The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 2) by Quil Carter Read Free Book Online

back. Once that blond kid was done with the bathroom I would be next. I showered every day back in Skyfall and I wasn’t about to change now. Especially since I was completely covered in chalky ash and drying blood. I smelled like a corpse. Elish was going to have to dispatch a dozen sengils to steam this place once we left. It was going to be crawling with dirty little greywasters and their fleas.
    I got myself some tea and placed it down on the wooden coaster. I reached over and grabbed the remote and turned the window on.
    That was an odd word for it, but I didn’t know how else to describe it. I took a drink and got up as the walls separated with a low whirring sound, revealing the vast and breathtaking landscape before us. It was like the council room back in the blacksands house but better. I always loved me and Elish’s getaways here.
    Sheared slices of granite framed each side of the bare grey crags around us, encompassing us like a horseshoe bowl. Only when the grey rocks joined with the haze of the sun did I lose where the dead and muted grey would go next. We were a hundred miles from the bottom of the cliff, three windows that looked invisible from any solid ground but to me they felt like the eyes of a god, or a great king looking out onto his burnt land. I always felt empowered when I stood so tall in front of the massive picture windows. I had asked Elish one night if he felt the same.
    ‘Power is the greatest illusion, Jade.’
    But the illusion of power was all I had ever had. So I didn’t discard the feelings of being regal and refined, on the contrary, I enjoyed pretending. Even if I knew as well as the next heartbeat that I was nothing, in all respects my boots still had slum grime stuck to them.
    In the slums, when I had been walking side by side with my old boyfriend I had been the king of thieves. A regal light that, at my beck and call, could get me any illegal and smuggled good in all of Skyfall’s districts. Now I reigned over no one, not even myself.
    Though over the years my chains had become my comfort, a fact that still in the depths of night made me question my own sanity. I had been free in Moros, now I was bound in Skyland, but I was bound to Elish and that truth no longer bore down on me with thousand pound weights.
    The shackles were ours, we were joined together and together we faced all those who would want to hurt us. Over a year ago it was King Silas looming his threats over us, driven by jealousy and hatred over Elish’s attachment towards me.
    Now he had shifted his eyes to another chimera, a chimera Elish had been following since before the boy had taken his first breath.
    When he had gotten the call that Lycos had been captured it was as if his anger had extinguished the very light in the room. I had been helping Luca organize our plates for dinner and the action had made both of us quake in our shoes.
    Something was wrong... and out of all the things to go wrong, something going badly with the secret in the greywastes was the most devastating.
    Silas had Lycos, Silas knew, he had known for months.
    Asher Fallon... that name stung my lips, and it burned my master’s.
    Now more than ever I was reminded just how much we had at stake going against Silas like this, once again he had blindsided everyone with his intelligence. Not only had he himself found out that Reaver was alive, he had snuck into Aras and duped everyone just to get a good look at his long lost partner.
    I had, selfishly, wanted Elish to abandon everything right then, if only to keep my master safe, but to him there was no going back. The time had come now to harvest the seeds he had planted.
    I just wanted Elish to be safe. It was like we were harbouring bombs within our walls.
    Did my master really know what he was doing? Or was he scrambling to pick up the scattering balls that had fallen as soon as that phone call went through.
    I pursed my lips as the questions started to sting my mouth like turpentine. The