Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 121339 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121339 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
But he was in the way.
Lexi grabbed him by his hair and yanked him back.
His blast of magic nearly made her black out. She reacted, as did Kieran, two streams of magic fighting his. It almost wasn’t enough. This fucker was powerful.
Zorn didn’t care. He muscled his way in, grabbed the fae, and ripped him away. Bloody gashes tore lumps of skin from Zorn’s arms and chest, but he didn’t so much as flinch.
“If you value Daisy’s life, you will let Alexis work,” Zorn growled.
The fae stilled, confused, reddened eyes blinking. His hair was mussed, and his face was the picture of agony. Worse, his gaze was hollow. He’d just watched—maybe helped—someone he loved die.
She would not be gone forever.
No time for sobbing, Lexi pushed up her sleeves and bent beside her kid.
“What did she die of?” she barked, feeling the spirit box with her magic. All the prongs that were needed to hold the soul in place had been shattered. Daisy never did do anything by halves.
Her body wasn’t cold yet, though. It wasn’t beyond use. If they could heal her body and fix some of the prongs, using spirit to patch everything together, they could keep Daisy alive.
They needed that soul, though. She couldn’t cling to life without her soul.
“What did she—” Lexi cut off as a plethora of thoughts and images rolled through her head, so fast she almost didn’t grasp them. Then she saw, through the fae’s mind, his thoughts, his feelings. She saw the whole thing—the pain, the magic, the amount of sheer power that had gone through her kid’s body. It had fried Daisy and evacuated the soul. But the magic hadn’t lingered. It hadn’t stayed. It had blasted through, like electricity looking for ground. She needed to be jump-started. Her heart, it needed to be—
“Faelynn!” the fae yelled, command in his voice.
A female ran in on shaky limbs and with a deathly pale face. She hadn’t gotten over the fright from Lexi’s magic. That was pretty common the first couple times.
“She’s a healer,” the fae said. “She can help.”
Kieran took Lexi by the shoulders. “You focus on those prongs and the soul. You need to pull her back and get her soul in this body. If she’s gone too long, the body won’t be able to repair. I’ll work on her heart.”
Tears dripping from her eyes, she moved to Daisy’s feet and bowed her head. She worked those prongs, rebuilding, and got ready to call Daisy back over the line. She got ready to fight her way through that guy standing in the way. She could do this. She had to do this.
37
Daisy
The colors around her were so calm and tranquil. Comforting. She felt…at peace in a way she never could remember before.
She moved through the space, like walking in a meadow at dawn.
Dawn…
Why did that ring a bell?
She couldn’t really remember. Wasn’t exactly troubled to think about it. This felt right, this place. She belonged here. She felt that.
She closed her eyes, kind of a weird idea, since she didn’t actually have a body, and prepared to drift away. To roll with the winds of time and the fluctuations of forever. To exist but not. The afterlife really wasn’t so bad.
“Hey.”
A man leaned against a doorframe in a place where doors weren’t present. For some reason, that didn’t seem odd. He looked vaguely familiar but also like he didn’t belong here. His magic was all wrong for this place. Foreign.
“Wow, when you give in to something, you really go all in, huh?” he said, wearing a smirk. His eyes narrowed as he looked closer. “Ah. Yeah, gods are tricky. We can help a spirit find peace, whether they like it or not. But you took it and ran. There are no halvsies with you. Now I get why you all but threw your panties at that fae. Don’t get me wrong, he is hot as fuck, isn’t he? A wet dream walking. But I expected you to give him more guff at the start.” He shrugged. “Why resist when they are that bangable? I get it. I’ve been known to make a bad decision now and again when it comes to pretty partners. They wrote a whole fucking myth about it. I can’t seem to live it down.”
Strange feelings vied for attention. Strange memories, pulling at a heart she’d left behind. Pulling at her very core and squishing out sadness. Loss.
A moment of panic snapped her out of her peaceful state, grasping at a memory that wouldn’t quite form. A need not realized. This place seemed off. Not right. She shouldn’t be here. She couldn’t—
“Shh, shh,” the man said, putting out a hand. A wave of peacefulness again enveloped her, washing away the panic. “You’ll never remember things like that. Not here. Let’s get you in the right headspace. How’s this?”