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)
“I don’t want it,” she told it.
“The universe wants it.”
“And my choice doesn’t matter?”
“Fate chose you, hero.”
Fate. Another word she hated.
“You can sense the bond in me and refuse to break the geas on it?”
“Yes.” A final word, definitive.
“Is there any way to break this bond?”
“Yes.”
Kierse perked up at the word. “Besides death?”
“Yes.”
She waited for the stone to elaborate, but of course it did not.
“I didn’t choose this,” she pleaded with the ancient thing. As if it could understand human emotions. As if it could know that love was a choice and not a matter of fate. That destiny didn’t choose her. She made her own destiny. And if the universe didn’t want her to love Graves, then why had it thrown her directly in his path?
“You are made for more than this,” the stone admonished. “Heroes are few and far between. The greats wrote tales of their prowess. They fought wars and besieged castles and made kings.”
“And the good ones did it for love.”
“They did it for power,” the stone corrected. “Take back your own power. Until then, I will be waiting for you, hero.”
The stone went silent. Just a hunk of rock, not a millennia-old supernatural object that could whisper into her mind the secrets of the universe.
She wrenched back from it, her stomach in knots and tears clustered in her lashes.
“Wren?” Graves stepped forward.
But it was Lorcan who touched her wrist. The contact tugged her toward him like he’d thrown a life raft in shark-infested waters. Might save her life, might still be dinner.
She lifted her teary gaze to meet his. There was no way to escape him. If there was another way to break the bond, the stone wouldn’t tell her. There was just…fate.
“Love?” Lorcan whispered, so full of utter devotion.
She shook her head. No words left for the pain of that realization. Their last chance. The hail mary. The stone wouldn’t help them. Nothing could help them.
“See?” he said gently. His hand came up to her cheek to wipe the tears from the tracks of her face. “You see now?”
“Yes.”
“The stone showed you exactly what I knew it would show you. We are meant for each other, my chuisle mo chroí.”
“We’re meant for each other,” she said slowly, considering.
“Kierse,” Graves said behind her, confusion in his voice.
But she couldn’t look at him.
If she looked at him, she might give away her thoughts. He might see that she was lying. And she needed Lorcan to believe her. She needed him to really believe her right now.
Because the stone had said that they were fated. This was her destiny. This was what the universe had decided for them.
But it had said something else, too. That she needed to regain her power. And until she had returned from the stone’s presence, she hadn’t quite realized what that meant. What it could possibly mean when she had all of her power at her disposal again. Her eyes lifted over Lorcan’s shoulder to the power at his back.
The sacred tree. Her sacred tree.
She had created that tree out of her own power and the power of her triskel. She had connected to it at her lowest. It had given her magic and unlocked doors. It had helped her with her persuasion. And Maya told her that she needed to merge with the tree to be able to talk to and access its vast powers.
No time like the present.
She reached out with her mind and magic. She found the tree that took up the enormous rotunda within the bank. And she pushed.
“Hello, tree,” she said. “I know you helped me once. I know that you and I are together. If you ever wanted to talk back, now would be the time.”
Lorcan was still speaking, but she no longer listened. She didn’t care whatever way he had deluded himself into thinking that she would give in to him once she realized the bond couldn’t be broken by the stone. Like he thought that she wouldn’t look for another way. Any other way.
“Tree, please. I’m desperate. You and I can be a team.”
But the tree remained silent.
Kierse kept her face blank, not wanting to show the anger or the desperation. Not wanting to deal with any of it.
Instead, she reached for Gen and Ethan across the room. Her best friends, the two people who grounded her most in the world, her triskel. And like a lightbulb, the connection lit up. They’d been a triskel when the tree had been created, and maybe they needed to be a triskel to start that first connection.
She couldn’t speak to them through the bond, but neither of them had resisted when she sent the trickle of magic to them. They were a unit. As it had always been and always would be. Them against the world.
Lorcan had gone silent. He looked between them, seeing the triskel connection. “What are you doing?”