Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 70779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 354(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 354(@200wpm)___ 283(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
I shook my head.
“Just let it take me, Mistress. I deserve my fate. I deserve to go back and be forever bound in The Pit.”
“No, you don’t! Kael, please!” she begged and there were tears in her lovely green eyes.
But neither of us could stop the inevitable. I was going to be dragged back through the portal and into Hell, where I belonged.
I didn’t even try to fight it.
36
WILLOW
Iwas horrified at what was happening. This wasn’t right! Goldie had promised me that once Kael and I both came and sealed our Heartmate bond, the portal to The Pit would close on its own and never open again.
Instead, Kael was getting dragged back to the portal and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to stop it!
I could see some invisible presence tugging at him but my fallen angel wasn’t even trying to fight it. He was just passively letting it take him because he apparently felt guilty about breeding me in his gargoyle form.
The thing was, I wasn’t angry at him. I understood that he’d been out of it—not himself. And the way things had happened was my fault because I had forgotten the second verse of the mini-binding spell when I was cuffing him to the bedposts.
But Kael seemed past caring as I tried to explain this. He was going—getting closer and closer to the ominous portal where evil and eternal damnation waited for him. And I knew if he went through it, I would never have a chance to get him back again.
Then something else that Goldie had said came back to me.
“You’ll have to make a sacrifice,” she had told me. And Goody Albright had explained that I would have to give up something I wanted—something dear and precious to me if I was going to free Kael completely.
Suddenly, I knew what I had to do.
I didn’t want to do it—just the thought of it made me heartsick. Because what I was giving up, was Kael himself. Just as I had found a man I could love and trust, I was going to lose him.
But there was no other way.
I reached for the golden key that still hung between my breasts on the long golden chain. Then I climbed on Kael, straddling his waist and sitting down on him hard to keep the invisible presence that was trying to drag him back to Hell at bay.
“Mistress?” His eyes opened wide in surprise. “What are you doing?”
“The only thing I can do,” I said.
With tears in my eyes, I slipped the small golden key into the locket clamped around his throat. And this time, when I twisted it to the right, the key turned and the lock sprang open.
“Kael,” I said to him, trying not to cry. “You have served me well. I set you free of the curse on you. Go back to Heaven where you belong.”
“What?” His eyebrows shot up and he looked almost panicked. “Mistress—Willow—no! I don’t deserve—”
But before he could finish speaking his entire body began to shimmer and glow. I watched through squinted eyes, because it was so bright, as he slowly began to dissolve into sparkling sunbeams of pure white light.
I found I was sitting on nothing but the bed—Kael’s huge frame was completely incorporeal now. For a brief, brilliant moment his light swirled around me like a million stars—almost as though he was saying goodbye.
And then the light beams formed themselves into a single, vertical column and shot upwards, into the air. They went right through the roof of the cabin and I thought I heard the sounds of many voices singing and shouting in joyful unison.
“He has come home!” I heard a loud voice trumpeting from very far away. “Rejoice! For Kael has finally returned to the Heavenly Realm!”
And then whatever thin connection I’d had with my guardian gargoyle was finally severed and the cheering was cut off as total silence fell.
I looked up at the wooden rafters of the roof…and then at the wall where the portal had been. It was gone, too. In fact, all trace of the man I loved was gone—simply vanished out of existence, as though he had never been there in the first place. As though he had never come to life and come down off his stone pedestal to tell me he wanted to protect me. As though he had never shielded me with his wings or wrapped me in his arms or kissed me to heal me and show me what real love could be like.
He was gone…just gone and he was never coming back.
I hung my head and cried.
37
WILLOW
Ican’t lie—the next few weeks were some of the hardest of my life. You might think that I would be able to forget a man I’d known for less than a week, but my heart wouldn’t let me. I felt tied to Kael—as though there was a golden cord wound around my heart and attached to his somewhere as well. Nothing could break that cord and so I couldn’t forget him—even if I had wanted to, which I didn’t.