Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 109477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
She couldn’t stop blinking rapidly. “No. You can’t be. You don’t have wings.”
“They are banned from me. Wings represent freedom, and I have none.”
“But how? How did they do all of that?”
His look was sardonic. “Why, with the help of Equilas, of course. She will use me for the good of the realm, but as she does, she will revel in my struggles. They all will. Some will invent ways to make my suffering greater for their own amusement. They are ever so bored, the gods—they desire entertainment almost as much as they need our worship and devotion. Sometimes…they get greedy for the former. As I said, I am a pawn. Titles mean nothing to me now. They are empty brags of birth.”
“So you’re…you’re a…?”
“My birth name and title is Tarianthiel Drystan Windryker, Prince of the Diamond Throne, High Sovereign and Sworn Protector of Faerie, Guardian of the Fringe, Keeper of Balance, Brought Forth with the Dawn, Commander of Dusk, and Blessed with Ancestral Magic of Sevens. I added more titles as I completed each stage of my training, but you get the gist. I had such pride in them all, and now…they are useless. I am a ghost. My memory was stripped from the minds of the people I love. I did not die…I ceased to ever exist. My king—my father—and my court do not know me. My brother, who nearly succeeded in rooting me out of the royal line of succession, has no idea of his betrayal. My brethren, the Celestials, with whom I trained, drank with—now they try to kill me on each fringe crossing. All but ten of my friends—who allowed their wings and social standing to be stripped by Equilas so they might help me—don’t know who I am.” He paused for a beat. “Who I was. It was made clear that there would be no help for me. You are my only way out, Daisy. You are my only means of salvation. A human—who must play the games of the court against magical fae—is my only hope. On my end of things, the deal wasn’t a great one…”
She was struck mute. She hadn’t been able to process the whole chalice thing, and now this? This was way beyond her. She’d need a cup of coffee and a quiet room for a few hours to make sense of any of this. It was all too massive in scope to take in. To comprehend. A Celestial? This was only a fraction of his magic?
A Celestial?! They were nearly gods themselves, fierce and beautiful and terrifying. Then again…wasn’t that always how she’d viewed him?
“Have no fear,” he murmured, sliding his thumb along the edge of her jaw. “You’ll forget all I’ve said in a few moments, like everyone else. It will be plucked from your mind by the magic trapping me. Soon I’ll go back to being a hollowed-out, princely assassin and thief, the mockery of a filthy, out-of-balance court where evil continues to flower and corrupt and twist the minds and magic of its inhabitants.”
She remembered all his memories from Celestial training—how much he knew about their kind. How much he revered the position and the value he placed on their duty to protect the realm. Those were his values. That was his way of thinking. It now made so much more sense why he’d make any kind of deal at all. Why he’d fight, and toil, and hold himself above the rest so he could accomplish what he needed to in order to save his beloved Faerie.
He’d be doing this, deal or no deal. She didn’t know him well, but she knew that much. She would do anything to save her family, and he was the same, except his family was the whole of the realm.
She let out a slow breath. “This is a lot to take in.”
“As I said, you’ll forget. I am exiled from my home and trapped, but I have my Fallen. I am not alone, or maybe I would’ve gone mad, as the Obsidian royals desperately try to get me to do. But yes, I have a duty to these lands. I will help these people. It is my birthright.”
Some fucking birthright.
She shook her head for the millionth time. A god saved him, only to trap him in horror, expecting him to then save the realm? To sacrifice himself to do it? What kind of fucked-up donkey show were these dipshits running here? If a god had done that to her, she’d desecrate a temple or two. If the court mocked her for it, she’d fuck up the whole place so they’d be trapped just as much as she. Fuck ’em, there were other ways to play the game besides hunting down relics and hoping a magic-less human could get you out of a deal gone wrong…