Author: admin

Taking one step away is laborious, but I force myself to keep moving until I stand at the double doors, rolling my shoulders back and preparing for the pain that will come from slipping into Limbo, which is something I can’t do inside the walls of a temple. The mercenary stops beside me, resting his…

The soul-crushing grief. The unspeakable emptiness day after day, existing in a world she no longer occupied. I choke on it all. CRYPT When Maven sees me fall to my knees, she pauses the ritual and moves to my side. Her perfect fingers gently trace the markings on my neck. “Crypt?” Gods above, her voice….

She’s bleeding. Why is she bleeding, and why the hell isn’t she waking up?” Frost demands as ice spreads across the floor toward Maven and me on the marble ground. Damn it all, he’s right. Blood drips steadily from our keeper’s nose, rolling over her cheek to drip onto the temple floor. I’ve seen that…

“—your dominion would relate to the things over which I reign,” she goes on as if I never spoke. “You’ve made your choice, so we will never know the future you have forsaken in Paradise. Yet I will tell you this: I have observed death for millennia, and it always brings those who remain two…

This isn’t the beast at all. It’s him. “Baelfire,” I breathe as relief crashes over me like cold water. He’s trembling with rage and shock, covered in a sheen of sweat, and wildly disoriented as he drops to his knees beside me on the cold asphalt. He pulls me tightly to his incredibly warm chest….

Craved her. But no. It doesn’t matter. There’s no godsdamned escape. I begin to resent that aura more by the second as it permeates this space, tainting these abominable dreams and tempting me to let my walls down. Obsession teases the peripheries of my mind, a small reminder of how much I yearned to share…

“Maven is out there right now, waiting in Arati’s temple for me to get you out. See this amulet around my neck? It’s her blood keeping me this sane.” He’s still not reacting, so I throw in the revelation that I’m still trying to adjust to. “Our keeper is a demigoddess, Crypt. She’s the daughter…

Selfish incubus! another snarls. “You must have had a reason,” Maven prompts in Crypt’s memory. The prick has the nerve to fucking smile. “Must I have?” Of course, he is so cavalier about ravaging my childhood in one blow. How could I ever have felt sympathy for this sociopathic murderer? Madness seeps deeper into my…

I don’t translate quickly enough. “What?” “Something on display. A part of you.” On display like?— Oh, gods. My heart sits on Amadeus’s mantle in his chambers within the citadel. Fuck, I forgot I told Crypt about that. If he was trying to track that down… I need a heart, but going to Amadeus’s citadel…

Trust is for fools, my father hisses in my head. Trusting you is what led to my death, Maven agrees. But no. That’s not Maven. My true blood blossom walks in front of me, scanning this area carefully as we get closer to Arati’s high temple. She told me she loved me. That was real….