Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
“That must have been terrifying.”
Graves laughed, despite himself. “Ah, I wasn’t afraid of him. Perhaps if I had been then I wouldn’t be where I am. He wouldn’t be where he was. Even then, I accepted him as my brother. The twin flame to my dark soul.” He shrugged like it had made perfect sense. “We didn’t have a word for depressed at the time, but I was as dark as I could get. That was the darkest night of my life.”
“So you saw him as your equal even then.”
He glanced up at her. “Perhaps I’ll never escape my own ego.”
She laughed. It was so Graves. “You wouldn’t be you without it.”
“Perhaps that’s true. We’ll never know.” He ran a hand down his face before continuing. “Lorcan wanted me to cower and beg his forgiveness. As if he’d ever give it. I knew the tales, and how he’d feel about what had happened. That he was here to kill me as was his due. But I wouldn’t be cowed. I had to meet him where he was.” Graves glanced down at his hands. The hands that had killed so many, blackmailed and bribed and stolen from so many more, hands that cared for her in her own darkest moments. “He railed against me. Tried to make me beg. I refused. I told him that if he wanted to take his vengeance, he would have to do it looking me in the eye.”
“And?” she asked. “Did you fight?”
“No,” Graves said. “He killed me.”
Kierse burst out, “What?”
“One second we were arguing, the next he ran his sword through my gut. My short, miserable life flashed before my eyes, and I fell backward, dead.”
“But…”
“I’m not dead?” he said with humor. “Yeah, surprised me, too. I woke up with my belly sliced open, but I was very much alive. Scared the piss out of the owner of the house I was at.” A flicker of a smile came to the edges of his lips. “I ended up at another inn, and the innkeeper’s daughter took a liking to me. I healed and helped run the inn, because they had a modest library that rejuvenated my magic. That’s around when I met Kingston.”
“So, that was the night that it all started?”
“We didn’t figure it out for many years. He thought that I perished on his sword. I thought that my magic was just on the fritz every six months. That I would get a lot stronger and then weaker as the year went around. Then the tattoo…” He offered her his wrist covered in holly vines. “They began to appear after a handful of years.”
“Appear?”
“A part of the curse,” Graves said, tracing the line of the tattoo up his forearm and across his bicep. “The thorns really do dig in.”
“This is alive?”
He shrugged, unconcerned. “You get used to it.”
“And you never found a way to escape this?”
“I thought for a time that I might have a way out but…well, it didn’t pan out.”
“What was that?”
Graves was silent a moment as if he couldn’t quite admit this, even to her. “I was going to reincarnate Emilie.”
“Can you do that?” Kierse gasped. “I thought you said necromancers and shit didn’t work.”
“They don’t, but it was the reason I went looking.”
“And you found another way?” she guessed.
He was contemplative, staring off into the aether. “I told you once that I wanted all four objects for a great spell. There was a tale once that said if all the objects came together, a great work could occur. That it could defy death itself.”
“The spell was to bring Emilie back?”
He nodded. “That was the plan.”
“And you thought that if you did it, it would right the wrong that first started all of this.”
“You think me so heroic,” he said, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “It was primarily selfish.”
“Oh,” she whispered in understanding. “You wanted Emilie back.”
“I never thought that she would want me after what I did to her. Or that she would even recognize me. I am a much different man than the idealist I was in Ireland at eighteen.”
“Give yourself some credit.”
“Oh, I am,” he said. “Now I know she wouldn’t know me.”
“So, is that still the plan?”
“Not anymore. Something upended all my plans.”
She threaded their fingers together. “What would that be?”
“Who,” he corrected. “My Wren.”
His lips fitted to hers, soft and endearing. She’d upended hundreds of years of plans. He’d chosen her above all else. And how could she want anything but this man who would go to the ends of the earth for her?
Chapter Fifty-Five
The marks remained on her wrists in the morning. The symbols etched into her skin in some unintelligible language. The skin was fresh and new but still pink as it fully healed. The two High Priestesses had saved her life and given much to put her back together. She was forever grateful, even if the marks reminded her of the excruciating pain she had endured at the hands of her mentor.