Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 139662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 698(@200wpm)___ 559(@250wpm)___ 466(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139662 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 698(@200wpm)___ 559(@250wpm)___ 466(@300wpm)
“Jas,” I gasp.
She doesn’t turn to me. She’s too tired, too weak. But I see the shallow rise and fall of her chest and know she’s still breathing.
I scramble toward her, going for the rope that’s tying her to the post. I fumble with the knots with blurry vision and clumsy fingers.
“Abriella,” she rasps. “You need to go. You need to run.”
I shake my head. “Not without you.”
When I get the last rope off, she collapses into my arms and I sway on the plank.
I’m still too weak from the toxins. Even with Finn’s power flowing into me, my muscles are useless from the time inside the tomb. Months? Weeks?
Or has it only been days?
I can barely stand on my own, and the weight of her slight form threatens to topple me. I waver under her weight toward the river below.
Jas straightens before I lose my balance, and together we scramble off the plank.
I reach out a hand to help her take the final step onto the safety of the roof, but I’m stopped by a sharp, burning pain through the back of my leg. I look down in time to see Riaan’s blade sticking out through my thigh before it’s yanked out of me, leaving a white lance of pain in its wake.
I fall to the ground.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Riaan asks.
Jas cries out, and he grabs her by the waist, pulling her off the wobbling beam and close to him. Before I can feel any relief that she’s safe from a deadly fall, he wraps his big hand around her neck.
“Let her go,” I plead, words hard to find around the pain and hard to speak through this weakness.
“I have worked too hard to let you destroy everything we’ve fought for.”
“For what?” I ask. “For your queen? For your intolerance for the Unseelie? For your self-righteous belief that you are better?” The words spill from my lips and take the last of my energy. “The queen is dead. You’ve lost.”
“Have Sebastian surrender the Seelie crown to me, and I’ll spare your sister. He’d do it. For you, he’d do it.”
“Abriella,” my sister gasps, and Riaan’s hand tightens around her throat.
Hold on, Finn, I think, taking another draw from his power. I stagger to my feet, clutching my hand to the gushing wound in my leg.
“Get me that golden crown, Abriella,” Riaan says softly. “We can both get what we want. I’d be on the golden throne and you can have the Throne of Shadows. I promise to heal your sister and let you live after Sebastian passes on those crowns.”
Let me live, but not free me. He’d lock me back in that tomb. He’d find a way to keep me from escaping this time. He’d take the golden crown and let me take the Unseelie crown, but he’d keep me from taking the throne. He’d hold me prisoner so this power didn’t pass to someone else, so the Unseelie Court would continue to weaken. Until it died.
“Please. I only care about Jas.” It was true once, I realize as the lie slips from my lips. Once I cared only about her. I didn’t believe I had the power to save more than one innocent. But by the time I plunged that knife into Mordeus’s heart, the human girl I’d once been was already gone. Long before I bonded with Sebastian, I’d become something more. Long before I drank the Potion of Life.
Fat tears stream down Jas’s cheeks as she shakes her head. “Don’t do it.” Her voice is weak. So damn weak it chills me to my bones. “Don’t trust him.”
Riaan’s hand tightens around her neck. “Enough out of you.”
Still gripping my sister, he lunges for me, and his hand wraps around the fire gem at my neck, but he doesn’t get a chance to pull it off, because Sebastian plunges his blade into Riaan’s back.
Gasping, Riaan releases my necklace, then my sister. His eyes are wide, his lips moving as he looks down at the blade protruding from his chest.
Sebastian steps close behind him, catching him under his arms before he falls. “You were like a brother to me,” he says into his ear. “My only friend through so many lonely and difficult years.”
Jas stumbles to my side, pressing her hand to the wound on my thigh, her fingers turning red with my blood. “Brie,” she whispers, and we sink to the ground together, neither of us strong enough to stay on our own feet.
“Arya’s . . . kingdom . . .” Riaan sputters, blood trailing down his chin.
Sebastian sneers. “Her kingdom—the whole damn realm—is better off without you both.” With that, he brings his blade to Riaan’s neck and slices though, ending his pain and his life.
The last thing I see is Riaan’s head falling from his body. The last thing I feel is Sebastian scooping me and Jas into his arms.