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)
Pain erupted in my chest as he slammed his fist through it. Skin tore. Muscles snapped. Bones broke. I held on as I drank, pushing downward.
We hit the floor, cracking the stone. Still, I held on, drinking fast and hard, easing the burn of pain as my gaze landed on what had become of my father. My vision changed, contracting and lengthening until I only saw him through a thin slit.
The rage turned to an icy fire in my veins. Dual pain ripped through my back, right at my shoulder blades. This wasn’t Kolis. No, it was my bones—vertebrae expanding and shifting, breaking through my skin, unfurling.
Tearing through the flesh of Kolis’s throat, I jerked my head back and rose, lifting him from the floor.
Kolis’s brows lowered, and his eyes narrowed. “What the…?” His gaze shifted behind me, and his expression smoothed out, his lips parting. “Impossible.”
My vision rapidly expanded and returned to normal as I spat a mouthful of blood into his face. “What did you do to her?”
I twisted, throwing Kolis with a shout of rage. His body smacked into the floor, shattering several tiles.
He hit the ground and rolled. I didn’t give him a chance to recover. I was on him instantly, grabbing him.
“What did you do to her?” I shouted as I dragged him from the floor, twisted at the waist, and tossed him between the pillars and out the window, shattering the glass.
Blood poured down my chest, mine and his, as I prowled forward. My feet left the floor as I shadowstepped outside.
Sunlight broke through the remaining clouds, and I saw a shadow on the ground before me. Twin arcs that swept high as another quake ripped through the ground. Something exploded, drawing my gaze. Beyond the Rise, a smoke plume rose from the city as the sound of distant screams were swept away in the roar of the wind. I scanned the bloodstained ground, and the bodies littered about. So many. Most mortals—servants who had done as…
Kolis wasn’t here.
The eather rose—
A shock of pale-blond hair matted in crimson stopped me. Arms and legs broken into unnatural angles.
It wasn’t Delano.
But…
My chest seized. I turned sharply, willing myself back to the Great Hall, returning to them.
Hisa and Lizeth.
Delano and my father.
Kieran.
I staggered, then my legs gave out. My knees hit the ground.
Delano was gone.
So was Hisa.
Lizeth.
My father.
My fucking father.
None of this was supposed to happen. My mind raced back over the years. I was supposed to free my brother. I was supposed to take the Maiden. I was supposed to end the Blood Crown. Poppy wasn’t supposed to stop me from following her—from preventing this.
None of this was supposed to happen.
My trembling hands balled into fists as I pressed them against my bloody chest. My heart. I couldn’t feel it beating. I hadn’t felt it since Kolis arrived in the Great Hall.
Poppy.
She was hurt. She had to be.
I had to get to her.
I tried to focus on her, but like before, I couldn’t find her mark.
I couldn’t—
I jerked my left hand from my chest and opened it. Blood covered my palm. Heart thumping, I wiped at it with my other hand, over and over—
Bone.
All I saw was flesh fading into silver bone. I couldn’t see the imprint. I couldn’t feel her.
The roar of rage and eather built and built as the crimson-streaked mist poured out of me and spilled into the air.
I couldn’t sense Poppy.
My head kicked back, and a scream tore through me. The sound burst forth, turning into pure ruin the moment it hit the air. I slammed my fists into the stone.
Marble and gold exploded as patches of my flesh faded along my arms, replaced by the gleam of bone.
Inky black vines burst from the holes beneath my hands, slipping past my fists and rapidly spreading across the bloody floor. Thinner branches broke off, slipping over the bodies as I turned my head to Kieran.
With another shout that shook the walls and shattered what glass remained, I sent him from the Great Hall.
The doors slammed shut, leaving me alone with them.
The vines unfurled across the floor, gently wrapping them, moving over the others as a black bird landed on the floor before me. Then another and another. Ravens poured in through the dome as the vines climbed the walls, overlapping one another as they stretched over the windows and sealed the doors.
Pain—soul-deep pain—entrenched itself deep inside me, and there was this snapping motion. A coming undone as…something shifted inside me. All the desperation and sorrow carved ruin into my bones. Panic and rage collapsed into ashes of wrath.
I tipped forward, unused muscles along my shoulder blades twitching as wings slammed down on either side of me—wings with silver feathers tinged in dark gray and threaded with crimson.
The fluttering of smaller wings came, flapping wildly as snow began to fall. I suddenly understood Aydun’s words about our union because something was rising from within me. It was a thing—a powerful thing that had always been there. Waiting. Watching. Caged. And it was cold. Unending.