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)
She tried to clear her head. Lorcan had kept her magic trapped for months, and she had thought that she would never see those powers again. She switched off her absorption like a light switch and felt it come down with ease. It was back. It was back.
Well, back as long as Lorcan would let her have them.
This was what he had been saying all those months before. He might be her “soulmate,” but the binding was around her magic. For the first time, she understood.
Her power had doubled under his power share. It didn’t make what he had done right. It just made it true.
“The circle,” Lorcan shouted.
“Try to get through the circle,” Graves called at the same time.
For two people who hated each other, they were weirdly in sync.
But with her absorption in her hands, she actually had a way to stop Archie. Kierse turned from the incapacitated creature and put her hands on the circle. Then with a breath, she drew it toward her.
It was like breathing in air after too long underwater. The magic finally worked at her bidding. The blue of her pixie lights drew in the warlock’s energy and mixed gold and blue in the room. Her body became a vortex of power, so much power in that moment that she thought she’d be sick.
Strange to think that she could absorb power and be overpowered by it. She could only absorb so much before it would shred her defenses and leave her magically wounded. But she didn’t feel like that this time.
Whatever Lorcan had unlocked made her magic feel endless. She could take this, take it all, drain it until the torrent belonged to her. There was no bottom. Just magic.
She tilted her head back and reveled in the feel of the magic flowing through her veins. The power that radiated from her. Was this what Graves felt like all the time? Like a bottomless well of energy that had no beginning or end? No wonder he acted invincible. Who could go up against this and win?
Fighting was still going on around her as she connected to Archie’s magic and pulled and pulled and pulled.
“Wait!” a voice cried through the circle. “Please, wait, don’t! That’s too much.”
She could hear him through a fog of magic, but she couldn’t stop. She had to bring the circle down. She wasn’t sure those demons would stop until it was down.
“You can’t do this!” the voice shrieked.
But she could. She could do this and so much more.
“Please…please…please,” the voice said, softer and softer and then…
Nothing.
The circle popped. The demons disappeared as if they never were. And Archie Blair fell down dead in his own conjuring circle.
Chapter Five
Archie’s body was a husk of a being. The color stripped out of his red hair. His pale skin hollow and empty. The eyes dead and lifeless.
Kierse stepped back in horror. “What… No… I…”
Graves came to her side, turning her by the shoulders to face him. “Hey, eyes on me.”
She lifted her horrified look to meet his. She hardly even knew what happened. She’d killed Archie. And she hadn’t even been trying.
Wisps could kill warlocks, of course. That was one of the reasons Graves had hidden her heritage from her in the first place. Natural predators weren’t friends. Certainly not lovers. And yet it had worked for her and Graves. So she had assumed that it must be years of conflict.
But now she had done it.
She had used her absorption magic to drain a warlock dry.
No wonder warlocks and wisps had hated each other for so long. She touched the circle of Archie’s magic and pulled until there was nothing left of him. How terrifying that must be for creatures who could live forever.
Except it had never been this easy before. It had been so hard to use her magic for so long that she hadn’t even considered that she could kill a warlock. Certainly not contain enough of their bottomless magic to make a dent. But with the power share from Lorcan, it opened like a torrent.
And it had been…easy.
The magic still pulsed through her veins. It should have been exponentially too much, but then she felt the softest pull, and the magic lessened and lessened some more.
She felt the connection between her and Lorcan like a visceral reaction, an undeniable entity of the universe. As if this was exactly what they had been made for. A way to right the balance of the cosmos. She took a step toward him almost without thinking.
He drew a little more off, a tether between them that took her forward another step. The closest she had ever felt to this had been during the binding ceremony. The way their magic had connected. And though she had hated it with every fiber of her being as a violation of her existence…it still felt right.