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)
He turned when he heard her approach. “Is that it?”
She met him at the throne and carefully unwrapped the package. “For you.”
Lorcan hesitated only a fraction of a second, long enough for Maureen to notice. A sort of reverence was in his gaze. “Thank you, Maureen. You’ve done well.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, bowing her head.
He took the stone in his hands, his bright blue eyes flying wide. Maureen watched, enthralled, as if she, too, could hear the stone proclaiming him their overking.
Then with a hiss, he dropped it into the moss.
“Sir?” Maureen gasped, throwing the sheet over the stone to pick it up once more.
“Forget what you just saw, Maureen.”
“Sir?” she repeated.
“We still have work to do before she arrives.” He took the stone from her hands, carefully not touching it, and then turned his back on the throne.
She wondered absently why he wasn’t sitting on the throne. Still she followed him as he swept from the room and asked, “You’re so certain she will?”
“She will.”
Part VII
SamHain
Chapter Sixty
The portal door opened directly into Brooklyn.
Kierse stepped forward into the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building with Graves at her side and her friends at her back. Lorcan stood before her sacred tree, his gaze on the Ash Door.
His smile was genuine and devious when he looked up to find her standing before him. “Hello, little songbird.”
The sound of his voice sent a shiver down her spine. The bond pulsed between them like a living, breathing thing. A rubber band snapping against her chest, trying to reel her in step by step.
“Lorcan,” she said as her friends arrayed around her. Ethan on the other side of Graves. Gen and Niamh on the opposite side. Laz and Schwartz at her back. A team. Team Holly.
It had taken everything in her to not immediately portal in from halfway across Manhattan. But she couldn’t accurately pinpoint where he was in headquarters. She’d expected him to be at the Oak Throne, not the Ash Door, but she hadn’t known one way or another. And more than that, they had all agreed that it would drain her magic to a dangerous, unacceptable level. So they had driven the twenty minutes and once she had pinpointed his location had jumped the remaining feet inside the building.
Lorcan’s gaze flicked to their group. “Brannon,” he said with thick disdain. He tipped his head at his robin. “Niamh.”
“What do you think you’re doing, Lorcan?” Niamh demanded.
“I thought that was obvious. I’m taking back the Druids.”
“The Druids don’t want you.”
He glanced around the countless minions arrayed around him. Maureen barely managed not to bark out a laugh. Lorcan shrugged. “It seems there has been some unhappiness in the ranks. It turns out that working with their mortal enemy makes them question your loyalty.”
“You were working with Graves, too,” Kierse pointed out.
“Was I?” Lorcan asked with a scoff.
“You carried me away from Jason last night in his limo,” Kierse snapped. “That was you two working together.”
Lorcan’s gaze skipped over Graves, who had casually slipped his hands into his pockets. Unconcerned but on alert. “No one can fault me for saving your life.”
“And trying to come into the brownstone?” Graves prompted with an arched eyebrow.
“You had my chuisle mo chroí locked up in your tower. I was unaware whether she lived or died. I wouldn’t wish on anyone what it was like for me last night. When my soulmate begs me to come save her and then after I manage it, I am promptly refused the ability to tend to her.” Lorcan’s fury shot through him, softening only when his eyes landed on Kierse. “I would not even have known if you were still in such pain.”
Kierse winced at the raw emotion in his voice. “I already told you that I didn’t want this bond. I don’t know what part of that you aren’t getting.”
“The part where any of this makes sense,” he said calmly. “You do want the bond. You do want to be with me. You do feel something for me. You’ve told me yourself. Brannon kicked you out over that fact.”
Graves shrugged. “And yet she still chose me over you every time.”
Lorcan narrowed his eyes. “She’s not choosing you. You just happened to get to her first.”
“Then you shouldn’t have hired a thief to steal from me,” Graves said. “You should have seen her for what she was from the start.”
“Graves,” Kierse warned.
But he didn’t listen. “You were the one who put her in my path. It would be fitting that she loves me and not you when you could not see what was directly in front of you.”
Lorcan didn’t say that it was the spell that had kept him from her, because he should have known. There was a connection between them from their first meeting. In the easy way they talked when she should have been more guarded. And the way he kept reaching for her as if he couldn’t quite let her go. Even he hadn’t known why and because of Saoirse he hadn’t even known it possible to have a second magical soulmate.