Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 205594 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1028(@200wpm)___ 822(@250wpm)___ 685(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 205594 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1028(@200wpm)___ 822(@250wpm)___ 685(@300wpm)
“Everyone has, yes. Even those of us monsters in Darkfell.”
I poke him for referring to himself as a monster. The more time passes, the more I’m convinced that he’s just a man. A man with wings and fangs and weird legs and possibly a tail, but definitely a man. He has people, just like I have people. “So you know of Ravendor Vestalin. Then you know that she was the first of her line, and she was born from starlight. She wasn’t given the name Vestalin until her quarrel with the Golden Moon Goddess. Back then, they called the goddess Vestal. That was before we lost the right to call the gods by their names. Have you heard this story?”
“A version if it, but very different than yours, I imagine. Keep talking.”
“So Ravendor was a fierce warrior who sold her sword to whoever would pay her. The goddess was upset because Ravendor had killed the goddess’s son in battle. He was supposed to be impossible to slay by any blade, so Ravendor used a club given to her by a male of the First House of Darkfell. The goddess was extremely upset and appeared in the sky as the Golden Moon for the first time. She demanded that Ravendor and the male from Darkfell pay a penance—to give seven years to the goddess. Seven years of piety and prayer, and the goddess would forgive them. Ravendor agreed, and so the goddess rose the tower from the land itself—this tower—and Ravendor went inside. The Golden Moon hung in the sky for seven long years, watching over the tower to ensure that Ravendor and the Fellian did not leave. Once the seven years passed, Ravendor stepped foot outside of the tower, but the goddess was furious because Ravendor had been blessed by the Gray God during that time and had given birth to a child.”
“The Gray God, eh?”
“Yes,” I say. “And so the goddess named Ravendor as Vestalin—under Vestal’s eye—and cursed her line. Some of the children are born with a blood curse in their veins that will destroy them from the inside out. It’s only through prayers to the Gray God that we figured out a potion that enables me to live.” I shrug. “But that’s why the Golden Moon Goddess rises every thirty years to harass the new generation of Vestalin and your people, and why she gets so very mad when her demands aren’t met.” It’s the only reason the goddess’s name has survived for so long. Mankind lost the ability to refer to the gods by their names in another war, another time, but the Vestalin name has remained even though the names of the Gray God and the Absent One are long-forgotten.
“I see.”
He sounds amused, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. It irks me. “You think it’s a funny story? That everyone in my line has a risk of death? That I have to take potions for the rest of my life because the goddess is angry with my ancestor?”
“That’s not it at all.” He shakes my hand against my belly, as if I’m a child to be jiggled into paying attention, but instead of making me attentive, all it does is remind me that I’m pressed to his body, and we’re sharing warmth, and I’m starting to ache in all the spots that most definitely should not be aching. “You are misjudging me, little princess. I laugh because your story is so different from what I have heard.”
“Okay then, what have you heard?”
His breath is warm against my hair. “Well, the Fellian legends are similar in regards to the war.”
“But?”
“But that the human Ravendor fell in love with the Fellian Azamenth when they went into the tower. It was he that gave her the club that killed the goddess’s son, and they were lovers before they went into the tower and continued when they were there.”
“What?” I practically screech. “Humans don’t marry Fellians!”
“She gave birth to Azamenth’s child,” he continues, his tone chiding. “Which is far more believable than the Gray God touching someone like her and having her give birth to a baby with no father.”
I sputter. “The Gray God—”
“Are you sure she did not fornicate with a gray man? A Fellian? Because my people are gray. It is entirely possible that the story was twisted over time. My people say Azamenth was devoted to her, and it was Ravendor who betrayed him. The moment they left the tower, she abandoned him for her human lover. He killed himself out of grief and the loss of her. It is why my people do not like humans much. They have betrayed us time and time again.”
I roll my eyes, plucking his hand off my stomach. All the sensual pleasure I was feeling about being wrapped in his embrace has disappeared, and I’m left with vague irritation. “So you’re saying that I’m not born of the Gray God, but that one of my ancestors was Fellian. Do I look Fellian to you?”