Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 151630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 758(@200wpm)___ 607(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 758(@200wpm)___ 607(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
“Danny?” I pull the cold iron from his chest.
Danny and Sasha are there. Danny bites into his wrist. “Sasha, pour some over the wound. We’re fighting the cold iron.”
Ostara drops to her knees. “I can take that burden from him, but it will be quicker if you do as your king asks, love.”
Ostara places her hands on the dead king’s chest, and I can see a glow where she touches him.
Sasha pours blood from his wrist over the wound to the king’s heart.
Lee stands on one side watching. Rhys comes to my other side and takes my hand, holding it tightly while we wait.
“It will be all right, Mom.” For the first time in a while Rhys sounds like my son and not a soldier or a Green Man. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Where does this optimism come from, my son?” I ask.
His smile turns sheepish. “My goddess, of course.”
“Fuck, that hurt,” a familiar voice says and the king’s eyes open. Devinshea’s eyes open. “Cold iron sucks. It is a freaking crime. You need to make it illegal, Daniel.”
Danny leans over, putting his hands on Dev’s cheeks. “Dev?”
“In the flesh. Well, in the new flesh. Hey.” He reaches up and cups the back of Danny’s neck. “Are you all right, my king?”
Danny hauls him to sitting position and wraps his arms around him and does what he almost never does. He cries. He puts his face in the crook of Dev’s neck and cries. I drop to my knees and join them, arms around my husbands.
I look up and Shy is with Rhys, a smile on her gorgeous face.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
She bows her head.
Dev’s body stiffens for a moment and then relaxes. He squeezes us tight. I can feel Bris’s magic. It flows over us. “Easiest integration ever. Bris is happy to be back.”
And I am blessed beyond compare because I have my family.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Shy
“I don’t know. I think I should feel more evil than I do.” My father-in-law stretches for what I’m sure is the one thousandth time since we got back to the temple the night before. “Instead I feel amazing. This is what it feels like to be fully Fae? No wonder my brother is as arrogant as he is. Hey, I think I can easily kick his ass now. Not only am I fully Fae, but I got the whole ascended god thing going.”
Lee asked us to stay the night and for Rhys and I to power up the temple one more time before we go to the mountains and try to find our way home.
Rhys was happy to give in to that request.
I’m still a little sore because my husband got incredibly creative.
The temple is humming with power, and not merely from ours.
Ostara was beaming this morning, and I already saw how all the plants in the palace exploded, and it looks like ground zero was the room the royals used the night before.
Three fertility gods getting their freaks on really made the fields grow.
They gave off so much energy the Fae here were able to store the majority of it for rituals their new king would perform later on to keep the temple charged.
“I will be happy to watch that,” Daniel says, a smile on his lips.
He’s right back to his normal fully charged self. I even saw him taking a flight to check out the mountain we’re going to visit later today. He wanted to make sure there were no more weird lion/goat/snake things hanging out, even though Lee promised there weren’t.
“I will, too. I love it when someone punches my uncle.” Rhys winks my way as he joins us in the parlor where we’ve gathered to make our plans.
I know Sasha has a big decision to make.
The general paces in the corner, walking by the window that looks out over the temple and then turning and making his way back to the big bookshelves. I saw Ostara at breakfast but I haven’t since, and I wonder if they had a fight about their next move. Or if Sasha is trying to find a way to say good-bye to us so he can return to Ostara’s home plane.
“You know we’re still going to have to make nice with them,” I point out. “We didn’t get what we came for. We’re no closer to finding the Days, and now that we know the amulet here is a bust, we’re definitely still going to have to see your Fae family. Besides, I think your papa wants to show off his fancy new body.”
The amulet is out of magic. It appears the king used it all.
Rhys sighs and sinks down to the sofa beside me. “Yes, he is insufferable right now. I guess I never thought about how different it would feel to be half human. I always thought it was about how long he would live. It’s so much more.”