Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 132625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132625 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 663(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 442(@300wpm)
Kendrick squeezes his eyes shut for a beat. “I choose to believe the same. About them both.”
“We’re running out of time,” I say. “On Jasalyn’s eighteenth birthday, she’ll be lost to us forever, and the future of the shadow court right alongside her.”
Chapter One
Jasalyn
They don’t fear me in this body. Obedience comes with hesitation. With doubt. So I teach them the cost of their uncertainty, burning their fields and their homes with the flames that should be mine to command, burning it all to ash and painting the horizon in the reds and oranges of my rage.
She locks her power away from me, even now. Even weak as she is. But I will command it when the time is right. The seers have foretold this. They think they can steal my destiny. They think they can keep me away from my rightful life, my rightful court, my rightful throne.
I will take it all back or I will burn it to the ground.
“Princess. Pretty, pretty princess. Wake up now, you foolish girl.”
The words are too far away. A shout from a distant realm. A call from the shore to my submerged body.
Sleep has me in its grasp. Weakness weaves around my bones, worming its way into my muscles, forbidding me to do so much as open my eyes.
The ring. I know it’s the magical ring that is stuck on my hand making me so useless. Pushing me closer and closer to death. I’m teetering on the edge, peering into the abyss, craving the relief from this whole-body ache.
“Come now. Enough of this.”
A cup is pressed to my lips—cool ceramic prying them apart before something hits my tongue. Thick, warm, and sweet.
My eyes flutter open to see the faerie leaning over me, a steaming mug in her hand. “I need to go to Feegus Keep,” I tell her. Tell myself. I shouldn’t need to be reminded. Mordeus is using me—to kill hundreds, to bring himself back to life—and I won’t be the reason he returns for good. Kendrick thought Feegus Keep might hold the Sword of Fire, a sword that he says will open a portal to anywhere you want to go, a sword that can kill anyone. I need to find it and end Mordeus. I can’t undo my mistakes, but I can do this.
I look around the room. It’s not too dark to make out the silhouette of the short, stout female at my bedside, but it’s dark enough that I never would’ve chosen this place to rest if it weren’t for the ring’s magic weakening me.
I pick through the cobwebs of my thoughts, trying to remember how I got here. I was staying with Kendrick and his friends at Ironmoore, an Eloran settlement, when the town was attacked by a wyvern. That night I dreamed the most awful thing—about Kendrick being someone else, about him working with Mordeus.
Then I found out that every session of torture Mordeus made me endure in his dungeons was blood magic, and that now, because of that and this ring, Mordeus has some level of control over my consciousness. He used me to do horrible things. This ring makes me a murderer with death’s kiss, and some of those deaths I chose. The people who worked for Mordeus and tortured me in those dungeons? I wanted to watch them die.
I never would have guessed that I was personally resurrecting Mordeus with each life I took.
The female snaps her fingers in my face. “No more sleeping. You’ve done enough of that.”
“Who are you?” I ask, my voice raspy from lack of use. “Where am I?”
She flicks her fingers and the lantern at my bedside flames to life. “Climb out of this bed now,” the faerie commands, yanking the piles of blankets off me. Her thinning gray hair is pulled into a knot at the crown of her head and her pale skin has a yellow undertone. She flicks my arm with her thumb and forefinger.
“Ouch.” I rub away the sting, but I do feel a little more awake. Is this her house?
When it became clear that my horrible dreams were actually Mordeus’s memories, I left Kendrick. I climbed into a farmer’s wagon and was far from Ironmoore when I remembered my goblin bracelet and asked Gommid to take me somewhere I could sleep. Somewhere I’d be safe. Where did he bring me?
“Now.”
My mind is too fuzzy to piece it out and I’m too tired to argue, so I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed.
I vaguely remember Gommid grumbling about my foolishness, about how he warned me about the ring. The last thing I remember is ignoring his rant and crawling into a soft bed. This soft bed? Maybe, but I was too feeble and sick to pay much attention to my surroundings.