Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
She could almost hear Woodward laughing. They would all die here. Together. Eventually someone would open that door and find three human corpses.
She forced herself to reach for the pocket in her jacket, pulled out a pouch filled with liquid, unscrewed the lid, revealing a rubber nipple, and offered it to Kitty. The cub sucked on the pouch, making greedy growling noises.
Diana waited until all of Celeste’s milk was gone, typed a message on her phone, removed the password, and put it down next to her.
“What does it say?” he asked.
“It says House Harrison will give five million to whoever brings Kitty back to my House alive. She just had her milk. That gives her a couple of days. I left a dish of water on the floor.
“It will be fine,” he told her. “We will be okay.”
It would not be okay. There was no escape.
“Stay with me, Diana?” he asked.
She turned to him and forced a smile.
His eyes weren’t wholly green. They were a light, beautiful hazel, a ring of greyish green with a starburst of golden brown around the pupil.
It hit her. His magic was gone. Augustine was spent. She was seeing the real him, and she looked at him, really looked at him.
His shoulders were broader. She’d caught a glimpse of his true body during the fight with the Hesters, but now the hard muscle cording his frame was obvious. An old scar sliced through his left cheek, cleaving his upper lip in the corner. Stubble roughened his jaw. His features had lost their flawless perfection, but somehow that only heightened their impact. She’d always assumed he had reshaped his face with his illusions. She was wrong. Augustine still looked like himself. Her deadly prince was truly that beautiful.
She sat up, pulled off her jacket, rolled it into a wad, and gently tilted him up to slide it under his head.
A massive scar scoured his back. She gasped. An arcane circle, not just drawn but burned into his skin, so deep the lines of the sigil were shallow trenches in his flesh.
“Who did this to you?”
“I did it to myself.”
She slid the jacket under his head and lowered him. “Why?”
“I was weak. I needed power.”
Sometimes magic users drew sigils on themselves to boost their magic. Very rarely, they tattooed themselves, a process that was inherently dangerous. Arcane circles and sigils required incredible precision. A tiny mistake could cause one to lose their magic and even their life. She had seen statistics somewhere, and the survival rate of those who resorted to tattoos was tiny, less than one percent.
This wasn’t a tattoo. This was so much worse, a seal permanently burned into his flesh. There were no statistics for this because nobody would be foolish enough to try it.
She slid next to Augustine, so close they were almost touching. Kitty padded closer. Diana felt the familiar insistent push of the cub’s magic. Like a persistent kitten booping her hand with her head, demanding a pet. Kitty was looking for a bond. As always, Diana forced herself to ignore it. The cub tried again, then gave up, and tucked herself into the crook of Diana’s body. She wrapped her arm around Kitty.
She had failed her and Celeste. Thinking about it would only unravel her further, and she didn’t want that. She wanted to spend these last minutes with Augustine.
“Tell me about the circle,” she whispered.
“My father and I never got along. He thought I was irresponsible and naïve, and I thought he was rigid and controlling. A man without dreams, who settled for mundane drudgery and kept trying to drag me down with him. I wanted to be free. I had plans. I wanted to be a spy. Someone who kept my country safe.”
“You would’ve made an exceptional spy,” she told him.
“I would have. When I was in my early twenties, my family was attacked,” Augustine said. “They were well prepared. I found my mother, Verena, and my brother bleeding out on the floor, next to three corpses. My other sister, Seraphina, my aunt, and my father did not survive. We couldn’t afford to look weak. If it became known that the attack had succeeded, our enemies would rip us apart. Half of my family was dead. I had to keep my mother and my remaining siblings safe. So, I became my father. I cloaked myself in illusion, put on his face, and went to work the next day.”
How horrifying.
“For two years I was both him and me, pretending to lead MII, giving myself orders and carrying them out, trying to keep the ship that was our House and our firm afloat in the storm. Except that Primes can see through each other’s illusions. For the deception to succeed, I had to be stronger than any other illusion Prime. I needed the kind of power nobody could match.”