Page 62 of Henhouse
“We want you to read chapter fifty-four.”
Hope’s stomach lurched. “We agreed on chapter one. Wasn’t the whole point not to give it all away?”
“Yes, you and I did, but the team decided that we’ll make more sales tonight if you read fifty-four. I sent you an email about it.”
Hope chastised herself for letting her personal drama distract her. She recovered quickly enough. “Must have missed it.”
“Right. You’ll stop at the POV shift and leave them wanting more.”
Hope grimaced wanting to read anything,anythingbut chapterfifty-four, especially if Brayden was coming, but she kept her mouth shut.
“Between the six venues tonight you have well over twelve hundred readers waiting to see what happens between Kiernan and Dom. Give them something to yearn for, Hope. Plus the sound bites will be useful for your socials.”
Hope rolled her eyes, gut churning at having to read this particular chapter, the one that she had split open her heart and bled onto the page for in front of her audience. In front of Effie. In front ofhim. “You truly think this is the right move?”
“Don’t you trust me?” Hope and Effie’s conversation with Grams echoed in her mind. She wasn’t the PR team, she wasn’t the marketing team. She wasn’t even the publisher. She was the writer, and the people who had taken her career this far—who had made it so shecouldhave moved into her own home months ago without needing to take out a loan—were the ones that got her there. She wasn’t ready to throw the train off the tracks, not when raising a baby was so expensive, not when her readers were so devoted, and not when it wasn’t only her livelihood that rested on the book’s success or failure. Hope took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do it.”
When Brayden finally arrived at the Book and Bar, everyone had gathered around the small stage in the corner that was used for open mic nights and poetry slams that Theo had once been a frequent participant in. He crept toward the stage on stealthy feet until he found himself standing beside Theo and Effie. “What’s going on?” he whispered.
“It’s time for her reading,” Effie whispered back. Brayden took inthe room. Everyone in the crowd eagerly waited for a brand-new copy ofMagic Ensnaredand gazed at the stage where Hope stood, with a mix of awe, delight, and utter anticipation. The adoration for her work,for her, was unmistakable and it made him proud to know her. He had read the first few chapters of the book as she drafted it, but she wasn’t as keen to share pages that weren’t polished, so he hadn’t read more. He had lost all track of her deadlines and the release with everything else that had gone on in the last few months.
Hope approached the microphone with her book open. Her navy dress stretched snugly across her chest before draping in slightly ruffled tiers over her pregnant belly. It reached the tops of her sandaled feet and gave the impression of a medieval peasant skirt. The waterfall of loose brown curls she always wore unbound cascaded over one bare shoulder nearly reaching her hip. Brayden recognized the white-gold drop earrings with tiny sapphire flowers she wore as the ones he’d gifted her for their six-month anniversary.
She was radiant.
If she weren’t launching the final book in a national best-selling series he wouldn’t have been surprised if all eyesstillfell on her. Despite the distraction of seeing her up there aglow in the café lights and candles that warmed the space, he managed to clock the terse look Hope gave Effie. She seemed to make a show of how far into the book she went as she pulled out her bookmark.
Brayden’s gaze shot to Effie whose eyes were round with alarm. She let out a quick breath through puckered lips before nodding firmly at Hope. Whatever was going on here, Effie was worried about Hope and doing her damnedest to give her some confidence. “Everything okay?”
Effie considered, her face crinkling between a frown and genuinecuriosity. “Could be. Might be. Probably fine.” Her face lightened. “Might be fantastic, actually.”
Brayden was lost. Effie shrugged refusing to give him anything else before turning her attention fully on Hope. Brayden nudged Theo in the arm,surely he knew more. “Don’t ask me. I think they might be telepathic.”
Effie shushed them both as Hope cleared her throat.
“First, I want to thank you all for being here, it means so much to me,” she began, and Brayden caught the tremble buried beneath the speaking voice she’d aimed to perfect for such occasions. “And I know you all aredyingto know what happens with Kiernan and Dominique . . .” A well-timed pause allowed shrieks, giggles, and gasps to ring out amongst the hundred-person crowd. “So I thought we ought to get right to it and start with my favorite chapter in the whole book.”
More shrieks and applause.Was Hope a rock star?He had assumed so, but to see it in the flesh, even more so than that first reading they’d met at, had him glued to the floor. He couldn’t wait to see what she’d do next.
Hope’s hazel eyes flicked to him for a too-brief moment. He couldn’t tell if it was an apology or something else that flashed there before she took a sip from her water bottle and started to read.
“Kiernan couldn’t be certain what mistake had brought her here—to the gilded steps of the Forgotten Temple. There were too many to count. All she knew was that if she didn’t go inside, Dom would be lost forever. Her heart thundered in its cage, and the irony wasn’t lost on her that if she had given it to him before the Crumbling began, married in secret as they had planned, it would be safely kept in the Hall ofBetrothals beating alongside his from now until eternity.
If eternity still existed.
There was so much they didn’t know about why the realms had Crumbled and why others were saved. It was a miracle, a testament to the Goddess Arachnia herself, that Kiernan still had two feet to stand on, two arms to fight with, and a heart left to waste beneath her chest.
Kiernan steeled herself to enter the once pious ground, but her hand trembled as she reached for the heavy wooden door. If Dom was still inside, would he even recognize her? Would he still want her? Would he ever forgive her for fleeing when the ground had fallen from beneath them and his homeland had joined the Void? It was all she could do to stay upright. The image of his haunted face as he’d been hauled away from the Edge by the acolytes of the Forgotten Faith seared into her memory. He had feared for her safety then, made her promise to do whatever she could to stay on solid ground, but the betrayal in his eyes as she ran hurt more than any blade. He truly believed she wouldn’t come back for him, and it had broken Kiernan’s heart.
The Forgotten Faith needed a new Conduit, and who better than her prince—a man for whom reading emotions came easy, who lived life with fervor and joy, who spoke to the cosmos with ease and elegance?
But he was not theirs to covet, and if any of them fought her in freeing him, they would come to know her bloody wrath.
Kiernan unsheathed her blade and willed herself into the candlelit sanctuary. The stone was damp and moss-covered, evidence of the centuries of disuse. Pews crumbled before the stone dais that housed a single bench.
A bench where a hunched figure, unclothed from the waist up, bent over his knees, his dark curls hanging limply in his eyes. Shackles around each wrist bound him to the floor, the chains barely long enough to allow him to stand.
Which he did as Kiernan approached.
