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)
Relief and fire crashed together. “I won’t let you down,” I swore. “I’ve given my life to the Ember. It will shine for me when I reach the battlefield. I know it.”
She nodded. “I know it will, too.”
I waded into the spring beside her, and she offered me her hand. I took it, gripping tight as we pressed our foreheads together.
“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered. “You know that, yes.”
“Yes. Just as you know I’m proud of you.”
“Sisters until the end.”
Forever. Always. “Sisters until the end.”
She drew back, eyes blazing. “Steel yourself. I’m taking you straight into battle. Royal soldiers are falling in droves, and without you, all will be lost.”
“I’m ready,” I swore, palming two daggers.
“Then we go.”
Together, we sank into the liquid. The world tilted, and a new landscape locked. Heat kicked the air from my lungs as the battlefield formed around me. A haze of ash and smoke. Violet sky. Screaming earth. A village market.
I gawked, stunned. No stories, no lessons, no sharp warnings had prepared me for this. Nothing could have.
A monstra waited for us, as if he’d known when and where we would land. He didn’t aim for me but my sister. Fire slammed into Elowen’s middle, hurling her across a line of dead, smoking bodies, into a boulder.
“No!” I rushed over to kill the flames and drag her behind the rock.
“I’ll heal,” she rasped and pulled herself upright. “Go. Fight. Kill them all.”
Yes.
“I’ll love you until the end,” I told her, then hurled myself into the fray, an assassin trained from birth. I killed her attacker first.
On and on I fought. For her. For our mother. My father. Even Elowen’s. For Hakeldama. For everyone.
With every swing of my blades, I expected the Ember to fire up. To consume me at long last. To explode with light and crystallize the monstra once and for all. Though I felt its power, an engine running smooth and hot, powering my strength, it did little more than glow.
I didn’t feel my wounds until the last monstra fell. I stood among the carnage, panting, certain the war wasn’t over. It had only begun.
That was when I met Reese. Gentle hands. Soft voice. Kind eyes. He claimed to be a villager and cleaned my wounds. Helped my sister. In the coming days, we became friends.
The Ember never ignited, no matter how many battles I survived. Reese told me I didn’t have to carry the burden alone. I believed him. Trusted him. But he was monstra and at Ian’s command, he slid a blade between my ribs. Slow, precise, intimate.
There in the Ring of Truth, my body convulsed, lungs burning.
Reset. Another life. Different home. Same ache.
Elowen trained me harder this time, her voice clipped, her eyes watchful.
“Do not mistake kindness for safety,” she warned. “There’s always a motive.”
The first battle—again. Elowen avoided injury, but I did not. I met Anders in the marshlands…and he introduced me to his twin, Jasher. Humor like armor, laughter like hope. Jasher fought beside me. Bled for me. Hiding who and what he really was.
I fell for him. And he led me into a trap, ensuring my death.
No pause. No mercy.
One life collapsed into another, too fast, too brutal. For a string of those lives, I had no contact with Jasher. Not face to face, at least. Perhaps he’d been among the throngs I slew. Perhaps not. Then we met again. And again. Initial contact happened sooner each go-round, as if we were drawn together by a force greater than ourselves. But always in the end, he did exactly as my dad and Elowen had warned. He betrayed me.
“I’ve begun remembering our past loops,” Elowen told me one day, pacing just like I did when trying to work a puzzle. “A pattern has formed. You meet the one named Jasher. You love him. You die.”
For a few loops, she killed Jasher at every opportunity.
Now, she paced before me, frenzied. “If he dies before you meet him, you follow within a week. If he dies after…we war.”
War. Yes. Sister against sister, life after life. The big bad ruled unchecked. I never dealt with Sin or Malkom. Always they maintained their distance from me, as if afraid and waiting for the right moment to strike.
In a few loops, Elowen oversaw my demise herself, if only to start over again.
More pain ripped through me as I relived death after death. Fire, poison, steel. Screams tore free, and the real me fell, knees buckling.
Hands gripped mine. Jasher, anchoring me. Or attempting to. I resisted.
Every life, I had lost sight of my mission, breaking my vow to my sister.
Every life, I had loved the wrong man.
Every life, I had died with regret.
Finally—finally!—understanding settled heavy in my chest. There would be no more chances. Elowen was right; the final tide of my lives was rising fast, relentless, curling toward its inevitable crash. When next I died, the Ember died with me.