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)
I can’t look at her without thinking of all that blood. So to me, seeing her as that human woman I left Savage Falls with feels like a step up.
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
I feign ignorance. “What way?”
“Like I’ve got greens in my teeth.” She rubs her teeth with her fingertip, looking for stray pieces of food.
And this makes me smile, and that smile allows me to relax a little. I let out a breath. “I just have a really bad feeling about this place. We’ve been here long enough. It’s time to move on, don’t you think?”
Callistina isn’t feeling the same way, apparently, because she looks around like she’s trying to figure out what’s got me spooked. Finding nothing but a content pegásius chewing on some weeds several yards away, she shrugs. “Not really.”
“Don’t you want to continue our journey down the ordered list?” I raise my eyebrows, trying to insinuate that there is a grand adventure waiting. But that’s not gonna happen. I do not want to go through that third set of doors. And I’m making sure the next spelling I use to move us along comes with a failsafe. I’ve been working on it since we got here and it’s just about perfect.
Right now, as boring as Savage Falls is, I would very much like to be there and put an end to this trip. Because Pressia is the one guiding us through time. This is all her doing. She has to be the one who cut off Callistina’s antlers.
Who else would do such a heinous thing?
Who else would need such magic?
I mean, maybe if there was someone else in this forest with us, I could blame them. But there is no one else here.
It was Pressia.
I know I already had plans to end her, but what she did to Ire and Callistina, that’s evil. That’s downright evil right there. My plan is to get back to Savage Falls, go find Tomas, and find a way back to Saint Mark’s apothecary.
I know she’s there. Living in another dimension, or another time, or whatever the fuck she calls it. I know she’s there. And I’m gonna find her and I will make her pay. I will end her.
Not for what she did to me all those lifetimes ago. But what she did to Callistina and Ire.
Evil should never get a pass.
Someone has to stand up to it and that someone will be me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - CALLISTINA
Do I want to continue our journey down the ordered list? “No, actually.” I say this, but I don’t think Eros is listening to me. His gaze is directed at the forest and his eyes are a bit unfocused. “Did you hear me?”
He glances at me, mentally shaking himself out of something. “What?”
“You asked if I wanted to continue our journey down the ordered list. And I don’t. This place doesn’t look so bad. I mean, there’s no rush, right? We just got here.”
Now he looks at me intently. And again, I find myself wondering if there’s a piece of food in my teeth. “What?”
Eros lets out a long sigh. “I want to tell you something, because it’s something you should know and I don’t want you to find out later and then think I was trying to keep it from you. But… it’s… not good.” He’s looking down when he says all this, but for this last part, his gaze lifts up so his eyes meet mine. “So I don’t want to tell you.”
He looks… very sad. And defeated. Like he lost a big battle. A very big, important battle. And I’m not sure what to think about this, so I just give him a small shrug. “OK.”
“But you deserve to know.”
“All right.”
“We’ve been here three months.”
“What?”
“Ninety-seven days, actually. You were…” He pauses, gets a pained look on his face, then exhales and keeps going. “When I came through my door you were… bloody. Covered in it. And so was Ire.”
“Bloody? Why?”
“Because we came to the time—the very day, almost the exact moment, I think—that you had your antlers cut off and Ire had his wings cut off. You were… I thought you were dead.”
I am having trouble understanding what he’s saying. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying”—his tone is a bit irritable now—“that someone mutilated the two of you for your magic.”
“What magic?”
“The wings,” he says, pointing at Ire. “And your antlers. It’s the feathers and the bloodhorn.”
“The bloodhorn?” The moment I say these words a bit of clarity slips into place. Because bloodhorn was the ingredient that Tarq was looking for when he was doing all his magic with the wood nymphs back in Vinca. “But I don’t have any bloodhorn.”
“Oh, you do, Callistina.” Eros is nodding his head emphatically. “You do. Or… actually… you did, I mean. It’s all gone now.”