Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Chapter Twenty-Six
PHEONIX
10 Years Ago
I sit on my bed, staring around my pink room and thinking about Layden. Missing him feels like all I do lately. I think I’ll miss him forever. I shouldn’t have sent him away like that. I’m wracked by grief and guilt one second and then sure I did the right thing the next.
I miss him so badly. I grab my phone and check it for texts, but of course, there are none.
I didn’t think missing someone could hurt this much. I miss my parents, yeah, but that missing just feels like a dull ache. I was a kid back then and didn’t understand what was happening. This is fresh and hurts in my lungs. And my stomach.
I look at the clock. 9:12 at night. Almost time for another long night of tossing and turning, unable to sleep. I slump down on the bed and pull a blanket over me.
I miss the stupid moments, like when we’d stay up late in the computer lab and he got so excited learning about some new programming trick. He was always so enthusiastic to show off to me. Like a kid, but at the same time, there was never mistaking him for anything but a man.
I ache for him in places that remind me I’m a woman. Not that it will ever matter now that I’m doomed to be alone.
I pull the covers up over my head and close my eyes. They say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, right? Maybe I should be feeling lucky to have ever had him in my life. Because we had so many good times together.
Like the night we stayed up late talking last week and he told me what really happened the day Sabra actually managed to send his spirit back to his realm. When he talked with the angels.
He hadn’t told us the whole truth that day when he got back. He saved it and shared it only with me. Because he trusted me. He trusted me, and then I hurt him so badly. I try to push those thoughts away and focus just on the memories; those are all I’ll ever have of him. An ache stabs at my stomach even as I remember.
“It was a beautiful place. More beautiful than I can even describe,” he said, his eyes getting a faraway look of wonder. Layden was usually incredibly handsome, but in that moment, as we sat on his bed together, he looked practically beatific. Like an angel carved from marble himself.
“What was it like talking to an angel?” I asked.
“She was so bright I had to shield my eyes. And I was also sort of floating because I was out of my body. She knew me. She called me a creature of the thief and asked if I was a thief too.”
“The thief. You mean your father?”
He nodded. “They knew my father well. I could barely answer her. I kept stuttering because she was so overwhelming. The whole place was…” He drifted off, his eyes still lost in the distance before coming back to me. “It was just the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. So full of light.”
I felt a pang in my heart then, because I knew that was the kind of place he belonged. And here I was, dragging him down into my darkness. “I’m so sorry your father ever took you away from there.”
Layden shook his head. “I was born on earth. He’s a thief because he stole the spark of life to create my brothers and me in a forge here. But to know that any part of me came from there…” A soft smile lit his face. “After feeling so monstrous my whole life…”
“No part of you is monstrous,” I interrupted with feeling. And I knew then that I couldn’t keep him here even if I couldn’t admit it out loud. It would be wrong. No matter how I felt about him as we both sat there together on his bed, our thighs so torturously close to touching.
“Eventually, as we talked, she said she’d looked into my soul and decided I wasn’t like my father after all. She said I was young.” He smiled. “And she said my brothers and I were always welcome home, unlike Gol’gonaar, who had used up his chances. I never even knew my father had a name before then. He just always told us he was Creator-Father.”
“Because it gave him more power over you,” I said. “And if you’d known his true name, it would have given you power over him.” Sabra had taught me that. With the right spell and knowledge of a true name, you could have complete control of a spirit. “He always wanted you to feel as helpless as possible so he could control you.” It was a feeling I understood well. I might know Vlad’s name, but only because he wanted us to know he was the direct descendant of a merciless, bloody king.