Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“Keep looking. It’s safe in here.” She grips the bars.
“Is it?”
She cocks her head to the side, eerie and unlike her. “What does that mean?”
“Valen told me that becoming a vampire doesn’t make someone a monster. It only enhances whoever they already are. Whatever is underneath comes to the fore.”
She arches the brow over her good eye. “And?”
“And …” I shake my head. “I believed in you. I trusted you more than I trusted myself. I thought I knew you. I thought I knew you in the way that only sisters can know each other. But after everything, I think I was wrong.”
“Is that so?” Her expression turns sour.
I nod slowly. “Yeah.”
“Let me help you out, sister. We aren’t blood. We never were blood. You are no more my sister than Miss Bones over there.” She hooks her thumb at the skeleton in the next cell. “So if you have any more high and lofty pronouncements about—”
“Finally!” Carlotta strides through the darkness and wipes away the tendrils of black from her clothes. “What a spell.”
“Get back!” Juno reaches through the bars and grabs me, yanking me to her, one of her hands at my throat.
“Juno!”
“Shut up!” She presses her claw into my skin, drawing blood.
“What’s this?” Carlotta, unhurried, walks to me, her gaze bouncing from me to Juno and back again.
“Come any closer and I’ll tear her throat out,” Juno growls.
Carlotta stops and puts her hands on her hips. “That wouldn’t be ideal, of course, but killing her is certainly on my agenda. I’d prefer to ask her a few questions first, though. And you are?” she asks, peering around me.
“A vampire in a cage. Set me free, and I’ll release this human.”
Carlotta blinks a few times. “Hang on. You’re …” Her eyes go wide. “You’re Juno.”
“Well, I guess she isn’t as dumb as she looks.” Juno’s tone is pure acid.
Carlotta bears her fangs. “When the high lord finds out about this…” She laughs and steps toward me again.
I yelp when Juno digs her claw in deeper.
“Your own sister? Really?” Carlotta asks her.
“She’s adopted.”
Carlotta’s eyes narrow. “I’m no longer amused. Give her to me.”
“No.”
Carlotta shrugs and steps closer. “I would’ve taken you to Gregor alive, but now I’ve changed my mind.”
“I would’ve let you have her, but I’ve been waiting for—”
“Georgia!” Valen jumps through the black portal. He’s covered in blood, his gaze meeting mine as he barrels forward, then moves too fast for me to track. Something explodes behind me, and I whirl.
Valen has Carlotta pinned against one of the cells, his hands at her throat. She swings, raking her claws across his face in a vicious slash.
He rears back and punches her hard in the face, her neck cracking and her head banging against the metal. Then he hits her again and again.
“Get back.” Juno grabs my arm through the bars and yanks me hard, tossing me down the hall toward the black hole.
Carlotta slashes Valen again, then rears back and kicks him. He crashes into the stone wall, the sound of shattering rock filling the entire corridor as he hits his knees.
“Fucking Dragonis!” Carlotta screams and kicks him again. “Half human dog!” She brings her knee up, smashing his chin.
I hear the bones break, the horrible snapping and creaking.
“When you’re gone, Gregor is next, and then—” She lands a vicious haymaker to the side of his head. “Tantun will rule as we always should have.” Grabbing a handful of his hair, she lifts him from the floor. “Your line will die. Dragonis will be just as extinct as the humans!” She raises her other hand, the claws splayed wide.
Valen is limp, his head lolling back, neck exposed.
She’s going to kill him. I see it before it happens, his head severed from his body. I feel it, too, like splintered glass in my veins, parts of me dying right along with him. Parts that are somehow… connected. A flash of the two trees, one fading, one already gone.
“Valen!” I scream, the sound tearing free like a thorn pulled from my side.
His head snaps forward, and one of his hands does too. It passes through Carlotta’s chest, Valen’s bloody, sizzling fist outside her back, her heart caged in his palm.
She staggers and releases her hold on him.
With a twitch of his fingers, he crushes her heart, sending a cascade of sizzling blood raining down on the black stone.
She screeches, her body convulsing, only standing because she’s impaled on Valen’s arm. He shoves her to the side, and she drops and twitches. Then she goes still.
“Georgia!” Valen appears in front of me, his face bloody and mangled, white mandible poking through his skin. He kneels, his eyes searching mine. “Are you hurt?”
Yes. In ways I can’t even put into words. In ways I don’t understand.
Two trees, both of them linked by blood. A bond.