Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 123190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123190 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 616(@200wpm)___ 493(@250wpm)___ 411(@300wpm)
I sit up and stretch, letting my sheets pool at my waist.
“Thank the gods,” Kendrick whispers behind me, and I turn to see him sitting in a lounge chair on the opposite side of the bed. His throat bobs as he swallows. He looks me over. “How do you feel?”
I push out of bed and walk around to his side. I’m stiff and sore, but I don’t feel any of that weakness I had when I heard them talking and couldn’t get my eyes to open. “I’m fine.”
He leans forward to adjust the bedside lantern. The room is flooded with light. When he lifts his gaze to mine again, the color drains from his face. “What happened?”
“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”
“What did that bastard do to you?” He unfolds from the chair and cups my face in both of his hands, sweeping one thumb from the middle of my cheek and up around the outside of my eye, his eyes wide.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I place my hand atop his. “I’m fine. Don’t look so panicked.”
His throat bobs. “It’s a new scar.”
Maybe I’ll just cut these pretty eyes out. Then you’ll have to look at me.
I step back and rush across the room to the small mirror that sits over the dresser. My hand shakes as I lift it to the ragged, puffy scar extending from the center of my cheek and hooking up around my eye.
I’ve never been particularly vain—at least not since living in Faerie. I never cared that these scars from years-old wounds were appearing from nowhere. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care about this body that has fae blood. I didn’t care about this life trapped in a realm I hate or the fate I never asked for.
But that was before I knew what it felt like to want something other than numbness and revenge. That was before Kendrick.
My eyes burn with the tears of the weak girl I won’t let myself be, and I squeeze them shut so I don’t have to see. I grip the edge of the dresser and hang my head.
It doesn’t matter. It’s just another scar. In nine months, none of this will matter anyway.
I’m so lost in my self-pity that I don’t realize Kendrick is behind me until he wraps his arms around me, pulls my back against his front.
I lift my head to meet his gaze in the mirror. “Everyone will see,” I whisper, and I didn’t realize until now that it bothered me so much. “Everyone will know I was a victim.”
His eyes meet mine in the mirror as he traces along the edge of my jaw. “Everyone will know you are a survivor.”
I swallow the lump of emotion threatening to choke me.
“I wish I could go back and make myself think twice about everything,” he says, his breath feathering my hair. “I wouldn’t assume that I knew what was happening. I wouldn’t assume that your only wounds were the ones I could see.” He buries his face in my neck, and his words become a prayer whispered into my skin. “Every time they brought you back, you were fine, and I didn’t . . .” The band of his arms tightens, like he’s trying to will us back in time so he can change things. “Of course he was healing you. Every time. Healing you so I wouldn’t know how bad it was. Why didn’t you tell me what was happening?”
I swallow. He’s holding me almost too tightly, but I hope he never stops. “I would pass out, and when I’d wake up, the blood would be gone, and the pain was just a memory.” I turn in his arms and look up into his searching eyes. “I didn’t know if it was real or all a nightmare.”
He bends his lips to the scar, like it’s a fresh wound he’s trying to kiss better. When he brings his mouth to my ear, his voice is deadly quiet. “I will kill him myself when we find him.”
I close my eyes. It feels good, I realize, having someone share my rage. I’ve carried it alone for so long.
And maybe . . . maybe that’s where I went wrong. Maybe holding it inside, hiding all the twisted, broken pieces—maybe these old wounds festered in the dark.
“I want to ask you what happened before I collapsed, but . . .” I look to him, hopeful.
“You don’t remember either?” he asks.
“I was having terrible nightmares. Nightmares about . . .” Nightmares where I was Mordeus. Nightmares where I could feel what it was like to have his kind of power and to be willing to destroy everything to keep it. Except they didn’t scare me. No, the nights when my mind imagines what it would be like to be him—those are some of the most restful nights I have. It feels good, and I don’t like to think too much on what that says about me.