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)
That nickname from my youth.
The innocence of such a thing that’d become the worst sort of foreshadowing.
Did my parents call me Luxin because they knew all along what I was? Did they know what I would become? That I would die on the very same day that I returned home, detonating into a pile of ash on the marble tiles where I’d played as a little boy?
“You must be hungry, Xiao Lu,” Auntie Mei said.
“I’ll get you something to drink, sir.” A serving girl smiled.
“Come. Sit. Tell us where you’ve been all this time,” Uncle Wen urged.
Too much.
Too much!
Whisper lost all his obedience, feeling me so close to snapping. Launching forward, he shoved them all back with a fanged snarl and clawed swipe.
And I didn’t have the strength to stop him.
These people thought I was the same innocent child that’d been stolen.
They would never understand the depth of my hatred for Marcus and the board members who’d betrayed me. Never know the bloodthirsty savagery to slaughter them all—
Only one person could come close.
One person I desperately needed to help me...
I reached for her blindly and found her beside me, cold and calm and mine.
Her presence snapped around me as I crushed her against my side.
Someone tried to press a plate of sweets into my hand.
Someone offered me wine.
Whisper kept most of the crowd at bay, but it wasn’t enough.
I’d thought coming home would be silent and still.
That the estate would be abandoned, and I could gather my strength for the war I still had to win.
Why were there so many people here?
Were they still loyal to my lineage or to Marcus?
The huge gates clanged shut and the spacious courtyard started to blur. Blossoms bled into ponds; pillars tumbled into the lawn.
I was trapped.
Going insane.
Burning.
“I-I need to get the hell out of here,” I choked, pressing my lips to Rook’s icy temple. “Help. Now.”
The inferno howled inside me.
Even her wintery energy wasn’t enough.
A throbbing in my chest.
A tearing in my bones.
Flames roared through my blood so abruptly, my knees threatened to buckle.
Rook locked her arm around my waist, taking some of my weight as I straddled the line of awake and passing out.
I wanted to pass out.
At least the fire would stop.
Another wave tore through me—violent and volcanic—like magma replaced my blood. The marble pavers beneath my boots scorched black.
Someone gasped at the smoke.
Someone mumbled a scared question.
Whisper snarled, ears flat, hissing at my pain.
My heart slammed so hard, it felt like it might rupture.
Too much.
Too many.
Too hot.
So hot.
I couldn’t breathe.
I can’t breathe—
Make it stop!
Chapter Thirty-Four
PEOPLE CROWDED US FROM ALL directions.
Some old, some young, all of them in a state of shock at having Lucien home.
More and more appeared—popping out from pavilions and corridors, bringing gifts and trinkets and welcome.
And with each person’s arrival, Lucien grew worse.
My skin burned where I clutched him as if I pressed my hands to a bubbling kettle about to blow. Dozens of staff in earthy-coloured clothes crowded us, oblivious to how dangerous Lucien was.
But Whisper knew.
He snarled and chased, prowling around Lucien and me, creating an island where his master couldn’t be touched.
“He has his father’s eyes!” A gardener—by the looks of his soil-stained hands—beamed.
“He looks exactly like Jin Ashfall!”
“Where have you been, Master Luxin?”
“Why didn’t you come home sooner?!”
Their voices collided into a rising wall of noise, never knowing that the prodigal son who’d returned home had been a lonely prisoner for most of his life.
Lucien staggered against me, his hand clamping over his metal-trapped heart as if he was moments away from incinerating. Heat coiled off him in thick, blistering waves, warping the air—
“Please,” he panted against my hair. “You have to make it stop.”
Memories of the ice plunge where I’d found him in Cinderkeep haunted me.
He needed that.
He needed a blizzard—an arctic storm to blow out his pain.
He groaned again, fumbling for my hand.
I winced as his fingers wrapped painfully tight around mine.
My own agony made everything warp and shiver. I was only standing by sheer stubbornness and a lifetime of surviving constant nausea and headaches.
Locking everything down, I stopped trying to be polite and shouted rudely over the babble of voices. “It’s been a long day! Can we do this another time? When Lucien is washed and fed and rested?”
“Oh goodness, what are we doing?!” The woman Lucien had called Auntie Mei lamented, cutting through the crowd like a tiny scythe. “Of course. Of course. Where are our manners? Of course you’re tired. Come.” She shooed a few girls away—pretty girls who couldn’t take their eyes off Lucien.
My hackles rose at their obvious interest, followed by another punch of pain.
“This way.” She bowed a little and pointed toward a corridor that swept high with winged eaves, flanked by lily-pad dotted ponds.
Black specks danced on the edges of my vision as I stepped forward, hoping Lucien wouldn’t pass out before we were behind closed doors. “Come on,” I murmured. “Let’s go.”