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)
The future burned behind my eyes even now—emerald light, the sickening drop of falling.
Jasher’s mouth curved into the softest, saddest smile I’d ever seen, and it broke something vital inside me. “What I want,” he said quietly, as the metal snapped closed around my wrists, “I cannot have.”
The cuffs locked, cold biting deep, sinking past skin and bone and straight into my will. “Then we’re both doomed,” I whispered.
23
LAST RESORT
“Now, now. That’s enough you two.” With the confidence of a king, Ian smiled at me. “Bow, darling.”
My body betrayed me, my knees folding as if puppet strings had been cut. I hit the nest floor hard, catching myself on trembling hands as breath tore from my lungs.
Rage shattered my composure. I fought to stand, pushing up, muscles straining, my teeth bared in a silent scream. Waves beneath my skin hammered against the cuffs, searching for a crack, a weakness, anything.
Nothing. Even my outline of Elowen vanished as strength abandoned me in a rush. I sagged, panting, shoulders shaking, fury, grief, and humiliation scalding my throat. All this power inside me. Enough to open waterways. To peer into the future or the past and terrify battle-savvy soldiers. Yet still I ended here, on my knees, defeated.
Jasher swiped up the backpack and gave it to his leader.
“I hope you know this isn’t personal,” Ian said, a patient tutor with a new pupil.
“It’s very personal to me,” I snapped.
Jasher raised his chin, saying nothing else, his features blank.
Ian dumped out the bag. The stones. The journal. The hat. The note. The stones, now glowing again.
Whether they reacted to the danger, Ian, or my need, I didn’t know.
The two stones Jasher broke had reformed into perfect orbs. The ones I’d dropped and fed to a monster had reappeared, as well.
Grinning, Ian picked up the journal and kissed the cover.
Here was my nightmare, come to pass. How could I be so foolish to mark it?!
“Jay tells me you’ve been making notations,” he said, dripping with eagerness. “I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts.”
Jay? Jasher hadn’t admitted his full name? Hope flared bright again, even as he continued to work, arranging the stones in a circle, then blowing a stream of fire over them. The flames absorbed into the stones, as if sucked inside lungs. Then the stones exhaled, and the flames snapped high, bright and hot.
“You didn’t finish your story.” I pushed the words between gritted teeth, and not just to buy time. I longed to know more. Everything. “You found monstra eggshells, and Sin told you how to use them to create your clones. Why not explain it to me, if you’re certain I’m soon to die?”
Ian grinned his coldest grin yet. “You don’t have to cajole me, girl. I want you to know.” He tossed the hat and note into the circle of flames, and both disintegrated into nothing. “All it took to create the clones was a little of my blood. The smallest of shell fragments can grow hundreds of my beasts.” His gaze honed to a razor’s edge. “Now, it’s your turn to talk. Tell me where Andrea is hiding.”
“I don’t know.”
His eyelids narrowed to slits. “I gave you honesty, and you dare repay me with lies?”
“I’m not lying.” I looked between him and Jasher, who still displayed zero emotion.
“You are. So this conversation is over.” Ian flattened a palm over the emerald tattooed on his chest. A golden light speared from his fingers, and when he drew his hand away, he held an actual emerald. Not the glowing one I’d seen in my vision, but an ordinary gemstone.
“I. Don’t. Know,” I insisted. “You beasts caught me while I was searching for her. Ask your oh, so loyal Jay.”
“Come here,” Ian said, crooking his finger. “Stand within the stones.”
Compulsion hit. My breathing fractured. I dug my heels in, every instinct screaming no. Muscles locked as I fought the pull of his voice, but in less than a blink, my body snapped upright. My feet moved, each step toward the circle stolen.
Heat licked my cheeks as I approached the blaze. “A vision,” I bellowed, willing one to come. The air thickened before me, shimmering and alive. Flames coiled higher, their light stroking my skin like curious fingers.
“I don’t need your visions,” Ian asserted, unaffected.
I tried to slow, to stumble, to fall—anything—but my legs kept carrying me forward, inch by merciless inch, toward the heart of the inferno.
There was no stopping this.
All right. If these were my last moments, they wouldn’t be spent in a panic, delighting my enemies. I smoothed my expression into blank defiance, stopped fighting—and stepped inside the stones.
I expected pain. Melting. But seconds passed, and nothing happened.
I blinked, unsure. The fire whispered around me, scorching but also somehow…gentle. Almost reverent. And as the flames rose, licking at me, the prettiest shade of blue bloomed over my flesh, as if an invisible veneer was being burned away. My eyes widened. This was what everyone else had seen when they looked at me?