Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
To test it on a human…
To create abominations?
He would raise a world of monsters without souls—because everyone knew that a Fae or even half-Fae without a soul was a shadow, and if he messed up and killed a human who still had Fae blood in them—he would be creating an army of shadows without even realizing it.
Fuck.
“Dispose of the body.” Jasper sighed like he was bored.
“Any family?”
He snorted out a laugh. “No, that’s why we use the orphans or pick up kids off the street, so nobody will miss him.”
Rage filled my body until I felt the old power in my fingertips snap with electricity.
He was a dead man.
And I would smile while removing his head from his body.
It was only a matter of time.
And it was that much more important to break the curse because when I faced Jasper, I wanted to burn his world down.
And as I was… repressed… I could only do a few things without losing all my strength.
At least one thing made sense—if he was using any of this drug on himself, that was why he didn’t mind giving me his essence when I weakened; he just shoved more supernatural blood into his body and went on with his day.
Bastard!
I was irritated with myself for not noticing.
For feeling so fucking sorry for myself that I didn’t even notice the missing children or the cryptic way in which Jasper seemed to be acting the past few hundred years.
Selfishly I’d ignored it all.
All in an effort to break a curse that he was supposedly helping me with—instead, he was playing God down in the basement, using my orphanage and my resources to do it.
Hell no.
I ran back up the stairs and shut the door, then stomped toward my library, needing some time to think.
I wished I had the same power Luna did—to just hear a book speak to me—
My eyes flashed open.
“That’s it.” I grinned, feeling like an idiot for not thinking about it sooner. If books really spoke to her on a spiritual or divine level…
Then if I touched her, just briefly, would they call out to me as well? Could I siphon some of that power?
There was only one way to try.
I just didn’t know how to ask without giving myself away… fully revealing what I was didn’t seem like the best logic. Then again, she’d been at my house enough to experience the fever dreams; she had to know that they were real.
She had to know they were visions of her past.
A past filled with so much promise.
And so much jealousy from her sister.
I scowled. All the things I should have seen first, I hadn’t because love had blinded me back then, just as hate had blinded me now.
Maybe that was the lesson the Matchmaker wanted me to learn—to stop being blinded and consumed—to learn how to balance love and hate, life and death, and to learn to protect others at the cost of my own life.
I hung my head and took a deep breath—this day just got a hell of a lot more interesting.
Chapter Twenty
Luna
My brain was a complete black hole of questions that seemed to have zero answers. It didn’t help that Hath gave me a knowing look in the morning as she handed me a coffee and asked how I slept.
Like she knew I was plagued with two gorgeous Fae brothers and an un-dead mother who I never wanted to leave.
I’d told her I was fine, even though that was a lie, and kept my head down as I walked toward the bookstore.
Suddenly things that seemed normal about this town… were off. Like the way that people said gods instead of God, for one.
Who said that?
Or the way that Benjamin spoke about his library, even his house.
The alarm clock?
The creepy forest?
And the things that seemed to chase me right into this cove right along with my mother’s damning words, before she disappeared.
Nothing added up.
Nothing made sense.
By the time I made it to the bookstore, I was a tight ball of nerves, all keyed up with too much coffee.
I jumped a foot when the lady who had warned me to take care, the rude cook at the inn, started rocking in the rocking chair on the porch. Back and forth, back and forth, the sound of the chair creaking had goosebumps erupting up and down my arms.
“Good morning.” I tried to sound happy.
“It could be. It could be bad too. Nobody knows.” She didn’t once look up from the book in her wrinkled hands.
A tingle of apprehension raised the hairs on the back of my neck as I recalled her warning on my first day here, about the house, about my dreams. She’d been just sitting here on the porch then, too, like she had been waiting for something, much like she was now.