Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Want something—or someone—bad enough and boom, time loop? “I might, perhaps, desire you, despite how cruel you’ve been,” I admitted with a grumble. Because wanting him wasn’t the danger. Trusting him was. “But I didn’t kick off the loops.”
His pupils expanded over his irises. “Are you sure? You might, perhaps, be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Each word sounded dragged through clenched teeth. “Resourceful. Stubborn. Witty. Charming when you wish to be.” He stabbed his fingers through his hair. “And I might, perhaps, very much want to see you dance again. A desire that continues to grow. Soon, it might be strong enough to bridge worlds.”
My next breath seared my throat. I almost set the book aside. Almost stood and glided to him. Longed to crouch before him and exchange words for actions.
I forced myself to stay put. “I danced for you?”
“Only once that I’ve recalled. But that was enough.” His gaze dropped to my lips, and his smolder turned into a slow, consuming blaze. He lowered his lashes, dark crescents shadowing the heat in his eyes. “It was glorious.”
Shivers rippled through me, strings of control pulling taut. Look away, look away. He was playing a game, flirting to win our private war. Something. Anything but what it felt like: falling in love again.
“Fate says be brave. Monsters say be crunchy,” Kevin announced from his perch.
“Shut up, Kevin.” I avoided looking at Jasher. “If I’m going to find the Ember you hope to steal, I should read.” I also had plans A, B, C, and D to plot out.
Ignore the disappointment in his expression. Read.
I dropped my gaze to the journal, flipped to the back and wrote my silly code. Mangoes. Donuts. Was this a recipe? Libraries. Oceans. Was I supposed to go somewhere? Avoid somewhere? Eclipses. A certain time?
I hated Past Me.
I flipped to the middle and paused on Mom’s artwork. A stray thought hit like a baseball bat. Did she know Oracle Rye had left Kansas without her? She must.
Talk about a knife straight to the heart. How betrayed she must feel. Angry with me. Hurt. Or had she puzzled out who I was by now? Oracle Rye, her daughter. Maybe Daddy had admitted the truth.
“I’ve never seen you concentrate so hard,” Jasher said.
Ignore him.
My precious daughter,
Queen Elowen granted me the rare honor of reading a letter penned by her ancestor, Andrea. It was meant for Morris alone and proves beyond all doubt that the husband and wife loved each other with a devotion history could not quantify.
Allow me to share what I now believe happened.
Morris once worked in the mines of Emerald, chasing a treasure from his wife’s world. The Ember, brought with Andrea in a storm. The two were separated, and Morris wanted, more than anything, to find it for her. To quell her fear of what might happen if other beings from her world ever arrived. But only a few weeks into his search for the Ember, the cave collapsed. Soon after, the monstra came.
Hmm. The monstra came from beneath the mountains, but only after its collapse. Had they been trapped inside, but freed in the aftermath?
And what were the odds that Morris could face two collapses? First the mountain, then the catacombs.
“Moooriiiiahhhh,” Jasher called, drawing out the syllables in my name, all enticement and suggestion, hoping to lure me back into conversation.
Heat spilled across my cheeks. I rubbed the aching spot in the center of my chest and forced my focus on the pages before me.
Andrea felt in her bones that Morris still lived. That’s why she wrote the letters. To tell him she would fight her fear without the Ember. How she longed for the future they had imagined for their family. How, if she failed to find him, she wanted him to know she never stopped searching. Then she set out for the mountain where he had mined, determined to save him or die trying.
That’s where her letters ended. As Morris’s journals prove, she did find him. But I’ve discovered no reference to their child, who must have survived. Otherwise, there would be no water maidens here today. Unless others came as Andrea did. Elowen says either option is possible.
I believe Andrea found the Ember on her journey. I just wish I knew where she left it. Or how she and Morris wielded its power.
Did it truly come from another world, swept in through a storm? What is it, in truth? What does it do? Elowen doesn’t know or won’t say.
All excellent questions. Did it come from another world? How many worlds were out there? For most of my life, I’d thought one. Now I knew there were at least two.
“Moriah.”
So little remains recorded. I would swear someone deliberately stripped our chronicles of every clue that mattered. But why do that and condemn us all?