Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Blackness clouded in at the edges of my sight, coming so fast I was unprepared.
Eyes bulging with pain, with the loss of oxygen, I tore at his wrists, but I was unable to budge him.
The other man danced around in the periphery, howling with deranged excitement.
And I thought that this was it. I really had met my end.
Except, in the middle of the desperation, the light within me suddenly glowed. Glowed so bright it was blinding. It built in a flash.
I struggled to harness it, to bring it to my hands and use it against the one man who would bring complete annihilation to the world.
I stopped clawing at his wrists and instead drove my fingertips into his sides.
He roared when the contact blew him back ten feet, as if my fingers were electric prods. The beast skidded on his feet, and it took him all of two seconds to right himself.
I didn’t have time to process the exhaustion that wanted to bring me to my knees before he was flying back for me, though he’d produced a knife. “You little bitch. Whore. You think you’re going to escape me the way you did in Baahg? It will not happen again.”
He slashed the knife in my direction, and I lifted my hands to protect my face. A yelp rolled through my throat when it nicked the tip of my pinkie.
But that energy boomed. Bounding within me and becoming something brand new. I fought him with it, grappling as he lashed and whipped the knife. I kicked, sending him flying backward again, much the same as I’d done in that realm he’d called Baahg. In the place where he currently ruled.
Ruled the Kruen.
The Ghorls.
In the place where he commanded that all Laven be extinguished.
I had to stop him.
A shout ripped out of me as I dove for him. I knocked him back to the ground. He whipped the hand with the knife across the air, barely missing my chin as I ducked before I grabbed him by the wrist with both hands.
I tried to jostle the knife loose, and he roared, tossing me off.
I tumbled across the pitted pavement behind the grocery store, groaning when I landed on my back. My eyes pinched shut from the jolt of pain that rocked through my body.
The atmosphere simmered with evil, and my eyes peeled open to Ambrose standing over me. He turned the knife over, the blade pointed downward as he held it between both hands.
My heart was his target.
I could see it. The finality that gleamed in his eyes.
But the energy shifted, stirring through the air in a clamor of desperation. A thunder of footsteps raced up behind Ambrose, and Pax drove his shoulder into his ribs. The velocity knocked Ambrose to the side.
Pax’s eyes were wild when he saw me on the ground. “Aria.”
“Pax!” I shouted when the other man lumbered up behind him. “Behind you!”
Pax whirled, ducking just in time to miss the fist the man threw before he delivered a punch that knocked the monster onto his back.
I scrambled to my feet and ran toward Ambrose, who’d spun back around and was coming for me.
We met in the middle, and I grabbed the wrist of his hand that still held the knife while a tussle of shouts and kicks and punches thudded behind us.
I begged my spirit to comply. For the light to gather in a way that it never had before. To become something great. The power Valeen had promised that I possessed.
It glowed within me, and I gritted my teeth as I fought with everything I had to use it against Ambrose.
But on his face was a sneer. The amusement that I thought I could prevail.
Still, I tried to harness the power from Valeen and send it sailing into his being.
If it wasn’t enough, then how could I end him here? Was it all futile? Worthless?
I gasped and choked as I tried to push against him. To break the knife from his hold. Turn it against him. Hopelessness rolled through me. Even if I managed it, it likely wouldn’t do any good.
He was immortal.
A wave of strength erupted, and I managed to twist his wrist just a fraction away from me, turning it toward him.
His sneer turned to a snarl, and he pushed against the light.
Darkness enveloped, wrapping around me like the fiery tendrils of Kruen.
Pax was suddenly behind me, both hands planted on my back as if he was going to rip me away so he could stand in front of Ambrose.
Only the second he touched me, the light surged.
A shock wave that blistered through my hands in a burst of power.
The knife drove forward, and the blade plunged deep into Ambrose’s stomach.
It blew him off his feet and into the air, and the monster slammed into the grocery store wall. The cinder blocks cracked and crumbled where he smashed against them.