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)
“Me?” she croaked.
“You burning up like a phoenix, baby.”
She closed her eyes around the soft sound of him using a pet name with her. Comforting her when he had died.
“Graves, it’s not…”
“I know why you tried,” he said. “I get it.”
“No, it’s…” She sniffled and put her head in her hands. “You were dead.”
This time he did laugh. “I can’t die. I’ve been run through too many times.”
She shook her head. “You did. It drained your magic. Like a wisp does to a warlock.”
“But I’m the Holly King.”
She sniffled. “It was only a thread connecting you to Lorcan.”
Graves lifted his gaze to realize there were still other people in the room. Lorcan on a knee to the side. Gen, Ethan, and Niamh sniffling behind them.
“I…don’t remember being dead. It felt like any other solstice.”
“I tried to bring you back. I tried,” she told him.
Graves’s sharp mind was catching back up. His gaze swept back to her. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t let you die.”
“What did you do?”
“You saved me,” she told him through the trembling in her body. “You…you saved my life by closing the door. I couldn’t let that be for nothing.”
“It was a sacrifice. I would do it a thousand times over,” he said as he came slowly to a wounded sit. “I’d do it again.”
“I know, and I love you for it, but I couldn’t…couldn’t live in a world without you in it.”
Lorcan cleared his throat and slowly drew to his feet. “Let’s circle this up, love.”
She closed her eyes, biting her lip and trying to find the strength she had when she had to save Graves’s life. Now was the hard part. The part that she couldn’t bear to disclose.
A soft ticking began in her mind. A countdown.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Graves said, slow and deliberate as if he’d already worked it out and couldn’t quite process it.
“I made a bargain with Lorcan to bring you back.”
Graves stilled into a statue. “A bargain for…you?”
She nodded once. “He brings you back and I’ll go with him.”
“And he agreed.” Graves didn’t look to Lorcan. “Of course he did.”
“He didn’t have the magic to do it. It’s winter now. I…had to make the geas on the stone.”
Graves retreated as he stopped breathing at the words. “The stone.”
She nodded through her tears again. Then she came to her knees and grasped his hands. “I would do it to save you all over again. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to break it that doesn’t resolve in one of us dead again, but I know we’ll figure it out.”
“The stone has no loopholes,” Graves said.
“It told me there was one.”
His eyes swept over her. “That’s a fairy tale for you. Let me guess—it’s impossible.”
“No,” she said. “But it said I had to figure it out.”
“It’s a trap,” Graves said. “The last sliver of hope that sets you looking forever or die trying.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Graves said. “You don’t have to live like this.”
“I won’t let you die.”
Then before he could say anything more, try to convince her to let him just die instead, she grasped his jaw in her hands and drew their lips together. His arms came around her, strong and unrelenting. A forever kiss that felt as much as a sealed bargain as the one she would make after this.
She loved him. They would figure out how to break this. There was always a third option.
She broke the kiss just as quickly, scrambling away from Graves or otherwise she’d never do it. And the geas pounded harder in her mind. A thump, thump, thump of a heartbeat that said her time was running out to keep her end of the geas.
Lorcan had brought Graves back.
Now she had to seal it.
“Kierse,” Graves said, scrambling to his feet.
Lorcan held his hand out. She let him draw her into him. The headache became an all-consuming pulse. If she ignored it, she would die. Graves would die. The whole thing would be for nothing.
“Wait, Wren…wait!” Graves yelled.
Then she pressed her lips to Lorcan’s to seal the geas.
The magic of the geas enveloped the room, expanding to suffuse the bank. It was the same iridescent glowing magic that Lorcan had used on Graves. Then the bubble burst, and magic ricocheted across the room, throwing itself out to the deep reaches of the world. The geas encompassed everything in entirety before settling like a morning dew.
When the last of the headache disappeared, she pulled back from Lorcan, staring up into his eternally blue eyes. And for a moment, she felt as if she should be worried about something. That there was an itch at the back of her mind, but when she plucked at it, it fell far away from view.
“Kierse?” Lorcan said almost hesitantly.
She took a step away from him. She needed the distance to sort everything out. Why was he looking at her like that? She smiled up at him. “Why do you look so worried?”