Total pages in book: 401
Estimated words: 390373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1952(@200wpm)___ 1561(@250wpm)___ 1301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 390373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1952(@200wpm)___ 1561(@250wpm)___ 1301(@300wpm)
My head snapped back. Denial flooded my system, but it quickly faded.
“We should leave.” Attes glanced toward the manor. “This isn’t going to work.”
“What?” I pulled on my arm again, but he held on. “We can’t leave. If we do, he will attack Carsodonia. People will die.”
“So be it—”
This time when I wrenched my arm free, I broke his hold. “I am not leaving.” I stepped back, hands fisting as my gaze fell on the cracks in the stone pillars. “You can go, but I’m not.”
“Poppy—”
“You’re right. I am fucking up,” I admitted, tearing my gaze from the evidence of such. “I can lock it down. I will. You can believe that or not, I don’t care. Either way, I’m not leaving. What you do is up to you.”
Attes swore as he shoved a hand through his hair in a way that reminded me so much of Casteel that I had to look away.
Turning, I faced the colonnade. I didn’t close my eyes. I forced myself to see the bodies hanging there as I did what I said I would. It wasn’t easy—it was like trying to gather tattered clothing in a windstorm. But I had to. I was desperate to do so because I had to end this, and I was willing to do whatever was needed.
So, I did what I swore I would never do again. I took a deep breath and did what I was forced to do when I donned the veil. It wasn’t real. I wasn’t slipping anything over my head, but I could feel the weight of the golden chains. I forced myself to become nothing so I wouldn’t feel anything. Not the anger, the disgust. Not even the sharper, suffocating emotion that hid itself behind the rage. I didn’t just shut it down. I cut myself off. I changed. Adapted. For the last time, I became the Chosen. And when I opened my eyes, I was able to see past the bodies just as I had seen past the Ascended’s lies.
“Poppy,” Attes said softly.
“I’m level.” I started to walk and climbed the steps. “Are you coming or not?”
Attes didn’t answer, but he followed. In the very recesses of my mind, I acknowledged that I knew he wouldn’t leave me.
I passed the bodies, aware of Attes behind me. I turned my attention to the doors. Unease prickled the nape of my neck as I lifted my gaze to the entrance’s double doors. It was unguarded.
I arched a brow, a bit insulted by the fact that not even one guard greeted us. Glancing at Attes, I found him eyeing our surroundings with a frown. “I guess we just let ourselves in?”
Attes’s gaze moved to the doors and then to me. He nodded, and then, somehow, he ended up in front of me. Pushing open the doors, cool air rushed out to greet us. We walked into the wide hall that branched off into several smaller ones. The sound of distant…laughter came from somewhere ahead of us.
“Come on.” Attes stalked forward.
Wondering who the fuck could be laughing, I followed. I kept an eye on the halls we passed. Even though Kolis’s presence choked out the sense of anyone else, I knew there were many gods here.
The laughter increased the farther we traveled into the surprisingly clean manor. As did the sound of…
My back stiffened. “Please, tell me I’m not hearing what I think I am.”
“Unfortunately, you are.”
Moaning.
I heard soft moans and deep, harsher groans.
The laughter was hard enough to comprehend, but the sounds of sex? What in the actual fuck?
Attes abruptly veered to the right, and I almost walked into his back. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I think we’re where we need to be.”
I turned my head. Two men stood at the end of the hall, in front of the closed doors to what I assumed was Seacliffe’s Great Hall.
Their faces were painted like Callum’s and Millicent’s had been, in the shape of wings that extended from the hairline to the jaw. But these were a deep, dark red.
The laughter and moans continued and echoed from the Hall, the sound grating on my nerves and stretching my patience thin. Not only did Kolis know we were coming, there were also hundreds of bodies in the bay, and dozens hanging from the colonnade. And this was what was occurring? A sex party?
A tear in the veil formed.
Something like this couldn’t be okay.
The eather pulsed but I quickly stitched the tear before the anger, unease, and thin threads of fear buried under everything else could rip me from the nothing.
The Revenants moved to open the doors, but I beat them to it. Lifting a hand, I summoned the eather and blew the doors off their hinges.
I may have donned the veil, but I had not become the Maiden.
I prowled forward as the heavy wooden doors crashed against the walls with a loud crack that drew startled shouts from those inside the chamber. All I saw were flashes of crimson and skin—lots of skin. I didn’t look long enough to see anything else. I couldn’t the moment my eyes landed on him.