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)
“What was that?” she asked.
He looked at her for a second, unseeing. But instead of the gray of thunderstorms, his eyes were a dark, bottomless black from edge to edge.
Her mouth opened as her eyes widened in shock and horror. “Graves!”
He collapsed backward, and his body convulsed. Kierse rushed to him, falling to her knees and taking his head in her hands.
“I have you. Oh God,” she gasped, wishing she knew anything about healing.
Her heart felt like it stopped as his body continued to shake like there was an earthquake. Then as soon as it came on, it stopped. Graves rolled over, coughing a few times as blood splattered her gown.
Kierse’s hands were trembling as shock settled over her. He was alive. He was no longer seizing in her arms. He was…
“Graves?” she gasped.
He came to all fours, coughed a bit more, then shivered, and sat back onto the floor. When he next looked at her, the black drained from his vision and the whites of his eyes were visible once more.
“Ugh,” he groaned.
She couldn’t keep the terror from her voice when she asked, “What was that?”
“Spell,” he groaned, leaning back against the cabinet, still looking like he might vomit it all up again. “It’s not for the faint of heart. It countered the runes so I can start healing again.”
Kierse slumped backward as the adrenaline rushed out of her. “That was terrifying.” She put her hand to her chest until her heart rate came down. They were safe. They were back in Graves’s house, and he was going to start healing. They’d survived the horror of this all.
She released a breath and leaned forward to look at the cuts on his face. “I’m going to get the first aid kit. It’ll take a while for this to heal.”
He pulled away from her touch. “I’m fine.”
“You need stitches,” she countered, reaching for him again.
But he was already moving out of her touch and coming to his feet.
Kierse swallowed, watching as he trudged across the room and put his hands down on the table.
Okay. So he didn’t want her to help him. Fine. She followed him across the room and set the ledger down next to him.
“Does this mean we won tonight?”
“No,” Graves said flatly. “We fucking lost. Again.”
Blood drip, drip, dripped onto the table. A small pool collected into the grooves of the wood grain.
“Can I just stop the bleeding?” She reached for his bloody cheek.
Before she could touch him, he blocked her hand. His sleeve kept her from contact. “Is your absorption up?”
“No.” She didn’t have access to her powers yet. She was at the bottom of the barrel.
“Then don’t touch me.”
She took a step away from him, her stomach sinking at the words. “Okay, but…”
“I don’t want you to touch me,” he said as if his entire world had crumbled at this moment and it snapped something inside of him. “I don’t want to see what you’re feeling anymore.”
“What am I feeling?”
“Just stop,” he all but roared. “Stop acting like you don’t know what I’m talking about. We both know exactly what I saw when I touched you. What I’ve been seeing.”
She swallowed, her back going up at the accusation. “What have you been seeing?”
His gaze was flat and angry. “Explain what I walked into back there.”
She huffed out a breath. “I was dying. Lorcan saved my life with the bond. That’s what you saw tonight.”
Graves shook his head. “It wasn’t just tonight. It’s been since Edinburgh. The moment he opened that bond up, he had his claws in you.”
“I told you that, though. I’ve never lied about any of it. You can’t just be surprised all of a sudden. You were the one who told me the bond would be a problem. I’m the one trying to make sure it isn’t.”
“Then you’re doing a really shitty job.”
Kierse jerked away from him. “Wow. Thanks. Having a soulmate bond with someone I don’t want to have it with and having the universe say that I’m destined to be with someone else isn’t easy to ignore. Who would have guessed, Graves?”
“And with all of that information, you still end up with him every fucking time.”
“Do I? Because I’m standing right here,” she said, indignant rage running through her veins.
Graves tossed a small green book onto the table and into the puddle of blood. “It’s history repeating itself. It’s the same shit we’ve been dealing with over and over again.”
“History?” she asked, reaching for the book. “You lost me.”
“‘The Wooing of Etain,’ you know it?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly, trying to figure out where he was going with this.
“Etain marries a Tuatha de Danann and is turned into a fly. She’s reincarnated and marries a king in Ireland. Her first husband returns and seduces her time and time again over years. Then he beats the king and flies away with her when she regains her memories of her first life, and they live happily ever after.”