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)
“Please, tree,” she said. “You’re my tree. Our tree. We created you from the aether. And watched you grow from a sapling. We’ve given you our tears and our bond and tended to you. We need you now.”
Silently, a voice settled into her mind. Somehow young and old. A newly created thing connected to something as old as the roots of this world.
“You destroyed Sansara.”
The accusation ran through all of their minds. Gen whimpered. Ethan recoiled. It was a painful thing to hear. Kierse had known that by killing Jason there would be consequences. Known that Jason’s connection with Sansara was both an abomination and helping hundreds, maybe thousands, of people. That it couldn’t be helped anyway.
Sansara had been connected to Jason—her abuser—and he deserved his death.
Still, she was sorry.
“Sansara was corrupted,” she told the tree. Then she dug deep within herself and showed the tree everything she knew of Jason. The rogue Druid who had drained Sansara. The master thief who had beat her to within an inch of her life. The cult he had raised up around himself as he healed. The terror he promised upon the world by using the trees. “Do you see? He was going to take you and all the other trees. He was going to further corrupt something pure.”
The tree seemed to process all the information she had given it. Slow. Too slow.
“Kierse,” Lorcan said, his hands on her shoulders. He shook her gently as if to bring her back to reality. “Drop the triskel.”
“No,” she told him flatly.
“Sansara was restored once before,” her tree said. “You, too, are a restored magic. It did not first belong to you.”
“You’re right. It’s reincarnated from another will-o’-the-wisp. I am something old and new, too.”
The tree seemed to understand that. “You could restore Sansara as well?”
“If it’s possible to do, then yes.”
“Nuala,” the tree said in greeting. “Call me Nuala.”
“Nuala,” Kierse murmured.
“I see your problem. I can give you the power that you seek.”
Then the tree formed a bridge, and a fount of golden magic flowed between them, hotter than a volcanic eruption and more powerful than anything she had ever felt in her existence.
Enough to burn down the world with.
Enough to change the flow of time.
Enough to break the bond.
Chapter Sixty-Two
“The stone told you that this wouldn’t work,” Lorcan said.
Graves stepped forward, concern etched on his brow. “What are you trying to do?”
Kierse bit back a response. She had to concentrate on how much power she absorbed. Was there a breaking point? She had never found one in the past. She’d been overwhelmed on occasion and short circuited, but that had been someone else’s power. And it had been before she knew how to control it. Before she had a triskel at her back to ground her. Before the cauldron had given her more power.
This was something different. She wasn’t going to break under the pressure. She had to hold on long enough to use it for what she needed.
“She thinks she can break the bond,” Lorcan said. His hand came to her cheek, a soft, comforting thing. “You can’t do it, love.”
“Stop…touching me,” she ground out.
Graves came to her back, pulling her from Lorcan.
“All of this and you still defy what is right before your eyes,” Lorcan said.
“Pot…meet…kettle,” Kierse spat back.
Graves drew her flush against his chest. “You can hold it, Wren. You can do it.”
She listened to his comforting words. She had to do this. She had to be right. Because what else could the stone have meant when it told her to take back her power? This had to be the reason. Nuala was right there.
She homed in on the bond, felt where it beat in her chest. She prodded at the thing between them like striking a chord on a harp. A soft twang followed that thrummed through both of them.
Lorcan shivered. “That isn’t going to do it.”
“Why do you want this when I defy you at every turn?”
“Because that’s a lie that you tell yourself.” His cerulean eyes met her as Graves braced her arms with his. Her back to Graves, her front to Lorcan. “You told me once that you imagined our life together. The what-if you played in your head if you had met me first.”
“It didn’t happen that way.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t want it to be like that now.”
She inhaled sharply as more power surged. “I did want it to happen that way. A part of me did—a part of me does—but every other part of me wants him.”
Graves’s hands tightened on her arms. “Careful.”
She plucked at the bond again. A living, breathing thing. It was still just as taut. It felt like a ticking time bomb waiting to erupt in her face.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t break it. Even with all the power of a sacred tree, suffused by a triskel, held by the most powerful warlock of the age, she still was not capable.