Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
She places her fingers around my hand and holds me like that. “And I appreciate that you’re giving me that chance, but I’m not taking it. Because I don’t want to. Because I love you. My plans for my life? All I wanted was to find my purpose and find someone to love and, with you, I’ve found that. No matter how you try to spin it, there is no way I can just move on with whatever life I have left in this world knowing that my mother is the Goddess of the Sun, knowing that the balance of the afterlife rests in me uniting the land, that my heart truly belongs to yours. It’s too late for me now. I’m with you until the bitter end, Tuoni.”
Fuck. Now I feel a wet burning sensation behind my eyes. Damn these mortal emotions. “You have no idea how much I’ve needed to hear that. To know that.”
“Well, I’m glad I’ve made you see otherwise,” she says. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
“I would never try to get rid of you.”
But as I lay back down beside her and hear her slowly drift off to sleep, my mind starts to plan. It starts to race.
I don’t want to let Hanna go. I selfishly want her at my side as my lover, my wife, my queen, for all of eternity. But I don’t know what the future holds, and I don’t know what her part in the prophecy is. They said the one who can touch Death is the one to unite the land, but there has to be a way for her to do that without coming into danger. I know we were lucky in Inmost, but when we step back in Tuonela, if it’s already descended into Kaaos, I’m not sure how much luck we’ll have left. I want to keep her safe. I want to keep her alive.
I need to figure out a way to do that.
Chapter 16
Tuonen
The Dungeon
Ididn’t go back to sleep after I visited with Sarvi. We decided that the unicorn would fly to the Hiisi Forest to see Tapio in the morning, and we stayed up talking, figuring out what could have possibly happened to my father and Hanna. Unfortunately, none of the scenarios we came up with were anything but horrifying.
As a result, I’m tired as fuck, and when I’m tired, I’m not at my best. I’m in my room, afraid to leave. My father—ahem, my mother—knocked on the door once to ask if I would be down for breakfast, something my actual father would never do, since eating around the table together as a family is something to be saved for special occasions, not for shoveling toasted grains into one’s mouth in the morning hours.
But I managed to mumble a reply through the door that I was tired from the match and wanted to sleep in. If I had said that to my actual father, he probably would have kicked down the door and told me to smarten up and act like a god (“Gods don’t get tired! Straighten up!”) but now that I know it’s my devil mother, she’s a little softer.
It’s all an act. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe my mother does have natural motherly instincts when it comes to her children. She’s never really showed them, but perhaps during this charade, they’re coming out.
Either way, she left me in peace.
If you can call this peace.
I need to get in touch with Lovia. She’s down on the river, ferrying the dead to and from Death’s Landing. With everything that’s happening, will Tapio have his son take over for us? If he does, then Lovia will be free to come back here—but what if she’s walking into a trap? What if the best place for her is remain in the north with the rest of the gods?
I can only hope Tapio has told her his suspicions about the situation, and I hope Sarvi can find them both and tell them the truth.
There is no sun at the moment, hidden behind thick clouds that cover the tops of the mountains, the sea below calm and dull. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this weather—the gloom has always followed my father. But since he met Hanna, the sun has been out more and more each day. The old man must really be in love or something.
But to see the clouds again is troubling. The winter storm is gone, but this static gloom and darkness doesn’t bode well for my father being alive and well.
How did Louhi dispose of him? I thought no one could kill my father. If my mother always had this power, why didn’t she use it earlier, from day one, or whatever day she decided she suddenly hated my father and wanted him dead?