Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 125121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Move, Luna.
He closed on the hilt.
Move!
I shot forward. Grabbing his wrist, I slammed it on the ground, releasing his grip. The knife fell half a foot from my nose. I snatched it up, twisted, and—
Levi stilled. His face screwed up, grimacing almost in confusion. Slowly, we both drifted down to the knife sticking out of his chest.
A breath passed.
Two.
Three.
Levi flopped back, eyes staring unseeingly at the cloudless sky.
I ran.
Racing, tripping, crying, screaming—I dashed through the trees, running as fast as I could, and too slow to put enough distance between me and what I’d done.
“Luna?”
Wilder, Rafael, Cato, and Lucien circled the music hall—calling for me and roughly stopping Royals on their way out. “Luna!”
“Rafael!”
He twisted around, letting go of some poor freshman. Rafael took one look and ran to me. “Luna!”
I gasped, my breaths coming too quick and shallow for my lungs to fill. Shock leadened my feet—slowing me down just yards away. I lifted my hand, bloodstained fingers reaching for him.
“Rafael...”
Darkness bled into my vision. The last thing I saw before the ground rushed up to meet me.
I LAY UNDER LUCIEN’S black silk sheets, safe and warm under his attention. But I was not sleeping.
And I was not relaxed.
“I can’t believe I did that,” I croaked. “I killed him. I wasn’t thinking, Lucien. I just stabbed him.”
“It’s one thing to sit back and watch others dole out your final revenge against them. It’s another to carry it out yourself. Killing takes its toll on a person. You never really get used to it.”
“No, it’s not that.” I pushed up and immediately regretted it. My stab wound wasn’t deep, though it bled a frightening amount. The guys brought me home, bathed me, bandaged the cut, and put me to rest in Lucien’s bed. I woke up an hour earlier from a nap and saw the bleeding had stopped, and the pain somehow tripled.
Lucien eased me back onto the pillows.
“I can’t believe that I killed him because I ruined my chance.” My eyes swam. “He knew who the Phantom is. I had to get away from him, but after I did, I could’ve used his desperation as leverage to force him into giving me a name. Now he’s gone and he’ll never be able to tell. One split-second decision and I failed Winter. Again.”
“Luna, you can’t do this to yourself.” He grasped my chin between two fingers, gently raising me to drown in his eyes. “He was trying to kill you. You did what you had to do to defend yourself. Winter would’ve wanted you to walk away from that monster alive.
“Besides, we haven’t lost the phantom yet. There’s still Wesley,” he said, stroking my cheek. He caught my tears on his pinky and licked them away. “We’ll make him talk. Doesn’t matter what it takes. He’ll give up the Phantom.”
I nodded, sniffling. I had to believe him. The alternative was impossible to consider.
“I need a new plan for Wesley. It’s not enough to scare him. He’s already scared and it’s not of me. He’s more afraid of the Phantom. How do I change that? He doesn’t care if he dies.”
“How do we change his mind, Lady Luna? You’re not doing this alone. I’ve had over a hundred years of learning every way to make prey beg for mercy. In the end, they all fear death. And they all beg, plead, and offer up their very souls to be spared.”
Wilder and Rafael walked in. They dropped the tarp and shovel on Lucien’s damask carpet.
The guys decided the last thing we needed right after Levi went around shouting that I killed Owen and planned to kill him too, was for him to show up dead. They went to take care of the body, and I was too exhausted to stop them.
I frowned. “I don’t understand.” I took in the spotlessly clean tarp and shovel. “Did you change your mind?”
“We didn’t have to,” Wilder said. “We went to the area where you said you guys were. Found blood on the ground and everything, but there was no body.”
Rafael leveled me a grave look. “Levi’s gone.”
I stared at him. I couldn’t have heard that right. “What do you mean he’s gone? How can he be gone?”
“The how is easy. Either he survived and crawled away, or someone else got to his body before we did. Are you sure he was dead?”
“I didn’t check his pulse or anything, but I stabbed him in the chest.” I tried again to sit up and cried out. “Stabbed him deeper than this! He couldn’t have walked away with a wound like that.”
“If someone took his body, who was it?” Lucien asked. “And what are they doing with it because it’s been hours and police haven’t swarmed the campus.”
Looks passed between us. I didn’t like what I read on any of their faces. There were two options and they were both too terrible to contemplate. If Levi was alive, I now had a violent, homicidal psychopath lurking in the shadows, waiting for his chance to get back at me. If his body was taken by someone, it wasn’t for a good reason. That was easy to tell because an innocent person didn’t go around secretly hauling off corpses. They would’ve left Levi where he was and called the cops.