Total pages in book: 401
Estimated words: 390373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1952(@200wpm)___ 1561(@250wpm)___ 1301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 390373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1952(@200wpm)___ 1561(@250wpm)___ 1301(@300wpm)
“Holy shit,” the woman gasped, drawing my attention to her. She peeked through her bent arms, her brown eyes wide. “Are you, like, a superhero or something?”
I lowered my hand. “Superhero?” I asked. I thought I’d spoken the word normally, but it didn’t sound that way to my ears.
Or to hers.
Because she fell back on her ass, her arms dropping. She stared up at me in shock, and I knew she’d heard the eather in my voice. It sounded like shadows, ice, and fire—
A shiver of awareness tiptoed up my spine, sending a wave of tingles across the nape of my neck. My skin prickled as eather suddenly rushed to my skin. The corners of my vision filled with silver, and the air around me charged. Shadows pressed against my skin, swirling with traces of gold and silver.
Something was coming.
And it was her.
I felt her in every fiber of my being—warm and summery. The One who was born of Blood and Ash, the Light in the Fire, and the Brightest Moon. The true Primal of Life. The Queen.
And my…grandmother.
I inhaled sharply, catching a scent that reminded me of spring—renewal.
Then, as quickly as I sensed her, something seemed to pull her presence back, taking the warmth with it.
But the presence of another intensified as the entire river started to writhe in a frantic dance. Suddenly, the water level dropped as if the river’s floor had vanished. I jerked back as the force of its descent created a loud, hollow sound, and the water and everything in it was pulled downward.
As the awareness of another grew stronger, I turned my attention to the ships now spinning sideways; one of them quickly pulled down as the entire river seemed to fall away. The sound of screams being cut off, swallowed by the water, would haunt me until my last breath. I should’ve saved them. That was why I’d come. But I’d wasted time. Only one ship remained, and anger at myself rose. I latched onto the fury, stalking forward as my will formed. A surge of eather left me, causing the air to crackle and fill with the scent of burnt ozone.
Strands of silver twined with gold burst forth from my outstretched hands, swirling over the ruined ground and the sinking water. As tendrils of essence wrapped around the ship, I drew my arms up and back in one swift motion, lifting the vessel from the water and returning it to solid ground. It crashed onto the land with a resounding thud, causing dirt and grass to fly up in every direction. The ship mowed down a row of what appeared to be lampposts as it stopped atop a stretch of yellow-streaked gray cement.
I turned back to the river, summoning the eather again. A shiver of awareness swept across my body, raising the tiny hairs on my arms as the ship started to topple sideways.
“It’s too late.”
CHAPTER 13
POPPY
As I willed the essence to capture the ship, air lodged in my throat at the sound of an unfamiliar voice that seemed to drip power with each word. Warning bells rang in my head. That something I’d sensed moments ago was here. The eather pulsed, responding to what was inside him, just as it had with Casteel when I first woke. But this was different. And those warning bells were telling me that I didn’t want to engage with this stranger, that I should step back because the kind of power I sensed in him was something I’d never experienced before. It was infinite and old. I focused on the ship—the terrified screams—my chest throbbing wildly. An innate sense of knowing was birthed then, one that recognized the significance of each pulse. Each scream silenced forever.
“It’s too late for them.”
“I have no idea who you are,” I ground out.
“But I know you.”
That statement sent a shiver down my spine. “That sounded entirely too creepy.” I pulled the ship back from the abyss. “But if you’re not going to help me, can you shut the fuck up?”
A low, long sigh answered, sending another chill dancing across my skin as I brought the ship back to land. I tried not to think about how only half the people remained on the platform. Sending the vessel in the other direction, I was relieved to see those on the ground scatter, fleeing its path.
“You’ve only accomplished delaying the inevitable. Prolonging their suffering.”
I spun toward the sound of the voice, gathering the eather in me.
A tall man dressed in gray stood a few feet behind me where the woman had been crouched moments before. His dark hair was cropped close to his head, and some kind of design had been inked onto the skin along the sides of his face—a few shades darker than his brown complexion. It was a pattern I’d seen in the shadows as they climbed up the sides of Casteel’s face.