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)
Ever present.
She wanted to cry, but everything hurt too bad. Her fingertips were still black with the magic she’d taken, though the rush of it already receded as her magic diminished in turn.
With a heaving breath, she faced Nuala, the enormous tree undamaged but silent. Their connection still there, but it was no longer listening. It had given her all that she had asked for, and it had still not been enough.
Graves lay at its base before the door. And he wasn’t moving.
“Graves?” she forced out of her abused throat.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. He didn’t…
She couldn’t finish that sentence, because suddenly she was scrambling across the tile. She moved as fast as her hurt body allowed and collapsed at his side. With effort, she rolled him over onto his back. His eyes were closed and he…wasn’t moving.
“Graves,” she said again in a panicked gasp.
Her fingers went to his throat. She waited. She counted. She pressed in deeper. He was always so warm. So very warm. Endlessly warm. And now that magic was…empty. It was all gone. Drained away by Faerie.
“He doesn’t have a pulse.”
Her hands shook as she realized what she had to do. She had to do…something…
She had to…
She put her hands together on his poor heart and pumped downward with all the force she could muster. She did compressions, counting them out to the timing she had learned years earlier. She tilted his head up and puffed twice into his mouth, deep, full breaths.
“Come on,” she cried.
More compressions. Harder this time. The exact number of beats. This would restart his heart. It would…
It had to…
There was no other option.
She breathed for him again. She would always breathe for him.
More beats.
More
More
Still more
And then…
“Come on, Graves,” she cried as tears came to her eyes. “You can’t do this. He said it’s not possible. He said that nothing could kill you with the bond. Not even I could have done it.”
“Kierse,” Lorcan said so gently it was like ice piercing her chest. “Kierse, come away from him.”
His hands came to her shoulders.
“No,” she screamed when he touched her. She threw him from her and went back to work. “He’s going to make it.”
She didn’t know how many beats she had done. She lost count. The world blurred, and she kept pressing into him. But there was no magic in him. There was…nothing.
Gen pulled her free first. “Okay. It’s time to stop.”
“No,” she blubbered.
Ethan was there next, coaxing her to stop the compressions. “You’re with us now.”
“I can’t… I can’t… I just…”
Gen ran her fingers through her hair, and Ethan pulled her against him. The three of them a brutalized triskel. She had abused their friendship by taking too much. She could have killed them. She could have done anything. Had rooted them to the ground in service of her own desires.
And still they loved her when she didn’t deserve their love.
Because if they were right…
If things were…
If Graves…
He had done it for her. He’d known what touching that magic could do to him. And still he had done it to save her. At his own expense.
“Gen,” Kierse begged. “Can you?”
Gen shook her head. “Kierse…”
“Niamh!” Kierse said, turning from her friends and seeing another lifeline.
Niamh cried as well. She shook her head. “I don’t have to look at him. I can tell he’s…”
“Don’t say it,” she shrieked, covering her head. She couldn’t hear that word. Couldn’t process that word. “Someone do something. Someone…please…”
Niamh hiccupped and looked away. “I’m sorry, Kierse.”
“Don’t.”
She looked back to her love, lying there motionless. He looked like a broken raven pierced through the heart for spreading its wings.
Kierse lifted her gaze to Lorcan. “You said that I was the breakable one.”
“You are, love,” he said as soft as he could manage.
“You said that the Oak and Holly Kings couldn’t…”
She couldn’t say the word.
Lorcan said it anyway. “Die?”
She closed her eyes. “You lied.”
“I didn’t think we could. I admit to never being blasted by Faerie magic at the heart of a sacred tree maelstrom, though,” Lorcan said. “That might be different.”
“He did it for you,” Gen told her. “He’d do it again.”
“He did it for nothing!” she cried. “I’m still…this. I’m still…” She looked up at Lorcan, the bond still active and whole. “Still here.”
“Still mine, you mean.”
“Lorcan!” Niamh hissed.
“She feels it,” he said, reaching for her hand. “No amount of leverage, no amount of magic, no amount of destruction could break it. I felt you trying. I let you try. You would have killed yourself trying. So, I’m thankful for my brother for saving you.”
“That’s not what you care about,” she said, pulling free of his grasp.
She turned away from him, from all of them.
Her heart was in a puddle on the floor, a shattered mess of an organ. Everything was too much, too all at once. The light too bright. The air too abrasive to her skin. The world too alive when the only part she wanted in it was…