Total pages in book: 247
Estimated words: 242728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1214(@200wpm)___ 971(@250wpm)___ 809(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 242728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1214(@200wpm)___ 971(@250wpm)___ 809(@300wpm)
I’d never cared what colour it was.
Never thought to check.
Was it white like hers?
Black.
I scowled, fingering the knotty section of midnight hair I’d tugged over my forehead. A leaf clung to it, crinkly and torn. Running my hand over the back of my skull, I winced as my fingers caught in tangles, brambles, and dirt.
The woman slipped into walking again, drifting farther away from me.
I glimpsed her through the long stems, but then she was gone.
No...
Come back.
The crescent mark on my thigh suddenly burned.
“Forbidden and therefore banished apart—”
I folded forward in agony.
Hissing between my teeth, I clutched my thigh, pinching the crescent-moon. It welled with deeper pigment, gleaming metallic around the edges. The slicing, sizzling pain didn’t stop—keeping time with my thundering heart.
The acrid flavour of loss coated my tongue.
Memories swirled behind the forgotten veil of my mind, desperate to give me truth but stuck behind an impenetrable wall.
Blood appeared on the tip of the crescent, oozing from my flesh.
I struggled to catch a breath, crippled beneath the bleeding sear.
A burst of blackness sank through my bones.
My toes ached.
My ankles crackled.
Shadows suddenly snaked out of my being, swirling angrily around me.
I froze as those shadows thickened, delivering night to where I crouched, even while the sun still shone above.
I could no longer hear her.
No longer see her.
Blinding sorrow had me tripping upright, my torso cresting the high grasses, and my eyes locking onto the white-haired girl up ahead.
I chased.
The shades that’d wrapped around me dispersed, dissolving into the air as if pleased with my response and content to vanish.
I wasn’t quiet as I closed the distance between us.
She stiffened and turned.
Clutching her woven bowl to her chest, she gasped as her eyes shot wide.
Grief lodged in my throat for losing her.
Despair cracked my spine for not recognising her.
Even now, even face to face, my heart said yes all while my eyes struggled to remember.
How could I know someone I couldn’t recall?
How could I love someone I didn’t even know?
I slammed to a stop before her, my fingers tinged with blood from my mark, and my skin so much filthier than hers.
Regardless that she was a stranger to me, every breath in my body said she was the one. The one I’d been searching for, desperate and dying for.
“It’s you.” The words fell out of me as if I’d been choking on them ever since I awoke, lost and alone.
She clung to her harvesting bowl as if it would ward me off, her gaze tripping over my body. She drank in my face, my chest, and lower. Lingering between my bare legs before dropping to my dirty feet.
My blood sang.
My bones throbbed.
I shivered with crackling intensity.
Stepping the final distance between us, I reached for her arm.
I had to touch; to make sure she was real.
She reeled backward, tripping on the grass stalks, dropping her basket and spraying the plucked seedheads everywhere. She shouted something I didn’t understand. She didn’t look at the mess she’d made or the loss of all the work she’d done. Her eyes never left mine, panicked and a deep, rich amber.
Her fear wrapped around my heart, making me sick.
I dropped my arm and balled my hands. I didn’t mean to scare her.
I thought she’d be as grateful as I was.
We were no longer alone.
We were together again, just like we once had been.
“I’m sorry,” I grunted my regret, taking a short step away.
Her shoulders stayed tight by her ears as she watched me warily. The odd fur around her chest and hips seemed too thick and big for her, leaving the flat bareness of her stomach almost stark and the frailness of her collarbones too defined.
At least she didn’t try to run.
I didn’t think I’d be able to ignore the urge to chase if she ran.
I’d dreamed of her so often.
Those dreams were the reason I’d kept surviving, kept searching.
If she isn’t real...
My eyes narrowed with terror.
What if this was an illusion?
What if I’d fallen asleep in the grass and the sun played tricks with my mind?
My heart fisted with thorns.
I have to know.
Marching toward her, I didn’t give her the chance to flee.
My hands came up and clamped onto her soft, sun-warmed cheeks.
I wasn’t prepared for the pain.
For the spirit-slicing bang.
“Through every star and every sea, I’ll watch over you.” I dropped my head, nuzzling my nose to her adorably small one. “Neither time nor distance, nor war or disaster can stop what is true. You’re mine and that can never be undone.”
I cried out as the vision ended.
Something I’d never felt before tore through me, violent and vicious.
She gasped and jerked in my hold.
Her skin stung mine with a power that made the rest of the world vanish into nothing. Nothing was more important than this. Nothing was more real than her.
Her hands swept up to lock around my wrists, her nails digging into my skin.