Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Snatching her phone, I stabbed the red hang-up button.
She stared at me, her mouth hitting the floor. “Eh...what was that?”
Bending over again, I cupped her face and ran my thumb along the sweep of her cheekbone. Ignoring her question, I pressed my lips to hers in a quick, fierce kiss before marching to the couch by the window. “I need to borrow your phone. Take a nap so you won’t pass out later.”
“Why? Why would I pass out?” She glanced at Whisper with worried eyes. “What are you plotting now?”
“Go to sleep. That’s an order.”
“Tell me. Don’t keep me in the dark like last time.”
“Sleep, Rook.” Blocking her curses out, I sat down and prepared to contact the second key that I’d been waiting to use for two decades.
Rook might’ve been the first.
But now it was time to turn the one my father had put in place over twenty years ago.
And hopefully get the hell out of here.
Chapter Twenty-One
I HAD TO THANK MARCUS FOR something.
At least with him using the latest technology to monitor me in Cinderkeep, I had a decent enough understanding of how this very new, very noisy, very different existence operated.
Of course, I also had childhood memories.
Memories of playing with my father’s huge brick-of-a-phone as he parked me in his office while dealing with his underlings. I even recalled stealing his phone a few times as I ran around Ashfall Cliff and hid in the Burning Phoenix caves where no one could ever find me.
So I wasn’t completely inept—or at least not as hopeless as Rook seemed to think I was.
“You actually know how to use one of those things?” she asked from where she sat cross-legged on the bed, disobeying my order to nap.
I made the mistake of looking at her.
At the way her inky black hair needed a brush thanks to my hungry fingers; how her black dress gathered between her lotus-crossed legs. How stunningly perfect she was as she smiled at Whisper—the panther leaping onto the bed and folding himself around her like a fanged shadow.
She leaned against his bulk with a contented sigh. “Least you’re not keeping things from me, hey, tiny tabby.”
My breath faltered.
I didn’t like how much I had to rely on her to keep me from burning. I didn’t like how easily my temper cooled or how quickly my thoughts turned feral at the thought of her leaving.
For the first time in my life, I felt anxious.
Fearful of the moment she would abandon me.
Because why wouldn’t she?
Why would she stay when she had other people who wanted her? Especially after everything that I’d done?
My gaze strayed to the blackened wall again.
If I kept losing control, it was only a matter of time before she’d had enough, and now that we were out of Cinderkeep, there were no walls or guns keeping her by my side.
“Go to sleep,” I snapped. “You might not get another chance any time soon.”
“Sleep?” Her eyebrows arched. “How on earth can I sleep? We need to run. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.” Her gaze flicked to the door. “At least Dillon is coming. Wait.” She shot upright. “I need my phone back. I need to tell him to bring reinforcements. He can’t take on all those guards on his own.”
“He won’t be on his own.”
“What?” Her nose wrinkled.
“Go. To. Sleep.” I made another mistake of catching her stare and drowning. “Use the cat as a pillow and do what you do best.”
“Are you calling me lazy?”
“I’m telling you I need you strong for the next part because if you aren’t, I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself. And this thing...” I pressed my fingers to the dead vitalsync core. “This thing might’ve actually been helping me instead of hurting me so...do what I say and rest.”
Silence fell as I fiddled with her phone, trying to figure out how to bring up the keypad. She didn’t speak until I finally got it and hovered my fingers over the numbers.
“You’re in worse pain than you were with the pacemaker...aren’t you?” she murmured hesitantly as if afraid of my answer. “You’re burning more than you were before.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m fine.”
“Do you regret destroying it?” Yawning, she slid onto her side and used Whisper as a cosy bolster. The panther puffed up with pride, turning to lick her like she was his very own kitten.
Tucking her hands beneath her cheek on his pelt, she never took her eyes off me. “If you could fix it...would you?”
I blew out a slow, uneven breath.
Twenty years of agony burned behind my eyes—two fucking decades where the vitalsync core had crippled me, crushed me, and knocked me out far too many times to count.
I hated it.
I would slaughter all the men responsible for putting it inside me, yet...what if it hadn’t been punishing me but preventing me from punishing them? What if I’d always been able to burn like this? How quickly could I have learned to master the flames and razed everything to the ground, including them?