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)
Gone.
Missing.
Empty.
She turned over onto Graves and let the sobs rack through her body, let the world disappear around her. She felt the soft Italian silk at the inside of his suit jacket. The smooth wool of his coat and the crisp white button-up and the silken texture of his tie. How she had loved to watch him dress.
The hands that should have been able to read all her secrets that were now absent, empty. The fingers that had graced a page and her body with equal reverence. The light in his unpredictable eyes. Whether or not the thunderstorms were a good or a bad thing was only something she had discovered with careful watching and understanding of him. All the pieces of him that made him him and somehow encompassed none of the man she loved.
And now it was…gone.
People talked around her, arguing. And all that was here was his body, solid beneath her. Her Holly King.
But what made him the Holly King in the first place? A tale that they’d embodied. This wasn’t the first time that either had been killed in all these years. And it was in the wrong time. The wrong place.
Samhain had left the door wide open for her to enter Faerie and gather up their power. But the story still had its hooks in him. It wasn’t possible for the story to end in a different way. Was it? That was what they both harped on continuously. That once the story started, they endured the crooked hand they were dealt.
She looked up at her friends all arguing with Lorcan. She didn’t even comprehend what they said to him, what his argument was, or why it mattered. Didn’t they know that this was the only thing that mattered?
“Why did you think he couldn’t die?” she asked.
Lorcan stopped his rant mid-sentence to face her. “Never have before.”
“Have you been mortally wounded outside the solstice?”
“On many occasions.” He hesitated before adding, “I’ve run him through before when it wasn’t the solstice. He’s done the same. It never took. To be fair, it was not a magic drain like this.”
“But at the solstice, you said it would kill me if he ran you through?”
“While I was holding your magic, yes.” He bent down. “What are you thinking?”
“You can bring him back.”
Lorcan barely managed not to laugh. “Love, I’m not going to do that.”
“Not going to or incapable?”
He wavered. “I’m not going to.”
“Even if I ask you to?”
“You know how I feel for you, but…no.”
“Lorcan,” Niamh hissed again, “can you do it?”
Lorcan didn’t turn around. His eyes were only for Kierse when he reluctantly said, “Yes. The Oak and Holly Kings are connected through god magic. He is as dead as he could be without the bond, but…he only stays that way if I allow it.”
“Then do it,” Niamh snapped.
This time he did look at his robin and said, “No.”
Kierse broke on the word. “Please.”
“This is for the best.”
“For me to be heartbroken? For him to be… How can you say that?” More tears came to her eyes, and she had to swipe at them to look up at him. “I will be like this forever without him. I do not want to live in a world without him in it. If you cared about me at all…”
“I do,” he said hoarsely. “I love you.”
She reared back at the words. How unbelievably callous to utter them now. To say them when she was at her darkest.
“Do this for me.”
“I won’t,” he said as if it somehow hurt him.
And then she knew that what she had to do would equally break her and yet there was no other option. She couldn’t survive in a world without Graves in it. She didn’t want to.
“I’ll go with you,” she told Lorcan.
Lorcan’s eyes rounded in shock. “What?”
“Kierse, no!” Gen gasped.
“That’s not even possible,” Ethan said.
“Absolutely not!” Niamh said.
“Explain,” he said hesitantly.
“You know what I mean. I’ll go with you just like I said.”
“And you’ll forget your relationship with him,” Lorcan added.
Kierse thought she would throw up at the order. But he had all the cards right now. So she nodded. “I’ll go with you, and I’ll forget our relationship.”
Lorcan stared into her eyes, and she saw every time he had wanted this exact outcome. And before he even said something, she knew it would work. Because Lorcan wanted to protect her. He wanted to love her. He wanted her as he always had. And he would always do the right thing for the wrong reasons. It was his fatal flaw. The crack in his hero facade.
Still, she would do it for Graves.
Lorcan nodded. “Swear it on the stone.”
“What the fuck,” Niamh spat.
“A geas on the stone?”
“Then it’s binding,” Lorcan said.
She nearly laughed. “So you don’t trust me to do it otherwise?”
“I have done everything I can to keep you apart. Even in death, you run to him.”