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)
“An avenging angel,” he said, sweeping a loose strand of her hair behind her pointed ear.
“Do angels carry murderous weapons?”
“Assuredly.”
“Maybe just teach me Latin next time.”
“If you insist,” he said, pressing a firm kiss to her lips with a promise for more. A jolt ran through her, and she wished for the hundredth time that she still had the capacity to lower her absorption and let him see into her head.
When they broke apart, she said a little breathlessly, “Let’s get the stone and get out of here.”
“Together,” he said.
“I lost my lock picks.”
But Graves had already made it to the door, jerking it open with one powerful tug. The warding dissolved under his touch as if it had never been.
“That’s one way to do it,” she said, marveling at how easily he had overpowered Archie’s wards.
Then they stepped inside his vault, only to find someone else had been here.
And that someone had remained.
“Hello, little songbird,” Lorcan said.
Chapter Two
The buzzing in her ear suddenly made sense.
Lorcan Flynn. Her soulmate. The Druid who had bound their magic together.
She had gotten so used to pushing away the string that guided them, feeling the ever-oppressive weight of it in her gut, that she hadn’t even realized when it was ramping up. It was always there. One step away from driving her to catastrophe. And now he was here.
“You look surprised to see me,” Lorcan said. Somehow Lorcan made himself seem at home in the gently lit crypt stacked with assorted treasures. He lounged back on a green chaise, dressed in gray slacks and a white button-up with a navy blazer. His eyes were a cerulean blue that made her think of the ocean, and his smile made her stomach lurch involuntarily. The scent of morning sunshine and ocean waves and spring filled the room. His power that wrapped around her like a noose. The Oak King, her summer god. “Surely you felt my presence long before you got here.”
“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think about you at all,” she snapped.
“If that were true, you wouldn’t have to tell me.”
Kierse flushed at the silken words out of his mouth. It made her want to shove a gun to his temple and pull the trigger. She would if it wouldn’t result in her death as well.
When Lorcan discovered that she could lower her absorption powers to allow Graves to enter her mind and find her lost memories of her parents, he’d decided to take matters into his own hands. He’d kidnapped her, forced a binding of their magic against her will, and then locked down her magic so that Graves could no longer get in her head. All because Graves had destroyed the mind of Lorcan’s sister, Emilie, and ultimately killed her five hundred years ago. Out of fear that he’d do the same to Kierse, he’d gone about it all wrong. It didn’t matter that he’d done it out of some false reason to save her. None of that mattered.
Lorcan believed he was in the right. He believed that taking away her choice in the matter was for her own good. And she hated him for it.
Still, he wasn’t wrong about one thing.
She did think about him. And not just fantasizing about his eventual death at her hands. Kierse had inherited her magic from Lorcan’s dead wife, Saoirse. The bond stretched back hundreds of years, and they’d had two Fae children, and it was only strengthened through this new binding. She had to focus to keep him out of her head.
“What are you doing here?” Graves interrupted in a voice that was as cold as the dead of winter.
His storm-cloud eyes were nearly black with disdain for his enemy. He’d taken a half step forward to put himself between Kierse and Lorcan. And when she glanced at him from the corner of her eyes, she could see the monster coming out to play.
She sometimes forgot that Graves was the most terrifying being on pretty much any continent at any point in time. That he’d been fine to play the villain for centuries and softening for her was more difficult than this mask he wore.
“You know why I’m here,” Lorcan said. He lifted a hand behind his head and lay back with that smirk on his lips.
“To infuriate us?” Kierse grumbled.
“Is it working?” Lorcan asked with his eyes on Graves as he added, “Brother?”
Graves didn’t even tense at the word. Once they had been as close as brothers, but that was before Emilie. Before Graves had been cast out of Druid society and out of Ireland as a whole. Before they’d become personified gods—the Oak and the Holly Kings—always battling for the turn of the seasons.
“Give us the stone,” Graves said instead.
Kierse held her hand out. “Now.”
Lorcan tilted his head, looking at the two of them with that insufferable smile still on his face. “What do you mean?”