Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46787 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Ronan remained quiet, still kneeling, staring at the spot where the demi-goddess had stood. But he didn’t leave.
He didn’t run away from me and Goldie. He stayed. Barely, though. I could feel him wanting to get away from what the three of us had done together.
I couldn’t let him do that.
“Come here,” I beckoned him to Goldie’s other side. “Help me keep her warm, will you?”
Ronan hesitated for a moment…then he lay down behind her, pressing his chest to her back.
He didn’t say anything but he stayed…he joined us.
That was enough for now.
20
GOLDIE
We were almost out of the woods. Literally. Somehow the trip back from the Blighted Forest hadn’t taken nearly as long as the trip to reach it.
The branches and trees around us were thinning. We were nearly home—nearly safe. I could see the softly glowing lights of Hidden Hollow just up ahead and the faint shimmer of the magic bubble that surrounds it.
My heart was full and aching with everything we’d just been through in the Blighted Forest. Finn and Ronan and I had grown closer and now I knew that Finn would stay with me, no matter what. Ronan, I wasn’t so sure about. But at any rate, Locasta had granted us the bitter berries, so we had a chance now to break the curse. A sliver of hope.
But hope, it turns out, is a slippery thing.
Because one second I was walking and the next the forest floor crumbled under my feet and I tumbled downward, moss and roots ripping away from the earth as it gave out under me. I slipped down what felt like a moss-covered slide, a shriek ripping from my throat as I went.
“Goldie! Goldie!” I heard both my guys shouting.
I landed hard but not painfully, breath whooshing from my lungs as I hit something soft—like an overgrown velvet footstool. It was a moss-covered outcropping—hard enough to stop my momentum but soft enough that it didn’t hurt me. I lay there panting for a moment before rolling away.
It was a good thing I got out of the way. A moment later, both Finn and Ronan slid down after me in a blur of panic and brawn, crashing against each other in their hurry to get to me.
“Are you hurt?” Ronan’s hands were already running over my arms and legs, checking for breaks. Finn knelt beside me, cupping my face, eyes wide with concern.
“Are you okay, baby?” he murmured.
“I’m okay,” I gasped, still catching my breath. “But… look.”
We had fallen into an underground cavern—no, not a cavern. A sanctum.
Smooth stone walls glittered faintly with veins of crystal. Strange vines, silver and humming, crawled across their surfaces like living script. In the center of the chamber stood a raised pedestal carved from milky white moonstone. Resting atop its broad surface were five objects, each glowing with the faint sheen of magic.
“What is this place?” Ronan growled, looking around. “I don’t trust it.”
“You don’t trust anyone or anything,” Finn pointed out. He frowned. “But in this case, I agree with you. There’s something weird going on here.”
“There definitely is—something weird and magical,” I told them. “Look.”
I pointed at the back wall, behind the large moonstone pedestal. There were silver, glowing letters there, written in some script I couldn’t read.
“What does it say?” Ronan asked, frowning.
“Some form of Elvish, maybe.” Finn shrugged. “I don’t know—I can’t read it.”
I was about to say that I couldn’t read it either…and then the writing on the wall shifted.
The crystal wall behind the pedestal shimmered and rippled like water, forming words that glowed golden-bright.
“One gift to take where shadows dwell,
Each holds a truth too deep to tell.
Choose with touch and not just sight—
For some bring bliss, and some bring blight.”
We all stared.
“Well what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Ronan growled.
“I don’t kn—” I began.
But just then something tiny and sparkling zipped out from a crack near the pedestal, wings fluttering like a hummingbird’s. It hovered in front of us and I saw it was a kind of dragonfly with a bright green human head. It stared at us, all four of its arms crossed, and its teeny face glowing with gleeful judgment.
“Well, well, well,” it said in a voice like the tinkling of wind chimes. “A horny Succubus and two very confused bear-boys. Haven’t seen this trio before.”
“What…er, who are you?” I asked, blinking.
The creature preened in mid-air.
“Call me Whimsy. Keeper of the Vault of Dreams, former companion to the Priestesses of the Veil, and Judge of Supplicants. You three are clearly idiots, so I’m here to help.”
“Oh good,” Ronan muttered. “A smartass lightning bug.”
Whimsy glared at him.
“I am not a lightning bug, bear-boy! I am a flitterling—the last of my kind. So show some respect.”
“To a creature I could squash with my thumb? I don’t think so,” Ronan grunted.