Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“You may begin painting your promises on your mate,” Aeris said.
“How?” I asked. “I don’t know runic mag—”
Alisdair laced his fingers through mine. “Once upon a time, a century ago...” Dipping our hands in the cauldron, he laid my palm over his heart—stopping my breath.
Runic ink dripped down my skin onto his and spread, and kept spreading, skating down his chest in odd, twisting lines that grew and spawned more.
“How is it doing this?” I whispered. The runes were forming before my eyes, borne from words I didn’t need to speak to be true. Although my knowledge of runes was limited, I read one clear as day: betray.
I jumped when a light touch brushed my shoulder.
“There was a brash, young faeman from Sarabai,” Alisdair began, tracing his promise with surprising gentleness. “He staggered off the battlefield and found himself lost in the wilds of Lumenfell, cornered by the Taken.
“Desperately, he screamed for help, summoning his enemy to save him from a worse fate, and as his luck would have it, his cry was answered.” Alisdair traced a path along my shoulder blade, popping goose bumps in his trail. “A young woman—a faeriken—came to his rescue. She saved him from the Taken, then saved him again by hiding him from me.”
My lips parted to ask why he was telling me this, but the words didn’t come out. There was a seriousness belying his tone. One I was hearing for the first time. I wanted to know where it would take him.
“She stashed him away in an abandoned shack far from the village. She nursed him, fed him... and fell in love with him.” His fingers skated around my hip. The rune for possession drew just above my middle. I knew that one. Kirwan drew the same one night above Mama’s door. “When he was healed, she came to me. Begging me to let them go and build a life far from the war, the fighting, the prejudices. Far from the faelands of Elva.
“I said no.”
Alisdair pulled me close, erasing the scant distance between our bodies. I held my breath as he touched his cheek to my chest, peering over my shoulder to draw a rune on my spine.
“A fae and a faeriken? There was no life for them outside of Lumenfell. All that awaited them was pain and struggle. The gratitude of the faeman that turned into love, would morph again, becoming resentment and hate.” His grip tightened on my thigh. “She did not believe me. Convinced their love was true, she ran off with him in the night.
“It’s possible she did get to live her blissful, fairy-tale life for a short time. I’ll never know for certain,” he said, “because Gorban Salman murdered her a year after they fled.”
I froze. “What? Did you just say Salman?”
“That’s right.” His voice was a low, dangerous hiss. “That man was your father. He loved Raelina. He was desperate to be with her. That was until your grandparents announced they refused to give the throne to their daughter, and would instead bestow it on the man who wed her. They decided it should be the hero who survived the cursed lands, and faced me and lived to tell about it.
“They didn’t know he was already married. More so, that he was married in a ceremony like this one—bound by runic magic and blessed by the goddess Meya.”
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. If I could’ve done either, I would’ve run screaming. Something was happening, and it was not good.
“Divorce cannot end a marriage such as that”—he smiled—“or a marriage such as this. He was ineligible to marry the princess, become king of one of the wealthiest nations in Elva, or hold more power in his pinky than the strongest fae in the land. All because of Raelina.”
“No,” I whispered. “Please.”
“So he made a terrible, brutal choice to slaughter the wife no one knew about. No one but me.”
“Who... Who was she to you?”
His eyes flashed. “She was everything. Our last hope. My last chance. And he took her and threw her away like she was nothing.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “That’s why you wanted to humiliate him by leaving me at the altar.”
“No, little bird,” he said, surprising me. “My subject was quite wrong on that score. I never intended to leave you at the altar.” His glare pinned me through. “I was going to slaughter you on the altar.”
Noise, breath, people, everything. It all stopped.
“I was going to slaughter his precious heir—famed beauty of the east—right in front of him while he stood helpless to stop it. But then...” Alisdair moved up to my shoulder, covering me with ink as promises I couldn’t name spelled out on him. “You trumpeted my vow before the whole of the Lyrican court—swearing our marriage would end in death.”