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)
At first, she had resisted. For so long, she had wanted to return to her home in Ghana and learn from her people. But Graves was a world traveler. He’d learned from magic users all over the world. She didn’t regret going with him to his residence in Paris, but her life would have been forever altered if she hadn’t said yes.
Paris felt like the height of the modern world at the time. Writers, painters, and artists of all kinds filled their evenings. She became a personal friend of Alexandre Dumas as he penned incredible novels. When the world’s fair came in 1900, they watched the colossal structure of the Eiffel Tower be built.
With it came Montrell.
This poet with perfect recall of everything he had ever read. He had left Nigeria to start over in Paris during the fair, using his magic to gain passage on a vessel. She met him at W. E. B. Du Bois’s sensational exhibit featuring photographs of the lives of African Americans. And from the first moment she looked at Montrell, it was like his magic sang to her. His mere presence seemed to settle the frustration at her core that she had felt during the last fifteen years at Graves’s side.
She should have been content that Graves was deftly honing her powers to make her a master in her own right. But he had always rejected her as a lover and hid his dalliances from her. They were as close as any two people could be, and still he would not let his guard down. And when she discovered he had a lover—one she had never seen before, who was not her—she had to know who this woman was.
So, she conspired to find out. And what did she find?
Him in bed with a man.
Montrell.
Her Montrell. Who made her magic come alive. Who knew her suffering as his own.
Some part of her knew that joining them would be the end of everything. Still, she hadn’t been able to resist. And it had ruined everything.
Before Graves’s eyes . . . they had fallen in love. But a part of Montrell still loved Graves. Loved and hated him for letting him go to Imani so easily. For letting them both go . . . as if he had known that they would one day leave him anyway. They had just proven him right.
It was why she had stolen his letters in the first place. As leverage. No one let two of his best go that easily without a plan. And Graves always had a plan. The bastard.
She sighed as she stepped into her study. It was best he was gone. Best for Montrell and her, their marriage, and the world at large. Nothing good could come from their coexistence.
She paused in the doorway. Something was wrong. The door to the powder operations was ajar. Not fully open but not closed, either. Montrell had gone downstairs to prepare the crates to ship to Graves, but he wouldn’t be so foolish as to leave access open.
Imani moved forward with grace that did nothing to hide her growing fear. She raced down the stairs. She could sense it before she even hit the steps. Her wish powder. The white smoke she had engineered herself to recreate a person’s nightmares, to wish them to death. The smell of it coated the tunnel. Its sweet tang suffused the air. She didn’t sell these kinds of wishes. She only unleashed them on her enemies. Her eyes widened in horror. The vault.
She picked up her skirts and ran. No, no, no, no, no. But there it was. White powder littered the floor. Enough to kill a person. To overpower their senses and make their last wish literally eat them alive. It hung in the air, taunting her.
She knew what this meant. Knew it before she opened the vault and crossed the threshold. Before she looked into the box. Before she saw that the letters were gone.
Graves had stolen from her.
She sank to her knees, coating herself in her own powder, and screamed and screamed and screamed.
He would pay for this.
Oh, he would pay.
PART IV
THE OAK AND THE HOLLY KING
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Kierse had no reference for how long she’d been out when she woke up again in her bed in Graves’s brownstone. Her mouth tasted like she’d eaten cotton balls, and her throat was just as dry. She was no longer burning up. She just felt a general malaise.
It was exactly how she’d felt the time she contracted influenza. She’d gotten it right after the war started, when the worst strain in recent history had been running rampant. She was working with Jason, and he’d told her he didn’t care if she was sick—they had a huge job lined up, and she couldn’t pull out of it. And she’d done it, because she’d weighed that the consequences of saying no to Jason were worse than the illness.