Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Right now, she needed him.
Lorcan, she pleaded silently, reaching through their connection. Please. Help.
She waited and waited and waited. Nothing happened. She didn’t know what it would feel like for him to hear her, or if he could even reach back through. Could he talk to her? Were her words reaching him? Still she pushed, pleading and begging and coaxing, using the force of their connection to reach for him. Anything to get him to come back.
Don’t go to Brooklyn. Don’t leave me, she said in her mind. Come back. Help me.
The lights flicked on.
Her eyes were closed, and still she winced at the sudden brightness. It severed the connection to Lorcan she’d been trying so hard to hold on to. The magic faded back to its normal dullness as he continued to get farther away. She hadn’t reached him at all.
She slowly peeled her eyes open and got her first real look at the hotel meeting room. She was facing the door with her back to most of the room. There was a kitchenette against one wall stocked with drinks, and a small round table and chairs. She tried to wrack her brain for the floor plan and guessed she was on the second or third floor, in one of the smaller rooms off the ballrooms. The hallway outside connected to elevators near the bathrooms. If she could just…get out, then she could escape.
But there was no time for that. The door was creaking open. A black boot appeared through the gap. Kierse rattled against her bindings, ignoring the pain that shot up her arms and legs as the iron worked hard against her skin. But it was no use. There was no escape from whatever was about to come.
The man who’d knocked her out stepped through first. She still didn’t know why he seemed familiar. Maya followed behind him. She pushed her glasses up her nose and smiled warmly at Kierse.
“Good to see you again, Shannon,” Maya said as she took up a position to Kierse’s left. The other man stood sentinel to her right. Two other guards she didn’t recognize took up stances by the door.
“Her name isn’t Shannon,” the guy barked. “It’s Kierse.”
The tap, tap, tap, of a cane against the floor announced the arrival of their leader. “Shannon was her mother.”
All of his goons dropped to a knee and said as one, “Curator.”
Kierse froze at the sight of the man who entered. The Curator. Cillian Ryan. A rogue Druid and the powerful magical user who had cast a spell on her and stolen her memories. She recognized the face that hadn’t aged in the nearly ten years since she’d stabbed him in the back and left him for dead.
“Jason?”
Chapter Sixty-Five
“Hello, Kierse.”
Jason was larger than life, his upper body broad and muscular, clothed in a sharp black suit. He’d always hated ties, and he didn’t wear one now, just had his button-up undone at the neck. He’d scrapped the clean-shaven look she’d seen recently in her memories for a full, dark beard. His eyes were as dark and deadly, but a new scar ran through his eyebrow and lid toward his jaw. A scar she had given him. His mouth was set in a way that had always made her walk on eggshells. The tilt of his head revealed the clever snake hidden in his mystique.
No wonder she hadn’t been able to place the familiar Sansara goon. He was one of Jason’s from the thieving guild. She hadn’t even known his name.
“What…what are you doing here?” she asked. She willed her body to stillness, but it wasn’t listening.
She had killed Jason.
It had been her only mission after he’d beat her to within an inch of her life and left her for dead. Gen had found her and saved her. She hadn’t understood why Kierse had wanted revenge, but she’d needed it to be able to move on.
She’d tracked him down. With her own two hands, she had sliced into his face. He’d tried to fight back. He was bigger than her, stronger than her, and now she realized, he’d had magic to repel her. She’d probably absorbed any attack he leveled against her. He’d gotten his hands on her throat to finish what he’d started. Her knife had been out of reach. She’d managed to push him off her. He’d gone for a gun on the bedside table. She’d put a knife through his back before he could get to it.
Her body trembled at the memory. Of watching the blood leak out of his body and the life leave his eyes. The only father figure she’d ever known. And all of it had been an elaborate lie.
“Surprised to see me?” He looked down his nose at her. “I thought you might be. Worthless piece of shit.”
She flinched. She was a little kid all over again, getting scolded by the one person she looked up to. The person who threw her off a building and broke her arm and left bruises in his wake. The fear was innate. Ten years away from him didn’t change a thing.