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)
My matching orgasm tore through me like lightning, sending a shockwave of fire across the flowing river and shooting up the waterfall.
I could die from this.
I could happily die from how good she felt. How good we felt together.
“Rook. Fuck.” My body jerked in ecstasy. A guttural groan tore from my throat as my release wrung me dry.
I sagged against her, breathless and shaking.
We stayed like that for a while, breathing hard and slowly coming back to life.
Her light extinguished and the fire that always stalked inside me was snuffed out as easily as if she’d reached inside my heart and pinched out the candle wick that lived there.
The valley went still.
The waterfall continued to crash.
I slowly lifted my head, and my mouth fell open at the impossibility.
The valley was no longer frozen or burnt.
It didn’t drip with melted snow or choke on clouds of ash.
Everywhere I looked, new life sprouted in the moonlight. Tiny buds on the bushes and branches, unfurling with bright green.
Rook squeaked in my arms. “I...have no explanation for any of this.”
Even the rotting leaves on the riverbank were eased aside by new shoots, swiftly turning the barren river edge into a thick meadow.
The air came alive with the scent of newly bloomed wildflowers. Burnt bark peeled away from tree trunks in curling ribbons, revealing living wood beneath.
Something brushed my calf.
I looked down, peering through the dark water to find a school of zippy fish.
Pushing me off her, Rook waded to the edge and climbed out. A cluster of white flowers bloomed at her feet.
I went to join her, unnerved and questioning everything.
Turning to face me, she dripped with river water. Her voice dropped to a whisper as if she was petrified of someone overhearing us. “You burned it and I froze it...”
“Yet together...” I trailed off.
She turned to look down the serpentine valley.
Further up the river, trees that’d been utterly consumed by flames were now fully whole with branches overladen with leaves. Flowers released a cloud of pollen so thick, it covered everything in yellow dust.
We’d both destroyed this valley, so how?
Somewhere in the distance, an owl called. Followed by the cicadas singing.
Rook hugged herself in awe as well as fear. “So...we destroy life when we’re apart but—”
“—together. We seem to give it.”
Our eyes locked.
A shiver ran down my spine.
Rook inhaled deeply and I sensed her falling into grief again. Grief that she’d never been told what they’d done to her. Grief that her own parents were probably the ones who did it.
Wrapping my arms protectively around her, I scanned the moonlit horizon.
Thank God this had happened here and not somewhere public.
Thank God we had no witnesses. No cameras. No drones.
Only we would ever know what we’d done.
And we’d take it to the grave before we told anyone.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“DRINK IT, YOU DUMB BEAST.”
“What have I told you about calling him dumb?” Rook asked, dropping to her haunches beside me where I shoved my bleeding wrist under Whisper’s burned nose.
She looked as if she’d been dragged through a forest backward—which was almost true. After the uncomfortable epiphany by the river, we’d begun the journey back to Ashfall Cliff.
The trail was ridiculously overgrown, and it’d taken us two hours to hike from the bottom of the river back to the estate at the top. It also didn’t help that I was used to walking barefoot but she wasn’t. And she refused to let me carry her, even though she winced and moaned most of the way.
At least everyone was asleep as we’d slipped through the back gate and sneaked through Ashfall Cliff. Whisper had appeared from the shadows as soon as we’d entered my courtyard. I’d raced toward my best friend, taken one look at his weeping burns, and ordered him into the pavilion where all of this nightmare had started.
“It’s a pet name.” I offered up my cut wrist again, rolling my eyes as the panther turned his nose up. “Isn’t it, Whisp?”
Whisper sneezed and hoisted himself to all fours with a wince. His burned pelt and exposed flanks tore at my heart. Watching him limp on scalded paws...I couldn’t do it.
Shooting upright, I blocked his path and shoved out my arm again. “If you don’t take a lick, I’ll force it down your throat.”
He hissed unconvincingly.
“Lick it.”
Plonking his rump down, he sat like a pissed-off gargoyle, his tail lashing in the lamplight.
“Don’t make me ask again,” I growled. “I can’t stomach seeing you in pain so behave and let me fix you.”
He rolled his golden eyes, sniffed my wrist, then licked my strangely gilded blood with his sandpaper tongue.
Rook sucked in a breath as we both watched him—waiting for the flush of healing and impossibility of a miracle.
But...he jerked back with an offended hiss, his singed fur bristled, and he gagged as if I’d fed him acid.