Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Agony tore at me.
One day. That was all the time between “let me bring her to you” and this. He had asked for me, and been told that those against his king died, and he had stayed anyway. He had stood at Sebastian’s back until there was no more back to stand at.
Anyone who harms you will die screaming. Gunnar had said it the day we met, so matter-of-factly he might have been remarking on the weather. I had laughed and told him I’d rather he didn’t do any dying.
That’s on you now, isn’t it?
On the ridge, Sebastian stepped over him. The same stride he’d used on the soldier at the reefs, as if it cost him nothing, because Gunnar wasn’t the objective either. Forty years of my king, my king, my king, and my husband did not look down.
I toppled to my knees and pressed my forehead to the cave floor, releasing a broken sound I’d never made before. Fresh tears rained over my cheeks.
I only looked up when battle sounds came again, Sebastian taking Jon head-on.
He let the shifter king grab him. He didn’t move as a shadow tentacle came out of the wreckage, wrapped around his throat and yanked him to his knees. Impact cracked the ridge beneath him.
“Remember when we used to share everything?” Jon said, his monstrous mouth splitting into a grin. “It’s time to revive that old tradition. Jokull says I can have your firebrand when you’re dead.”
Sebastian didn’t speak or struggle. I saw the wheels turning in his eyes. He was measuring the angle of Jon’s stance, the distribution of his weight, the position of his own hands.
Jon was too drunk on his supposed victory to realize he was about to lose everything. “I want you to know. Jokull will take your grandmother.” Jon reared back. “Today, I’ll take your throne, and I’ll take your queen—”
Sebastian’s eyes changed.
My back straightened. I saw that… right? On a wall, in a cave, I saw the emotionless creature my husband had become waver. The flat, dead gray broke, and for a quarter of a heartbeat the sea stormed back into his irises.
Hope sparked. The firebrand bond might be a force even the rune hadn’t accounted for.
I watched as Sebastian ended Jon in a not so efficient manner. The ground beneath the shifter king erupted. White tentacles coiled up around his ankles and sliced both his feet off in one brutal arc. Jon crashed backward, screaming, and Sebastian rose. Then he took the shifter apart. Slowly. Methodically. Thoroughly. Long past any point where Jon could have posed a threat. And when there was nothing left on the black rock but red, my husband stood over it, breathing hard, staring down at his own hands as if he could not entirely account for them.
He popped his neck, turned, already icing over. Moving forward, he issued new orders. Jokull wasn’t far now.
But hope stirred within me. Sebastian was still in there. He’d heard another man threaten to take me, and he’d slipped through the rune stone for one second like a leviathan breaking water.
I got to my feet. “I know what to do,” I said, out loud, to the cave, to the realm.
If I put myself in front of him, in danger, where he had to choose, he might break through again. Longer. Permanently. And I might be able to reach him. Or he might not break at all. But either way, I could make sure my presence advanced his mission to kill Jokull.
The wall shifted before I asked it to, revealing the manor half-swallowed by the trench, where the sea kissed the abyss, past the last membrane of the dome, past Sebastian’s territory. And inside, at the head of a dining table I’d sat at a week ago, was Jokull. Platters were laid out along the length of the tabletop. Thankfully, nothing looked human, kraken or mer.
Nearby sat Harpa, hair wild, clothing bloodstained from battle, confined in a cage that hung from the ceiling.
I pressed a hand to my throat. The walls around them glowed a dull, patient red. The rune Harpa and I had used to escape dinner was already scrubbed away, making his dome as un-enterable as Sebastian’s. I’d bet un-leavable too.
So how was I seeing this?
“How do you think?” Harpa, through the dome, met my gaze—and winked.
Air sucked between my teeth. She knew I watched them. Was she the reason I could do it? Had she allowed herself to be captured like a Trojan horse I could use to my advantage?
“How do I think what?” Jokull asked her.
“When I’m talking to you, primmy, you’ll know it,” the Raving Pearl snapped.
He pursed his lips and drummed his fingers against the arms of his chair. “I expected your grandson to reach us sooner. Does he not love you?”