Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 496(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Which he is, so it makes sense. But… he looks powerful. And for as long as I’ve known him, he’s not been very powerful.
He’s also got a weapon strapped to his bare back, a very serious-looking bow, and a leather bandolier filled with short, fat bolts crisscrossing his chest.
But no. The bandolier is not filled. It’s missing two.
“He’s… uh… sick.”
“Why?” I whisper, too weak to speak loudly. My head still hurts, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was. And when I reach up to touch it, it’s not a sticky, bloody mess like it was in my hallucinogenic nightmare. It’s just soft hair through my fingertips.
“Someone cut off his wings.”
The stab of pain in my heart could match that pounding in my head at its peak.
Of course, I knew his wings had been cut off. Knew this almost since the beginning of my trip through time with Eros. But it felt like a long-ago thing and now, here we are, in the time of the tragedy.
And those moans I heard were Ire’s pain in the present.
I want to ask who would do such a thing, and why.
But I already know.
Someone like Tarq would do that. He was hunting wood nymphs. Someone like Nysta would do that. She was luring them through the doors so he could steal their magic. In fact, isn’t that all anyone’s ever been doing? Stealing the shine of others to make themselves more powerful?
Tarq ruined Vinca. I know I’m the one responsible for the dragon—for Madeline. I’m not sure how, exactly, but that’s what the nightmare was telling me.
But it was also telling me the truth about Tarq. Even though I knew it. I knew all about it. I just didn’t stop him. We made a deal, after all. Once the old king died.
Tarq didn’t want to rule. He wanted to find wood nymphs and open doors. That was all he thought about. So I would just turn the other cheek, not ask any questions, and leave him alone to do his work. I could have the throne.
I could have all the power he didn’t want.
But he did want power.
Doesn’t everyone?
He just wanted more than being king could give him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - EROS
Everything was happening so fast when Callistina and I went through the new doors that it took a couple of weeks to sort through everything I saw, or thought I saw, and put it into some kind of sensible order.
First and foremost, the magic worked. Better than expected, actually.
I was looking at the door—at the projection of a door, because that’s all it was—and then, the next thing I knew, I was already inside the hallway.
Time was going slow or something because I had enough of it to make a decision. At least, that was my perception. But I don’t think my perception was matching up with my reality because though I was relieved to be back in the hallway—a place where choices should be available to me—it didn’t feel like a choice when the second door in the ordered list sucked me through like I was going down a drain, or like this was some predetermined set of actions, or like… fate. Maybe.
Maybe not, but the point is, though I wanted to make a decision, the decision to continue this journey through the doors was not mine.
I came out in a forest covered in blood. I mean, it was everywhere. Dripping off giant, tropical-looking leaves, pooling in the dirt at my feet, all over me. But, most importantly, all over Callistina as well.
Time is a cruel bitch. Because it slowed down here too. Not so I could finally have some sort of say in what happened to me, but so I could burn the memory of what I was seeing into my brain like a brand on the hide of a meat animal.
Callistina was half lying, half draped over the edge of a large, flat boulder. Face down. Naked, of course. Her gold fur was scarlet. Not a bit of it wasn’t covered.
And the top of her head was where all this blood was coming from. Because we came through those doors and arrived in the moment, or shortly after the moment, when someone had cut off Callistina’s antlers.
I am not a mortal man, but I know the ways of the mortal world. And antlers don’t bleed if you cut them off. I know this for a fact. I mean, I’m kind of an expert bow hunter. I’ve shot my share of deer and I’ve cut off my share of antlers. Ground-up antlers of all kinds are a common ingredient in magiceutical recipes.
But clearly, Callistina is no deer.
No lion, either. Since lions don’t have antlers.
Whoever did this might as well have cut off her arms or legs the way that blood was pouring out of her. On top of that, it was no ordinary blood. It was… pulsating. Undulating. Like flowing lava, or something.