Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
“I know he talked to her through one of his witches.” I’d read the queen’s report. Myrddin had used one of his witches to speak to the queen. The witch had been there physically and had taken the grimoire, but Sarah Day’s wards had held and the witch hadn’t been able to get into the apartment the queen found refuge in.
“Did the witch know what he said? Or does he take over completely?” Lee mused. “How many times has Myrddin taken over Olivia’s body? How would we know?”
“Well, he sounds different for one thing,” Trent said, though I detected uncertainty in his tone. “I’ve heard Myrddin’s voice come from someone else’s mouth.”
“Does it have to?” I’d picked up on Lee’s thought process.
“No.” Gray sounded like he knew what he was talking about. “He can use any part of one of his hosts. It’s a particular talent of his.”
That sent a chill through me. “How do we know he’s not inside Liv right now?”
“He can’t fool me. It’s a demonic talent. A possession of sorts,” Gray explained. “In a regular possession the host is aware of what happens, but those possessions are almost always against the host’s will. For Myrddin to take over one of his witches, they have to offer their bodies to him. That willingness might be enough to suppress the memory of what happens. Or Myrddin might be able to plant false memories. We’re dealing with the greatest wizard of all time. He managed to trick Nimue. It wouldn’t be hard to trick a woman who desperately wanted to be fooled into believing she could get her magic back and not be the bad guy.”
So now I had to consider that Liv didn’t even understand reality as it existed.
It multiplied my problems by a thousand. And gave me a sliver of hope.
* * * *
Liv
I practically ran out of that room, my mind feeling scrambled by their lies. For a half a second I’d felt comfortable, almost remembering what it was like to sit in on those meetings with Kelsey and the gang. Though Lee had been much smaller in those days and Fen and Evan not around at all. It had felt almost right to be there.
Then reality set in. Gray had snarled my way and everyone had started lying.
It was all fucking lies with these people. I had to wonder if they sat up at night making this shit up.
Did they truly believe I didn’t know what had happened? I’d been there.
Except when I wasn’t. Except when I allowed the master to take over and then the world seemed foggy and unreal to me. Like I was trapped in my body. It was odd because it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. When I allowed Myrddin to take over, the world receded and I floated through. Like a drug.
But I knew what happened. I knew what happened that day when they returned. I had offered to take them to the master, to show them how we’d made the world better, and they’d fought. They’d killed several of our shifters.
They were the ones who’d done the killing.
“Do you honestly believe that bullshit you spouted off in there?”
I stopped in the middle of the hallway, closing my eyes. Of all the voices I didn’t need to hear right now, his was the worst. Casey. Fucking Casey. Sometimes I cursed the day he rose.
“Leave me alone.”
“I want an answer, Olivia.”
I turned, letting him feel how much I cared about what he wanted. He stood there, the light behind him glowing around the edges of his form. Sometimes it was like that with supernatural creatures. The light seemed to caress or reject them. In this case, it made Casey look a bit angelic, which was a fucking lie. “You know what I wanted? A boyfriend who didn’t run at the slightest provocation.”
“Slightest provocation? Are you talking about the day when your friends murdered all of mine?” His jaw tightened. His hair was still fairly long. It was hard for vampires to change their appearances. He could get up every day and cut it, but Casey simply pulled it back in a queue.
I used to love running my fingers through his hair. We had such a short time together. When I thought about it, we’d only had a few weeks when I’d lived in his apartment, fed him, loved him. When he’d treated me like I was something precious.
“It was war, and I was in that building. I was mere floors away from you when it started. I didn’t know what was happening that day. I wasn’t as powerful as I am now. I was vulnerable, and you left me behind. You ran the minute things got bad.”
It was precisely why I’d ended up at the Days. I’d looked for Casey and discovered he’d left me behind.