Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“Your aunt doesn’t have your blood,” she adds, her words more measured now. She frowns. “You don’t know, do you? She never told you.”
This is a ruse! She’s luring you into a sense of security! Don’t play into it!
“Tell me what?” I can’t help but ask, licking my lips. Curious until the day I die.
Which might just be today.
“You never thought you were different?” she says, raising a gray brow. “You never questioned things about yourself?”
I can’t even form the words.
“We called you the Daughter of Pain because of your grief inside, your anger, and the monthly pains in your desolate womb,” she says, her eyes piercing into me. “And for the truth inside you’d not yet realized. Oh, no wonder you’re here, trying to exact some sort of revenge. You’re lashing out because you want to blame someone for being lied to all your life. You want to blame someone for all the things your parents never told you. The truth about your mother. The truth about what you are.”
“And what am I?” I whisper.
“A false idol,” she says. “One that should have been struck down long ago.”
At those words, everything goes into slow motion.
She pulls the trigger.
I throw my sword.
The arrow hits the sword in midair, halfway between us. The impact deflects the arrow to the side of my head; it redirects the sword to the bedpost, where it lodges into the wood with a crack.
I start running for the Harbringer, pulling my other sword out, coming at her like lightning as she reloads the bolt-thrower.
I leap into the air, robes flying, my sword poised and ready to plunge into the old crone’s heart.
And then I hit something.
Hard.
Fly backward until I’m on the carpet.
Stare up at the Harbringer as she aims her bolt thrower at me, a crackle of shimmering light between us before it disappears.
A ward.
She has a magicked ward for protection, the very thing the rest of Esland would be killed for.
“You think Magni wouldn’t protect his best disciples?” she says, the arrow aimed at my head.
Her finger twitches on the trigger.
I’m about to die.
It squeezes.
This.
Is.
It.
I love you, I can’t help but think, projecting my thoughts at Andor. At Lemi. At my family.
But the room brightens from behind the Harbringer, the air changing, popping my ears.
There’s a snarl.
And before the Harbringer can pull the trigger, she turns around to see a large black shape leaping up at her, knocking her to the ground.
“Lemi!” I cry out.
Lemi ignores me and bites the Harbringer’s neck, tearing into the skin, tearing out her throat in a bloody mess before she has a chance to scream. He wolfs down her jugular, jaws snapping, and looks at me briefly, enough to wag his tail, before he goes back for another strike.
He bites the Harbringer’s face and I finally look away. I stumble to my feet, picking up the bolt-thrower that has slid across the room, the arrow still unfired. I carefully unhook the arrow, tuck it where the lock-picker is, then slide the device into my boot before I pull my sword from the bedpost.
I glance down at Lemi, who has left a bloody mess. The Harbringer’s face is an unrecognizable pulp.
He notices me looking and stops, about to come over to lick me, but I hold his bloody mouth back. “How in damnation did you do that, Lemi?” I ask him, scratching him behind the ears. “I thought you couldn’t shift where you hadn’t been before?”
He just wags his tail in response. I guess I had only assumed that.
I’ve never been so glad to be wrong.
“Good dog,” I tell him, kissing the top of his head. “Now how are we going to get out of here?”
He looks up at me with liquid eyes and while I’m staring down at him, so grateful for my best friend, a movement catches the corner of my eye.
The Harbringer twitches.
Then sits upright.
Chapter 32
Andor
“Do you think she’s all right?” Kirney whispers to me. We’ve been standing behind the creepy dragon statues for what feels like forever, waiting for Brynla to appear. With every veiled Sister who makes her way to their private chapel, I keep hoping one will stop before us—that Brynla will pull back a veil and reveal her beautiful face.
But that doesn’t happen.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” I say to Kirney, but I have no idea at this point. I shouldn’t have let her do this alone. I should have taken down another Sister and worn the veil. No one would have known. The three of us could have done this together, even though I know the more lives we take here, the riskier things get. But the biggest, most unbearable risk of all is that Brynla won’t make it out of here alive.
Have faith, I remind myself, my palms starting to sweat. You know Brynla can take care of herself. She might not have suen in her blood, but she’s more than evenly matched against them.