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)
“No!” Lorcan cried.
Graves plucked the spear out of Declan’s chest and pushed him backward. He collapsed to the ground, dead. Graves tutted in disgust before turning away, the dead body already forgotten.
“You’re a fucking monster,” Lorcan snarled.
“Yeah, I fucking am,” Graves agreed.
He lifted the spear high and brought it down upon the braided threads securing Kierse and Lorcan’s hands. The strands snapped into pieces as if they’d never been reinforced with god magic and filled with the power of the Oak Throne. The pieces fluttered to the ground, shining like tinsel against the moss.
The magic disappeared around them, and Kierse took her first real breath since the ceremony had started. She ripped herself backward away from Lorcan. Her wrists were raw and red from the ceremony, a visceral reminder of what had just occurred.
“You’ve gone too far,” Graves told him. “You’ve fucking earned this.”
Graves lifted the spear in his hand, prepared to thrust it through Lorcan’s chest. Lorcan raised his hands, shining with magic. The same gold-and-blue magic that had suffused them moments ago came to him like a snap of his fingers.
Graves faltered at that.
“You’re too late,” Lorcan told Graves. “The ceremony is complete.”
Graves’s gaze shifted to Kierse in horror. “Do you have your magic?”
She reached for it. This vengeance was her own. She could tap into their sacred tree the way that Ethan and Gen had. She’d join their triskel, and she would exact revenge upon him for ever thinking he could do this to her.
But when she touched her magic, there was…nothing.
Her hand went to her chest. She could feel the thrum of her connection with Lorcan, no longer a thread but a wide open, live cable, a completed bridge. Like she could walk straight across it into his heart and soul.
Deeper into the well, there was emptiness. A long, vast stretch of desolation where her magic had once lived. She could sense that her powers were on—her absorption was definitely there, in a neutral on position. But she could no more switch it off and on than she could before the spell had been broken. She reached for her slow motion and found a complete block. There was no magic she could access to turn the dial on her time manipulation. She held her hand out for the tree, her sacred tree, and still nothing happened. Her hand went to her ears. They were pointed. Her glamour had been stripped from her at some point, and now she was fully on display. It was just gone.
“What have you done?” she whispered in horror.
“I’m protecting you,” Lorcan said.
“And who is protecting her from you?” Graves asked, low and deadly.
“You fucked with her mind.”
Graves looked unimpressed. “Are you actually trying to justify forcibly binding her against her will and seizing control of her magic?”
Kierse clung to her white dress as panic set in. She hadn’t wanted this binding, but this was so much worse than she had ever imagined. Just when she had begun to come into her own with her powers. When she was pushing herself to her limits and coming out on the other side. Now it was like she’d never entered this world at all.
“I can’t glamour,” she said. “I can’t hide my ears.”
“You don’t have to hide who you are with me,” Lorcan told her.
Graves snorted. “There’s no fucking way she’s staying here with you.”
He lunged for Lorcan. Lorcan was stronger on the solstice, his powers amplified by the longest day of the year, and he had unfettered access to her magic. But Graves had the spear and his rage, and Kierse didn’t know who would win this time.
“Stop,” she whispered as another wave of panic struck her in the heart.
She should have been able to get between them. To make them see reason. But there was no reason here. Her knees buckled, and she fell back to the moss-covered ground, shaking. She fought the binding. She fought with everything she had. Reached for the sacred tree, the Oak Throne, anything that would listen to her, but all she heard in her mind was tortured silence.
And then a voice.
Fighting me won’t work, Lorcan told her.
She jolted in horror at the sound of him bridging their connection to speak directly into her mind. All that bullshit about Graves fucking with her head, and now he was speaking into her mind, and he didn’t see the hypocrisy of it all.
Get out of my head! she screamed back down the line.
Lorcan flinched. In that moment, Graves sliced through the magic he was building and buried the spear into Lorcan’s shoulder.
Lorcan tumbled backward onto the ground. Graves wrenched the spear free and raised it overhead. He was ready to finish it all, finally. She should have let him that night he’d said he was going to fix his mistake with Emilie. She should have let the showdown happen, but she’d thought she was saving him. She’d never thought Lorcan would resort to this. That was her mistake.