Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“I’m done,” Walter said frantically.
“We don’t have time,” she said. She pushed past Walter. “Graves, let’s move.”
For a second, she thought that he wasn’t going to listen to her. But after staring at Walter another beat, he followed Kierse down the exit. Then they took off at a run.
The tunnel was long and winding, but she remembered the way through. The entire time, she held tightly to the spear, its constant hum a reminder of how very alive and deadly this thing was.
“What the fuck am I holding, Graves? I know you said it was the Spear of Lugh, but I didn’t know that it was going to feel like this.” She shook her head. “The gods,” she muttered under her breath. “This is a god’s spear.”
“Yes. I already told you that it was. This was why we had to get it from Louis.”
There was a difference between knowing and knowing. If all of it was true. If the spear was literally a magic spear from the gods. If all of the stories she’d read from her assignments weren’t just a kernel of truth but fact—then what was she? What was Graves?
He used the holly as his symbol. Of course he would see the wren as part of him. He hadn’t said anything, and yet she knew it. Maybe she’d always known it. Because they’d been twined by that first night. As soon as he’d seen her wren necklace. The moment she’d glimpsed his library. They’d been tied together like their magic in that kiss—an inextricable link.
But she still had to say it.
“You’re the Holly King.”
His throat bobbed before he nodded. “And you’re my wren.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The Holly King.
In the flesh.
And she was his wren.
She shuddered at the shape of the words. They sounded the same as when Gen made a prophecy. They sounded true.
It seemed impossible that myth and legend could be manifested in this way, and yet it was impossible to ignore. Her winter god was before her, and today was his day—the winter solstice. No wonder she had felt their linking. It had been as destined as it felt.
“What does that mean?” she gasped. “How am I your wren? I don’t understand.”
“The Holly King is the power of winter,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s a manifestation of the energy of the season itself. I come into the height of my power on the summer solstice, and it wanes after the winter solstice.”
“I know that. Because of the battle with the Oak King.”
“Yes. The Oak King has his robin, his bird a symbol of the coming fall. And I have a wren, my symbol of the oncoming of spring.”
“But I’m a bad omen,” she said. “I’m . . . the bird that dies after Christmas.”
“You are, but until then, you enhance my power,” he admitted. “I’m at my height right up until the end of the longest night of the year.”
“Tonight,” she whispered.
“That’s right.” His gaze slid to hers as they took another turn deeper through the tunnel system.
“But Kingston said . . . he said that it didn’t work out for you,” she said, slotting together all the pieces from the last couple of weeks. The words others had said about her being a wren that she hadn’t understood until now.
Graves averted his gaze again. “Yes, well, I gain more power, but ultimately, after the solstice, you are my downfall.”
She blinked in shock. “Then why . . . why would you work with me?”
“Our mission ended tonight. It was a gamble worth taking,” he admitted just as the light of the end of the tunnel came into view. Then he shifted his grip on Torra. “I never . . .” He actually stumbled on his words. “I never planned to fall for you. That wasn’t part of the plan.”
She swallowed. “I don’t . . . understand.”
“It’s poetic,” he said softly. “To fall for the source of your own destruction.”
She still had so many questions. More questions than answers as always with Graves, but then they reached the end of the tunnel.
Graves hoisted Torra over his shoulder and then climbed up the ladder. She followed with the spear in hand. When she reached the top, Graves hauled her up into the subway tunnel.
They continued in silence, jogging to the exit and scrambling up into the longest night of the year. The winter solstice. The last night of Graves’s heightened power. They had made it. They had survived with the spear in hand.
Torra roused as they exited into the evening air.
She shifted groggily. “You can put me down.”
Graves put her carefully onto her feet, shucking off his jacket and sliding it around Torra’s bare shoulders.
Torra wobbled slightly. “Thank you.”
“Can you give us a minute?” Kierse asked Graves.
He gestured to the car idling on the street. Their escape plan. Kierse nodded at him and watched him head toward it.