her in the dreamscape of Ashfall Cliff, refusing to admit she was just a figment of my imagination.
I would’ve rather dwelled in eternity with an imaginary replacement than survive alone in a world without her.
So what the fuck was I doing here?
Why had I returned but she hadn’t?
“ROOK!” The earth trembled with the force of my grief. Wildflowers shivered and rivers waked and the power in my blood turned molten. I would smite everything. I would melt all of it. I wouldn’t stop until I found her and claimed her and—
The bond jerked hard.
Collapsing forward, my fingers clawed at my heart as a single, brilliant thread ignited in my chest, slicing through the golden inferno like a blade of winter.
My fire froze mid-surge, hanging in the air like suspended cinders. The ground stopped shaking. The undergrowth stopped burning. And my heart—the heart that was no longer trapped by a metal vitalsync core—stopped beating. Proving...I might look human. I might’ve somehow returned to life thinking I was still mortal but—
The spirit connection lashed tight, sinking eternal claws into my soul. Silver and gold welded through my mind, repairing what was lost, amplifying my senses until...I felt her.
Felt her mind coalescing. Her heart forming. Her body making.
The valley went achingly silent and still.
The bond pulsed in my chest, alive and strong and real.
A silver cloud formed directly above me.
A blizzard appeared as if fate repeated the events that’d taken her from me that night. Snowflakes twisted into a vortex. Frost spiralled like a thousand tiny stars, twisting tighter and tighter, rebuilding her from nothing.
My heart refused to function as the snowstorm thickened and twisted, revealing the delicate arch of a foot. I couldn’t breathe as the snow travelled upward, sticking together, binding together, forming my soul mate as her other foot appeared, followed by her calves and thighs and hips.
Layer by layer, winter wove her body back together. She glowed like a goddess born from ice. The elegant curve of her waist, the swell of her breasts, the ribbons of her hair, and her stunning, beautiful face.
I stumbled upright just as the storm snuffed out and dropped her.
I caught her in my arms, dropping to my knees again as her skin touched mine and my heart started beating, slipping into sync with hers, binding that final lock of the bond.
I lost it.
Burying my face in her hair, I crushed her in my arms. Her skin glowed an ethereal silver as I pressed kisses all over her face, choking on grateful sobs. Every inch of her gleamed like living starlight. Fractal patterns embossed her collarbones, breasts, and stomach. She looked untouchable and colossally powerful.
No longer human. No longer dying or cold or weak.
“Rook...”
Her eyelids flickered as if she’d heard me, but she didn’t wake.
I tried another way.
The preferred way because it meant I could speak to her very heart.
Rook? Cupping her cheeks, I pushed the silent word into her mind. Wake up.