Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 54625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
“I just… need to ground myself for a minute,” Aggy said, moving forward toward my sister.
As for me, I slid down the wall, every muscle shaking in exhaustion.
I watched Aggy standing there, head tilted to the sky, arms out wide, lips moving.
But my vision kept blanking out as I drifted off over and over.
It was the roar that snapped me awake again.
Then there she was.
Nemesis.
My sister.
Free.
And fucking enraged.
She screamed so hard the ground shook.
Then, without so much as a glance at the two of us who risked everything to free her, she was gone.
“Nox? Hey, Nox!” Aggy said, gently tapping my cheeks. “Come on. Don’t die on me.”
“I’m not dying,” I assured her, my voice weak. Though, honestly, I felt a bit like I was dying.
Maybe I was.
“You’re so pale. And cold,” Aggy said, hands chafing up and down my arms. “We have to get you somewhere warm.”
“I have a car. And a motel room. I just… I’m so tired.”
“I know,” she agreed. “And you’ve earned the right to sleep. You just… saved the world. But… but you need to get somewhere safe first, okay? Here, I’ll help you,” she offered, slipping under my arm and half-lifting me to my feet.
“We got this,” Aggy said, starting to half-carry me through the cave.
I was aware of her lips moving, of her voice chanting.
But I had no idea what she said, or what she was doing. Trying to lend me some power, maybe.
All I knew was pain, an ache that felt like it came from my marrow. And cold. God, I was so cold.
I was vaguely aware of leading her to the car, of asking if she was even old enough to know how to drive.
“The world is ending, and you’re worried about road rules?” she said as she hefted me into the passenger seat. “Where is the motel?” she asked.
I think I managed to point.
The rest, well, the rest was a blank.
Somehow, though, Aggy got us to the motel. She even managed to get me inside, to set me on the bed.
Where I fell into a sleep so deep it was damn near a coma.
When I woke, it was like a goddamn electrical current shot through my body, making everything inside me wake up.
“Well, that sure did the trick,” a feminine voice said. Unfamiliar, but there was a strange… comfort at the sound of it.
I sought the voice, finding a black-haired woman sitting at the edge of my bed.
A stranger.
Yet so, so familiar.
“Hello, my daughter.”
Nyx.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Daemon
Pain.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nox
“Mom?” I asked, hearing a needy little girl hint in my voice, that part of me that had always craved a maternal figure, no matter how much I tried to pretend that my father was all that I could ever need. Because he was all that I had. Because I didn’t want him to think I found him lacking.
“That is a strange word,” Nyx admitted, head tipped to the side. “But I did carry you within me. I did hold you after you came from me,” she said, eyes far away for a moment. “Those soft cheeks and big, round eyes. You turned out quite beautiful. I wondered, over the years.”
“You could have visited.”
“Not if I wanted to keep you safe,” she countered. “A half-human child. The things that could have been done to you. But you know all about that now, don’t you? Clever girl,” she added, offering me a smile. “To think to look for your sister. To work with a demon to free her.”
“And a witch,” I said, gaze moving around the room, heart sinking when I didn’t see Aggy around.
“She is currently breaking open that metal box full of food. If you can call it that.”
Thank goodness.
She hadn’t run off.
I knew she said she had no home. But if what Arick said about witches and warlocks was true, she couldn’t be out roaming the world alone, unprotected.
Granted, I had little to offer her.
But I at least had money. A car. A motel room. Clothes for her to borrow. And if nothing else, access to a warlock who could maybe protect her.
“It is no wonder you have faded so much, eating that garbage. When all you needed was this,” she said, holding a bottle of bright, golden liquid.
The same liquid I’d seen in my siblings’ cups.
“One drop, and you have almost fully recovered,” she said, making my stomach twist.
That was why I’d woken up with such a start.
“What is that? What did you give me?”
“Ambrosia, dear,” Nyx said, setting the bottle on the nightstand. “The food of our kind.”
Ambrosia.
I’d seen that word so many times in the texts I’d read about the gods.
I’d never really given it much thought. I figured it was, you know, wine. Not actual sustenance.
“Did you truly think you only needed food? You’re half god, my darling.”
“I… I did just fine on food my whole life,” I said, brows pinched as I looked at the golden liquid, smelling its sweet scent.