Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 115388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Where is he?
Something massive was coming—ripping through the forest like it had no right to exist within it.
She ran forward, faster than ever before, and then. . .she looked over her shoulder again, and what she saw made her trip and fall to the ground.
Goddess help me!!!
The man was there again, but he was bigger, taller, wider. His monstrous form leapt into the air and his body began to reshape even more.
His body convulsed.
Warped.
Skin split in flashes of molten light.
Muscle surged and bone snapped outward—louder than thunder—as something too old for flesh ripped its way out of him.
His back arched unnaturally.
Bones cracked.
His limbs stretched, distorted.
Black and gold scales erupted across his skin like boiling armor.
This wasn’t a man changing shape.
This was a god remembering himself.
No!!!!!!!!!!!!
His face split wide and ungodly massive jaws shot out from the middle, expanding into a humongous snout.
Dear Goddess!!!
Golden horns curled from his skull.
His eyes—those same burning golden eyes—grew and flared as his body enlarged tenfold in height and then more.
Screaming, she quickly scrambled backward through the dirt, scooting away on her hands and heels.
No. No. No!
Korin.
It was him.
The man was Korin.
There had been no record of this possibility.
No song.
No scroll.
No whispered legend that claimed Korin could take human form.
Nothing in the history of Hareef.
And yet—there he was.
The truth in scale, fang, and fire.
His wings formed tearing and ripping through the forest.
With a thunderous beat of those huge wings, he soared for her.
“No!!!!!!!!!!!!”
His enormous body blotted out the moonlight. In seconds, his massive claws reached down and snatched her up like a doll.
“Help!!!!!!!!” She screamed, higher this time, ragged and panicked. "Somebody help me!!!!"
The wind howled past her ears as he rose into the sky.
And then. . .he roared.
The sound shattered the forest.
Korin.
God of fire.
Korin.
Slayer of kings.
Korin.
Now flying with her in his claws.
And Sol—still wet with fear, still glowing with magic, still trembling with a truth too big for her name—was no longer a Lowly woman running from fate.
She was now in fate's grip.
And it had wings.
And she had no idea where they were going nor what Korin would do to her.
Chapter ten
A Trap for a Tiger
Kenji
How does one catch a tiger?
I stood before the full-length mirror framed in gold.
My reflection stared back—collar open, sleeves unfastened, the final touches of my tuxedo waiting for my attendants to arrive.
The Scarlet Suite at Maison du Sang—the House of Blood—was a place for sinners who preferred silence with a view. It sat at the crown of the 8th arrondissement, in a hotel only spoken behind velvet gloves and cigar smoke.
From the outside, Maison du Sang looked like a dormant palace.
But inside?
Inside, it pulsed with the kind of wealth that demanded worship.
My suite was soaked in sexual history. Crimson velvet walls gleamed under the Baccarat chandeliers. They say King Léon IV brought his mistress here during the winter of 1726. She was a Black courtesan from Martinique, draped in pearls and scandal. The king had declared the space his ‘private chapel.’
And it was here where he worshiped her.
That courtesan had screamed with pleasure in this suite. She had moaned against the glass, her bare brown skin fogging the window as the king took her from behind with a moonlit Paris as their witness.
She had cried out his name with each thrust.
Did she moan Léon?
Or was it, King?
We would never know what she screamed.
What she begged for.
What she surrendered.
But what history does remember is that the King moaned a lot over his mistress. There were multiple written accounts—scandalous notations tucked in the back of the hotel’s housekeeping journals and letters penned by startled maids. The king groaned her name over and over during his visits here, so loudly that staff recorded it like weather.
In the past year, there had been a whole protest in Paris among citizens to allow these items to be on public display, but the French government would not obey. Even now, they did their best to erase the courtesan from history. No one even knew her name anymore.
To this day, most of those entries remained in the basement archives of the Royal Textile Museum, filed under “miscellaneous domestic anecdotes.”
Apparently, there was an infamous entry from the Queen’s own lady-in-waiting, the morning she caught King Léon napping in the garden chapel, hand on his chest, mumbling the courtesan’s name in his sleep over and over.
The French are an interesting bunch, but now I finally understand the King more than I am comfortable with.
I put my view on the right and spoke to Goro across the room. "Play it again."
“Yes, sir.” Goro lifted the iPad without a word and tapped the screen.
The footage began.
A modest Tokyo apartment showed. White walls, clean lines, a faint shadow of the city skyline filtered through the rice paper window.
Everything so, unworthy of my Tiger.
Nyomi and Zo sat cross-legged on the futon—that pathetic, narrow piece of furniture that folded like origami and offended me every time I imagined her sleeping on it.