Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
The moment she thought about getting out of their bond, she wanted to cling to him. The thought of losing him was terrifying, and yet she wasn’t opening herself up to him. It was as if she had a block in front of her that stopped her from even discussing what she was upset about.
Afanasiv sat back in the chair, his long legs sprawled out in front of him. “How would you go about ending our relationship, Vasilisa?”
She blinked at him. His tone was so mild. His voice was low. Almost gentle. He looked lazy—until she looked into his eyes. There was nothing lazy about his eyes. The color had gone almost pure amber with green flecks. There was nothing human about his eyes.
She shook her head. “I have no intention of ending our relationship, Afanasiv. If you wish to do so, you’ll have to be the one to find a way to do it. You asked about the death card, and I’m telling you the possible meanings.” She kept belligerence out of her voice. If he could act cool, so could she.
“It seems we are in for a bit of a transitional period with the death card, and we both are going to have to embrace change if we want to get through it smoothly.”
She avoided his gaze by scooping up the cards.
“Do the swords mean anything significant? It seemed as if there were a lot of swords for only three cards and one of them being the death card.”
“We’re in for a fight, but we knew that.”
He nodded. “Before we decide where to start, we need to straighten our problems out. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my time in the underworld and what had happened. I didn’t because I didn’t have all my memories. They returned in pieces. When they did come back, it was too late, and I knew I was going to have to disclose what had happened in front of you.”
“You asked me to wait and not visit Dimitri and Skyler. I didn’t listen to you. That’s on me.” She stared down at the cards for a moment, shuffling them because the cards brought her solace—just the familiar feel of them in her hands. “How could you know that Lilith wouldn’t get pregnant? What did you mean?”
“I never touched her. I never had any intention of touching her. I gave her that illusion. Even had I touched her, I can control whether or not I release potent sperm or she releases a viable egg. That doesn’t matter, though, because at no time did I ever put my hands on her. A few times she was suspicious because she didn’t get pregnant and she set up cameras. I had to put the illusion on the video, then find the camera in front of her, watch it with her and throw a fit and delete it.”
“If she ever found out . . .”
He shrugged. “She had me tortured often, Vasilisa. For weeks or months. Sometimes it was for so long I swear she forgot about me.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. The rhythm seemed familiar. She watched as he rubbed at his temples. “There was one important thing that happened that I didn’t tell the others. I will tell only you. My mother’s condition was deteriorating daily. The longer we took to negotiate, the more she was tortured. My father was certain Lilith had no intention of releasing her—or him. He told me that when the time came, if my mother were to die, he would go into the thrall.”
She had heard of the thrall but wasn’t entirely certain what it meant, so she arched an eyebrow at him.
“It’s a kind of madness, an insanity. That is when many honorable Carpathian hunters are lost. No Dragonseeker has ever turned vampire. My father didn’t want to be the first, but he was in the underworld, where he had seen the woman he loved viciously and brutally tortured over time. He worried his mind would fragment and he would become exactly what Lilith was driving him toward being. We planned out what to do in the event my mother died, just as we planned the wording of the contract. We went over it step by step a hundred times and then again even more so our responses would be muscle memory and not emotional.”
Vasilisa narrowed her eyes, watching Afanasiv as he pushed his forehead into the heel of his hand. There were smears of blood from tiny beads of sweat left behind. He didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t move when she wanted to get up and comfort him. She was afraid that if she moved, he would stop speaking. She sat very still, observing him carefully. Something was off, and she needed to figure out what it was. She had seen this the night before. The tapping was part of it, that rhythm. She couldn’t allow herself to be too immersed in what he was saying and not see all the signs of his distress both in the underworld and here in the present day.