Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 235897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1179(@200wpm)___ 944(@250wpm)___ 786(@300wpm)
“How much time do you need to free yourself?” I ask Tairn, wrenching the buckle of my saddle free and climbing through the hole in the net. Pain shoots up my left arm, but I pretend it belongs to someone else and keep going. Pain doesn’t matter if you’re dead.
“Moments,” Tairn shouts. “Do not—”
“I’m not going to let her kill you like a trussed pig!” I retort, fear and wrath fueling me as I scramble for his shoulder, struggling to keep my arm stable until he stills. He must have thrown his claws out before the net hit, because his forelegs are already extended, bracketing his lower jaw.
I draw a runed dagger, then slide down, dragging the edge of the blade along his leg as I go. The blade won’t cut scale, but the net falls apart in its wake.
“Brought low by a net?” Theophanie mocks, striding toward us. “How easy it was to catch the pair of them.”
The pair? The scream.
“They have Sgaeyl, too.” Tairn’s rage washes over me like acid.
I put myself in front of Tairn and open the floodgates to his power, welcoming the scorch of heat and flame in my blistered veins.
“Silver One,” Tairn growls in warning to the accompaniment of the sound of shredding rope.
“If I burn out, so be it, but she won’t touch you,” I say aloud just so Theophanie will know I’m not fucking around.
“Have you made your choice, then?” Theophanie asks, coming closer by the step.
“I have.” I flick my right hand skyward and let the energy snap through me, yanking it down with the tip of my finger.
Theophanie races ten yards to the right, moving faster than I’ve ever seen. “You’ll have to be—”
I wield again before she can finish and strike the very place she’s standing, earning an immediate clap of thunder.
But she’s already twenty feet to my left.
“Faster,” she finishes, and I strike again, only for the pattern to repeat.
Again and again and again.
My lungs scream as I breathe the very thing I’ve become, heat and power and rage, but she’s still too fast for me to catch and moving closer to Tairn with every failed strike.
“Almost there,” he assures as ropes snap behind me.
I need to throw her off her game now.
I hold my next strike when she appears twenty feet ahead. “Tell me, do you miss Unnbriel?”
Her eyes flare, and she startles.
Victory. I gather more and more power, spooling it like molten thread. “Do you not yearn for temple?” I use the words the high priestess had on me.
Her face twists with an emotion that almost looks like longing, but it’s quickly masked with anger. “Do you?” she counters. “Or are you immune, having only been touched, but not dedicated?” She charges forward. “Do you know the pain of never being allowed to return, of knowing that it would sever the very thing that’s kept me untouchable all these years?”
I let a fraction of my power release, striking the ground in front of her, and she skids to a halt. Touched. Shit, the priestess in Unnbriel had said that, too. So had the note wrapped around Aaric’s gift. “As a high priestess, you would have had immeasurable power on the isle. How was it still not enough?”
“Why serve a god when you can be one?” Theophanie snarls.
Putrid fear consumes the bond, followed by another roar that nearly buckles my knees.
Sgaeyl. My head jerks upward, my heart lurching against the cage of my ribs as Tairn snarls, his talons furrowing in the forest floor. “Don’t!” Terror clogs my throat as I shout for Xaden, but he can’t hear me.
Draithus is enveloped in darkness, and the shrieking cries of wyvern soon follow, racing across the field and echoing off the rock above.
“What—” Theophanie pivots toward the noise.
Shadow spreads like a ripple on a lake, devouring the field in the fury of an onyx storm and sweeping toward us at a speed that squeezes the hope from my chest, then outright shatters my heart. The pain hits like a physical blow to the center of my chest.
He’s terrifyingly powerful with Sgaeyl, but not like this.
This is the kind of force that ends worlds.
And it’s almost here.
“I love you,” I whisper down the bond, and the ice cracks, but it’s not enough to halt the approaching wave of darkness.
Shadow throws Theophanie to the ground a second before it rushes over me, whisper soft against my cheeks, tossing us into pitch-black night.
“Strike!” Tairn snaps, and I hear the net give way.
Exhaustion grabs hold and refuses to be ignored. I’m too tired. Too close to burning alive. What’s the point if I can’t catch her?
“Use the darkness!” Tairn orders.
My heart stutters. Use the very thing that’s taking Xaden from me? I never dreamed that taking every possible path to cure him would lead to his choice. The fire devouring me from the inside out threatens to consume my very bones, and for a second, I debate letting it. I couldn’t stop my mother, and I can’t stop Xaden. I can’t save him.