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)
Because he was… really well-preserved for someone who’d seen three separate centuries.
Hell, he was well-preserved for a guy who’d just lived, like, thirty years.
That pale skin of his was stretched over wide shoulders, a broad chest, and deliciously indented abdominal muscles.
I had the most absurd urge to walk over there and trace my fingers into those grooves, to follow them down his stomach, then into those dips of a V near his hips that disappeared into the waistband of his pants.
Worried I might get caught ogling him, I looked around us. “You might want to put the jacket on, though,” I suggested. “In case there are any other sharp things that want to infect you with their mysterious poison,” I added.
Not because his body was too distracting to me.
Nope.
Not that at all.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he agreed, slipping into his jacket but not bothering to button the front.
I tried to curl my hands into fists, but Nathaniel reached out, grabbing mine like we’d been doing since the beginning.
It felt like weeks had passed since we’d first exited the town car into the woods.
Maybe it sounded silly, but I was a different person now than I was then.
“Do you feel, you know, normal?” I asked as we, with nothing else to do, started to walk again.
“Surprisingly, yeah,” he said, nodding. “There’s nothing… lingering. I’m a little more drained,” he decided after thinking a second.
“I think I aged a decade during that,” I admitted.
“You did it, though,” he said, squeezing my hand for emphasis.
“I mean, I stole my grandmother’s spell and just changed some words.”
“Still,” he said. “You have been… impressive,” he told me.
His words—ones he thought would be his final ones—echoed in my mind, making a warm, gooey sensation move across my chest.
“The encouragement has helped,” I admitted. “And, you know, almost dying a few times is pretty motivating,” I added, getting a small chuckle out of him.
We walked for what felt like ages before Nathaniel lifted his arm. When my gaze followed, I saw what he was pointing at.
“Great. Another door. What’s behind it? A swarm of angry hornets?” I grumbled.
“Not so loud,” Nathaniel said, wincing and dragging a little bubbly laugh out of me. “Ready?” he asked, reaching for the knob with his free hand.
“Nope. But here we go anyway,” I said, sucking in a steadying breath, not sure how much more my overwrought, confused emotions could take. But knowing I had no choice but to keep moving forward regardless.
“I’m right here with you,” Nathaniel said.
Then we stepped through the door together.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nathaniel
“Well, this is… underwhelming,” Roxy declared as we walked into another white-walled and white-floored room.
There was nothing at all in this one. No blocks that needed sorting. No crystal balls.
No windows.
And as soon as the one closed behind us, no doors either.
“Huh,” she said, turning in a circle, surveying the surroundings. “So, do we suffocate to death?” she asked. “Well, me anyway,” she said. “Since you don’t need air.
“Or maybe we dehydrate. I hear that’s not a terrible way to go. I assume that by the time you get hungry enough to drink my battery acid blood, I’d be nearly dead anyway.”
“Is this depressing monologue helping you work through what the actual task is?” I asked, surprised at how snippy my voice came out.
Sure, I was frustrated.
But not with her.
With this endless labyrinth. With the emotional toll it was taking on her. With, you know, almost dying myself. In a very mortal way.
“If you have any suggestions, please enlighten me, oh, superior being,” she snarked right back, jerking back at her tone, as confused as I was by my own outburst.
“We could rest,” I suggested, feeling the ache in my muscles, the burn in the soles of my feet. Such mortal concerns. Ones I would have to learn to live with until we reached my cure.
To that, she snorted.
“What?” I asked.
“A little hypocritical, I guess. Always telling me to stop being lazy and to hurry up. But when you want to sit and rest, we can sit and rest.”
“I believe it’s more of a double standard than being hypocritical.”
“Whatever,” she grumbled, slitting her eyes at me, but she lowered herself onto the unforgiving floor of the room. “Maybe if I close my eyes and imagine a memory foam mattress, it won’t feel like knives are stabbing my back,” she mumbled to herself.
I stretched out beside her, loathe to find she was right about the pain.
Still, it was relief from my throbbing, aching feet.
As if responding to my focus, my soles screamed more.
And more.
Were they actually that painful, I wondered? Or was this room playing tricks on me?
Roxanne grumbled, rolling onto her side, facing me.
She was closer than I realized.
And even with my much more mortal nose, I scented the summer honey sweetness of her.
My mind flashed back to the fantasy playing out before my eyes on the crystal ball.