Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
The threads of panic were wrapping around my throat, making each breath difficult as I kept almost running into myself.
Tears threatened, then spilled, as another whimper escaped me.
My heart was beating wildly against its cage as I reached another dead end.
I turned, trying to find where I’d come from, but finding myself confronted with my own panic-stricken face.
“Roxy,” Nathaniel’s voice whispered, sounding close. So close.
I whipped in a circle, though, seeing nothing but myself, turning in dizzying circles.
“Hey,” his voice said, calm, close. Then hands were grabbing my shoulders.
“No!” I shrieked, trying to wrench away.
The strong arms closed around me, one over the top of my chest, the other around my midsection, pulling me back against a strong body. A familiar body.
But there was no one there.
“It’s me,” Nathaniel said, and I felt the brush of his lips on my ear. “You’re okay,” he assured me.
I was most certainly… not okay.
But he was there, even if he wasn’t visible, and that alone seemed to be a soft caress over my frazzled nerve endings.
“Where…”
“Vampire,” he said, lips brushing my ear again. And the shiver that moved down my spine had nothing to do with panic this time. “I don’t understand it,” he admitted, arms wrapping me up tighter. “My other powers are gone. But… I still have no reflection.”
Right.
Of course.
He might feel and sound and smell like a man, but he wasn’t.
“There you go,” he said as some of the tension fled my body.
My gaze slid forward, looking at the space where his reflection should have been, but seeing nothing but myself.
The only proof of his existence was the way my shirt was bunched slightly where his arms were holding me, the way my head pushed to the side a bit as his pressed into the side of mine.
My belly flip-flopped as a different kind of tension worked its way through my system, chasing away the panic.
My breathing went from fast and shallow to slow and deep as I melted into him.
“That’s it,” he said, lips tickling the shell of my ear as his hand shifted up to my neck, fingers gently gliding across my throat, feeling for the beat of my heart.
It hadn’t slowed its frantic beating though. It was just thumping faster for an entirely different reason now.
“You need to calm down,” he murmured.
“I can’t,” I admitted, too wrapped up in the moment to come up with a halfway convincing lie.
“You can,” he said, his arm tightening around my waist. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
Yes, he certainly did.
He just didn’t know in what way.
I glanced over at my reflection, seeing all the signs.
The pupils blown wide.
The flush that had crept up my neck and across my cheeks.
The parted lips.
But I could see how Nathaniel could easily mistake the desire for lingering panic.
And that was for the best, I told myself, even as my body rebelled against that idea.
I couldn’t be crushing on a vampire. It was, you know, wrong. At least, that was what generations of witches claimed. We were supposed to hate each other.
That was why Nathaniel needed me for this labyrinth after all. It was designed to keep him from doing it himself. And the magic seemed to hinge on what the witches who spelled it saw as an impossibility.
A witch willingly working with a vampire.
“You’re stronger than even you realize,” Nathaniel said. This time, it wasn’t my belly, but my heart, doing a flip flop.
He sounded so certain.
And I didn’t remember the last time someone had faith in me. The last time someone looked past the surface and saw the potential underneath.
I guess the last time had been when my mother was alive. But with her died any desire to prove myself. It was when the laziness began. What did it matter? There was no one to care, right?
Except right now.
Nathaniel cared.
Sure, there was a selfish reason for his care.
But that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that there was someone I suddenly wanted to impress, to show what I was capable of.
I sucked in a deep breath, feeling some of the desire sliding away, though it remained a hard pressure in my core that was impossible to ignore entirely.
“Okay,” Nathaniel said, arms falling, and I tried not to whimper at the loss. He reached inside for my hand, joining our fingers and holding tight. “This is just a maze, Roxy,” he reminded me. “A maze is just a path made of two walls with occasional dead ends. They don’t matter. What matters are the parallel walls.”
“Okay,” I agreed, nodding, even if I wasn’t completely following.
“The mirrors are just here to disorient you. Don’t pay attention. Mentally, just picture them as different colors. Red and blue. Now press your shoulder against the red wall,” he said.
“Okay?”
“Don’t move your shoulder off of the wall. Even if it leads you into a dead end, keep this shoulder against the wall. When you run out of dead ends, you will reach the exit. That’s how it works.”