Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
My skin flaked faster, leaving a fine silver dust on the floor.
Whisper whimpered as something cracked in my heart, sending me smashing against the wall. He tried to keep me upright; I gave him a weak smile. “Tell...tell Lucien I’m sorry, okay?”
He snarled and headbutted me, almost sending me to the floor. “Tell him I love him—”
The elevator doors slid open and I ran.
Ice erupted from my feet just like it had on the mountain when I’d rushed to Lucien’s side, turning the hut’s floor into an ice rink.
Last time, I’d run toward Lucien.
This time, I ran away from him.
Forever.
Apocalyptic-level power throbbed and pulsed.
With a tear and a rip, time broke again, sending me skidding from the hut and onto the ice fields. Looking toward the dark sky, I drowned in starlight and the glistening Milky Way.
My skin cracked faster, splitting with silver threads as sharp agony tore through my bones. I screamed as my spine snapped in places, bone becoming ice—splintering into pieces.
This was so much worse than the mountain.
So, so much worse.
Blood sprayed from my mouth. I fell forward, crashing onto the glacier as I fumbled with the frequency collar, trying to turn it on. My fingers no longer fully existed. Translucent and barely there, vanishing into the night.
Hurry.
Hurry.
I couldn’t see.
My eyes fractured like shattered glass—
I found the button.
I pressed it.
Frequency tore through me like a hundred thousand blades of pain.
The ice screeched as white-hot, soul-deep agony detonated through every nerve and cell and ligament. I’d never felt such pain. Such absolute, life-stopping pain.
My skin split open, glowing silver and bright. The pieces that made me human all broke—every bone, every memory, every laugh and tear and emotion.
The immortal power surged free, hurling my breaking body into the sky. A maelstrom of ice held me aloft like a sacrifice as it tore away my skin, my tendons, my sanity.
I screamed as it rewrote me.
I howled as it obliterated me.
Frost detonated outward in catastrophic waves. The ice fields cracked below, waking up the ancient glacier and stealing its frigid power.
Power built and built. My entire body hovered on the edge of bursting. The sky lit up with silver auroras, arrowing toward me like lightning bolts.
“ROOK!”
My labouring heart hitched.
That voice. That man.
Blinking through broken vision, I searched for him. Even if it was an impossible hallucination, I wanted to see him...one last time.
“Where you go, I go, remember?!”
No...it couldn’t be.
A sob crawled up my throat as our eyes connected.
Lucien stood on the glacier far below, his shirt whipping around his body. Whisper stood beside him like a dark shadow, allowing his master to lean heavily against him.
“Don’t do this, Rook!” His voice was snatched by the winter storm. “We can fix this. Come here and let me fix this. Please.”
How?
How was he here? How was he still alive? How had I not felt him coming for me?
I searched inside my heart for the bond, but...it was still broken. I couldn’t talk to him, feel him, be with him.
“Lucien...” My voice cracked as my left arm vanished into dust. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll forgive you if you come down,” he shouted, voice raw with desperation. He took a step forward, feet skidding on the ice. “Rook, please. Come back to me.”
Another sob ripped free as my legs snapped in multiple places. “I-I can’t—”
“I’m not letting you die!” He staggered forward, balling his hands and summoning the weakest flame around his shoulders. “Come here!”
The ice merely carried me higher, consuming me faster.
More pieces of me broke—my shoulder, my collarbone—feeding the violent ascension.
Pain tried to swallow me, but I kept my gaze locked on him.
I wanted him to be the last thing I saw. The only thing.
“I’ll find you again,” I whispered. “I promise.”
A savage roar echoed across the Icelandic wilderness as Whisper howled.
“Rook, please!” A bolt of fire arrowed toward me, but...it was too late.
My heart beat once, twice—
The ascension didn’t just split me in half; it shattered me.
My spine disintegrated mid-air—silver shards exploding from my chest with a supernova of ice and light. The glacier answered with a deafening crack as a massive crevasse belched open beneath me.
And then...I fell.
Whatever power held me aloft dropped me like a pebble into a vast, unforgivable ocean. Polar wind howled past my ears. Silver snowflakes lifted from my skin. Each flake glittered and sparkled before vanishing into nothing as if the universe erased me.
Strong arms caught me.
Lucien crashed to his knees, cradling my breaking form against his chest. His fire flared hot and fierce, trying to hold me together. “You can’t. You can’t leave me.”
I tried to see him. I couldn’t. I tried to speak. Nothing worked.
“Rook...don’t. Don’t you dare.” Rocking me gently, he cupped the back of my head with one hand and pressed his other over my fracturing heart. “I will never be able to say goodbye, so don’t fucking make me.”