Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Only…
A gun fired—
Peter snatched me by the shoulders and spun me around, guarding me with his body.
“Argh!” He shuddered as a bullet tore into him.
“Peter—!”
He went stiff with agony.
His legs gave out.
Together, we fell.
Him on top of me, slamming us to the ground.
Sweet scents of grass enveloped us, erasing the hot ashy flavour of fire.
Caishen screamed and charged out of the smoke, letting a volley of bullets fly at whoever had shot us.
I couldn’t see who’d fired.
Couldn’t see apart from the stars above and Peter’s face as he panted and gasped.
“Ily…” He coughed and choked, blood frothing at the corner of his lips as he failed to catch his breath.
“No. No, no, no!” I pressed my palms against his shoulders.
I tried to push him off me.
To see what’d happened.
To help him.
Only…that coldness within me spread from a different wound.
Pain radiated in my chest.
A tiny circle of discomfort, throbbing with newness before going numb like everything else.
Nothing.
It’s nothing.
All I cared about was Peter as he choked and spewed up another trickle of blood. It landed on my cheek, rolling toward my ear.
“Paavak. Please. Don’t. Don’t do this.”
He squirmed above me.
He tried to roll off me.
He coughed and gagged and made a heart-wrenching noise of surprise. “I…I can’t move.”
The blizzard inside me built into a snow drift, burying me in thick white nothingness.
“Peter…”
“I—” He coughed again, blood pink and bubbly on his lips.
Tears seeped from my eyes as I touched his cheek. Just that tiny motion cost everything I had left. My vision grew hazy, grey…
I brought his rich brown gaze to mine. “You’re okay. We’re okay. Just—”
Caishen landed beside us. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck.” Planting his hands on Peter’s back, he pressed down hard enough to squish me into the dirt beneath Peter. “Someone help me!” He looked back at the jewels and guards, Masters and war. “He’s bleeding bad!”
But no one came.
Everything faded.
A sunburst of light appeared in the night sky. A circle of pinks and golds, whites and starshine. It glowed brighter and brighter, building and building until everything was gilded and glittering.
My heart kept beating, slower now, turning into a winter sculpture made of icicles.
I looked at Peter above me.
Peter haloed in white bright light.
And my heart no longer fought the glacial creep. It went quiet inside me. Calm inside me. The coldness that’d plagued me for so long went wonderfully warm.
“Ily…” Peter’s eyes welled with tears, his chest heaving, lips dripping in blood. “I’m—”
“I know.” The bright light above grew ever more brilliant, luminescent and iridescent, pure and home.
His hot blood seeped onto my chest.
His essence soaked into mine, stinging the matching hole within me.
The hole where everything faded, quieted, slowed…
We stopped fighting the fear, the instinct, the pain.
We looked at each other one last time.
I wished I could’ve said goodbye to Henri.
To tell him not to worry.
To promise him this wasn’t the end.
But as more jewels crashed around us and hands tried to staunch Peter’s bleeding, I sighed with acceptance that this was always the way it was meant to be.
I’d come here to save them.
I’d done my very best.
This life was not in vain.
It was blessed.
I sighed as I floated into a warm, cloaking comfort.
Death was so warm and soft and happy.
Death was goodbye and hello, an ending and a new beginning. A changing of garments from one form to the next…
And as that white light claimed everything and the tangible world shattered into diamond dust, Peter pressed his bloody lips to mine, and together…
…we were finally free.
Chapter Eighteen
………………………….
Henri
MY HEART TWISTED PAINFULLY.
I stopped and rubbed at the strange savage ache.
I didn’t have time for that stupid organ to fail. It could skip all it wanted once Victor was dealt with but not before.
Keep going.
Shoving away the unexplainable sensation of despair, I pushed forward through the night. I’d spent a lifetime at the mercy of the shadows inside me, and tonight, they became my allies.
The darkness kept me hidden as I parried around the spotlights and hid in pockets of blackness. Inch by inch, I made my way closer to the battlement wall. I didn’t rush. I stayed calculating instead of careless.
Not one sniper fired.
The only hole in my body remained the one courtesy of Larry.
And I didn’t feel it, so it didn’t count.
It hadn’t killed me.
It was unimportant.
Just like everything else.
The lashes on my back…non-existent.
The emptiness in my stomach…who cared?
The only thing I lived for, existed for was to end this.
To end him.
With a final sprint across the open grass, I plastered myself against the wall and inched my way along the chiselled stone until I found a portico.
I braced for a fight.
I raised my gun to shoot.
No one hid in the archer’s nook, and the darkness covered my tracks as I stepped deeper into the alcove and eyed up the door.
Running my fingers over the wood and brass-braced entry, I tried the handle.