Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
His laughter was menacing as he began to circle me as if I were prey. I followed the path, trying to keep him in my line of sight.
All while my mind shouted for Pax. For him to feel me. Find me.
“I was a Laven,” Ambrose hissed before his voice turned mollifying again as he continued.
“It’s true what Valeen says . . . Your Nol is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness. I was supposed to take over my father’s printing shop, but I didn’t care. When I was seventeen, I traveled from Chicago to South Carolina to find her. She was the only thing I cared about in that horrible life I’d been sentenced to.”
He kept moving, his voice drifting between malice and awe. “God, she was breathtaking. I was enthralled. I would have given anything just to be by her side. The smallest reprieve from a lifetime of torment. The voices? The burns? Those eyes? As if what we’d been given was supposed to be some gift?”
His scoff was discordant.
Jarring.
“I hated it and would have done anything to be rid of it. I would have given anything to be normal and go to sleep and dream at night. But Abigail . . . she embraced it. Her whole purpose was what happened once she went to sleep. And then one day she woke up changed . . . and she took on that purpose during the day. A Valient.”
He snarled it as if she had committed a sin.
“No regard to anything else but giving herself to the pathetic, weak creatures of this earth, as if they deserved her time and care. As if they should have something better than what Kreed had planned for them.”
His jealousy twisted around him, a tornado that spun as fast as the clouds overhead.
“She was pathetic, just like the rest. So it was easy when Kreed made me the offer.”
A soft puff of air slipped from his nose. “Did you know if a Laven doesn’t sleep for a week, he’s brought before Kreed? Its soul so weakened by not returning to Tearsith that he now owns it. I wished I’d have known sooner so I could have been brought before Kreed earlier. It turned out, all I had to do was kill her in his name. Take one Valient’s life, and mine would go on forever. I’d be removed from the burden that Laven were given. Given a true gift . . . one where I ruled the night. There was really no option.”
He said it casually. Easily.
He circled me, coming closer with each rotation that he made around me.
“You should have heard the way she screamed inside that house when I set it afire.”
Pax, I begged in my mind. I could feel his confusion and fear blistering through the air. He was searching for me.
Ambrose angled his head to the side. “Just the way every Valient I’ve hunted down over the years has done. One given to this world each decade as if they might have the power to stop me. And you, little Valient . . . you will be the last. Have you ever wondered why you were the last Laven in your family? Valeen has no power left to bring anyone into her fold. She gave everything she had remaining to you—creating the last Valient to stand. And it will be my pleasure finally bringing her vain attempt at stopping me to its end. You are the final one sustaining her, and once you’re gone, Valeen will finally have lost the very last of her pathetic, wilting strength. I’ve been waiting for more than a hundred years, and now, once I remove you, I will reign here. No longer in the darkness.”
His voice twisted and dipped, and my pulse careened as I tried to process everything he was saying.
“People will no longer fear what is in the shadows. They will fear what stands in front of them in the day. Me. They will bow at my feet. I have given my soul to Kreed, and he has offered me this reward. To rule both here and in Faydor. And there will be no Laven left to protect them from that. And you, little Valient, are that bridge. I will cross it when you come to your end.”
The second he said it, he grabbed me by the throat and threw me to the side.
I flew off my feet and slammed against the block wall. My head cracked against the concrete.
Pain ricocheted through my body, and the air was knocked from my lungs. Gasping, I attempted to orient myself, to hold on to the memory that I’d beaten him in that realm. That I’d gotten away.
He’d been afraid.
Energy throbbed within me. Convulsing and rough.
I grabbed hold of it, but I had no time to focus on amplifying it before Ambrose was on me again. Gripping me by the throat and squeezing with both hands. “And that end is now.”