Page 22 of A Rising Hope

I had waited an eternity for this. What were a few more minutes?

“Ugh, what now?” I turned to my shadows hissing at me, then at the center of the room, a flash and an ominous cloud of smoke and blood appeared out of nowhere, swirling like a hungry void. “Well, that’s new.” I snarled, holding onto the cup slowly filling with blood. The spinning, dark red cloud encompassed the entire room. It was loud and obnoxious, but much less than the figure that appeared in the middle of it.

Gideon Bellator.

His face void of its color, and the whites of his eyes were completely black. But it was that fundamental, primal rage as fire crackled through his entire body at the sight of the motionless figure of his lover on the floor soaked in blood.

He was too late, and my triumphant smile told him so.

“Oh, you missed all the fun, General,” I shouted over the thunderous loud gusts of the foreign portal he had come through. My shadows hissed louder, not liking the unknown anomaly.Healer boy,they whisperedas another stranger popped out from the portal.

But he could not stop me now.

Nobody could.

Not anymore.

14

GIDEON

There was only one thought in my mind as the world crumbled around me.

One thought was all I would allow myself to think.

Finnleah had to live.

Shehadto survive.

I didn’t let my mind process what my eyes saw. The heaps of dead, tortured bodies all over the ground and in the middle—her. Wounded. Motionless. Silent. Not a tremor. Not a shout or a whisper. A lovely body in a pool of blood.

No, I didn’t let my mind think. Didn’t let myself remember.

“Now, Godric!” I shouted into the void.

The giant poisonous thorns lunged at us.

The fire within me roared, begging to be let free, but I had to keep it leashed. Had to let my blood magic work, to take root. The urge to burn the Queen, to burn this castle and the whole damn world tortured me, but I kept it locked.

Not yet. Not now.

Everything happened all at once.

With a quick jump, Godric reached Finnleah’s broken body.

I threw myself against the rain of large thorns and vines as they shot through my body like a thousand arrows piercing my flesh, hungrily tearing it like wild beasts.

I glanced back only once.

Godric was already in the portal. Finnleah’shandlessbody over his shoulder.

He gave me a fleeting nod goodbye and a blink of confirmation.

A blink that I would never forget. One that I would hold on to for the rest of my life.

The Queen’s screeching cry erupted, hammering my eardrums as she realized what had happened. Because even as her thorns tore into my flesh, blinding me from pain, the portal was gone and so was Godric and with him, Finnleah.

“You!” she hissed, stumbling past the mutilated bodies scattered all over the room. “You, fucking idiot! What have you done?!” she shouted, her eyes turning inhumane, unnaturally senseless. Shadows matching her fury rose in the room, swallowing any light within.

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