Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Graves’s hand landed on her shoulder as the balance between their magic shifted to even. “Wren.”
She stopped, coming up out of a fog. Lorcan was only a foot from her. He, too, was staring at her, starry-eyed and hungry.
She jerked back a step, colliding with Graves’s chest. “You,” she accused Lorcan.
His smile was dreamy. “Yes?”
“You did this.”
“He didn’t,” Graves said gently.
“Don’t defend him,” Kierse said, pulling away from him, too.
Lorcan’s hand went to his chest like he could still feel that bridge. “I opened the connection between us when you were in a bad place with your demon. I couldn’t get there fast enough while I dealt with my own, but I could give you more weapons to work with.”
Kierse took a step toward him. She couldn’t stop trembling. He’d opened the connection. He’d opened it, and that had been the euphoria that had passed between them. He could have given her powers back at any point.
He looked hopeful when he added, “I only wanted to save your life.”
She slapped him across the face, the full force of her Fae abilities behind the gesture. His head snapped sideways with a resounding crack.
“I could have saved Nate,” she snarled.
“Wren,” Graves said with command.
They’d had this conversation before. They’d gone round and round about how it wasn’t her fault. That it was the werewolf pack leader Nova’s fault, since she dealt the final blow. That it was the Men of Valor’s fault, because they instructed her to silence Nate’s opposition. That it was the fault of Amberdash, the head of their pro-monster group, who had stirred up fear and continued to upend the sanctity of her city.
And still she felt the blame.
“Fine. If it’s not my fault, then it’s his.” She pointed at Lorcan. “All of this is his fault.”
Lorcan looked as if he were going to respond, but Graves glared at him and said, “Can we talk about what’s happening right in front of us?”
Kierse glanced back at the dead body before her. It wasn’t her first by a long shot, but she hadn’t wanted to do this to Archie.
She didn’t want to look at him, and yet she couldn’t stop. She could see his empty face and the cracked lips and the bloodless look under his skin. It made her want to vomit.
“They’re going to know it was a wisp,” Lorcan said regretfully.
“I’ll take care of it,” Graves said.
“How?” Lorcan demanded. “You were there during the wisp-warlock conflicts. Your kind lose your mind over this sort of thing.”
“The wisp-warlock conflicts?” Kierse managed to ask.
Graves shot Lorcan a look, then turned to Kierse. “Have you heard of the Thirty Years’ War?” When she shook her head, he continued, “It was a devastating religious conflict throughout Europe in the 1600s. The catalyst happened in Prague when Catholic officials were thrown out of a window by Protestant nobles.”
“Okay?” she asked, her shaking subsiding at the brief history lesson. Somehow, Graves always grounded her.
“It was a bound Druid-Fae that threw a dead warlock out the window,” Lorcan explained bluntly. “It resulted in hundreds of deaths on both sides. Millions of humans and monsters.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
“And then we held truce for hundreds of years,” Graves said.
“Until Saoirse,” Lorcan snarled.
“And the Fae Killer.”
Kierse shivered. The monster who had hunted Fae to extinction. They had come for her parents, killing them in cold blood. It was only a spell on her body that kept them from finding her.
“What happens if they find out a Fae killed a warlock?” Kierse asked.
“It only happened once, and the Fae was hunted and killed,” Graves said solemnly. “But now, no one can know that you exist. They think that you’re all dead.”
“So if they find Archie, they find a way to me.”
Lorcan and Graves exchanged a look. “Not going to happen,” Graves growled at the same time Lorcan said, “Never.”
Then the door burst open, ending the conversation as Walter Rodriguez bleated, “I couldn’t get in!”
Walter was six feet of wiry twenty-something with curly hair and amber-brown skin. He wore square black glasses, and even a few months with Graves couldn’t impact his fashion sense as he stood there in jeans and a superhero T-shirt.
He took stock of the situation and said simply, “Uh…fuck.”
“We need to get rid of a dead body,” Graves said.
“Sure,” Walter said. “What exactly happened to him?”
“Something we don’t want anyone else to know about.”
Lorcan nodded. “That would be very bad.”
Walter glanced between them. “Are you…working together?”
At the same time, they said, “No.”
Walter’s eyes widened. “All right.”
“I have a contact who can help,” Graves said.
Kierse’s eyebrows shot up. “Someone here?”
“Not exactly the reason I planned to reach out to him, but yeah.” He squeezed her hand. “Make sure the house stays clear and have George pull around.”
“Sure,” Walter said, heading to the door.
Graves nodded at Kierse. “Give me a minute.”