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)
“This isn’t about all of this,” Kierse argued. “It isn’t about the Oak and Holly Kings. I am not a piece to move about your board. I am just me, and I’m saying that this has to stop.”
“You’re right,” Lorcan said simply. “It has to stop. I stood on that curb for hours waiting for news about if you had been healed by my own robin. And I realized what I needed to do.” Lorcan beckoned to Maureen. “Allow me to show you the present I got you, love.”
Kierse’s eyes rounded. The rest of the room gasped as the cloth was pulled back and Lorcan unveiled the Stone of Fal.
“You stole it?” she asked. “But…how?”
Lorcan laughed softly. “How? When Druids are part of your plan? And the Druids belong to me? It was not so difficult.”
Niamh winced. “I didn’t know he had his claws in that deep. I didn’t anticipate him manipulating the Druids. After all these years, I still don’t expect him to work against me.”
“Work against you?” Lorcan asked. “You’re my robin. We’re working together.”
Graves cut in. “What are you going to do with the stone?”
“What do you think I want to do with it, Brannon?”
“It hasn’t proclaimed you overking in the hundreds of years you had it. I’d bet it didn’t do that today, either,” Graves reasoned.
“There are no more overkings,” Niamh said.
“What’s the overking?” Gen asked from Kierse’s side.
“The High King of Ireland,” Kierse said. “The ruler of all rulers.”
“Is it because Ireland isn’t a monarchy anymore?”
“No,” Graves said. “It hasn’t called out since the Tuatha de Danann left Ireland. No one has been worthy to be king since then, and still no one is. Least of all you.”
“Lorcan?” Kierse asked.
He smiled that truly joyous smile. The sound of his name on her tongue tugged them closer together. “I told you already. I got it for you.”
“For me…how?”
“You wanted it, did you not?”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly.
Lorcan’s smile sharpened, holding the stone out. “Then go ahead.”
“What?”
“Break the bond,” he ordered.
Kierse’s gaze slipped to Graves’s. As if she couldn’t quite trust what Lorcan said. Surely he didn’t actually want her to break the bond.
“What’s the catch?” she asked.
“You already touched the stone and didn’t do it the first time.”
She blinked. “How do you know that?”
“The stone is like all objects of the Tuatha de Danann, and it spoke to me of you.”
“What…what did it say?”
“That it had already selected its hero. And only a hero can put a king on the throne.”
“We already know all of this,” Graves said irritably. “There have been many heroes and many kings, and none of them have made the stone sing.”
“So then why didn’t you break the bond the first time?” Lorcan asked Kierse, ignoring Graves.
“I ran out of time.”
He tilted his head, and that smile returned. As if he knew her heart and that she lied.
“Then do it now.” He held the stone out before him. “After you.”
Kierse didn’t want to walk into whatever trap this was, and yet she couldn’t stop herself from stepping forward and putting her hand on the Stone of Fal.
Chapter Sixty-One
“Hello again, hero.”
Kierse closed her eyes against the press of the magnificent and ancient stone. The first time she had touched it, she hadn’t truly prepared for the magnitude of what she was experiencing. She had thought it would be like the spear. And in some ways it was. But this was older. Much older. The spear was to the stone what New York City was to the start of the universe.
It reminded her of the story of Cleopatra. How she had studied ancient Egypt while she reigned over it. That she was closer to modern times than she was to the pyramids.
This stone had seen universes birth and die. It found this world small in comparison to its previous life. The lack of true heroes baffling. The darkness overwhelming.
She sensed all of that in a single moment. And then it retreated from its eminence to a point where she could return its response.
“Hello, stone,” she said back to it.
“Are you here to try to put your king on my throne?”
“No,” she said with reverence. “Only to make a request of you.”
“You are not the first nor the last who will swear their promises upon my surface.”
“What if I wanted to break a promise?”
The stone was silent for a moment. “Promises should not be broken.”
Kierse hated that answer. “What if the promise was not made in good faith?”
“Then the breaking shall kill you.”
“Oh,” she said. “What if it was not a geas but a binding between two people? A binding of magic.”
“I sense this in you. It feels right.”
Kierse nearly choked on the word. Right. Oh, how it did feel right in every way except one. The one that brought her back time and again to breaking it.