Red Blood (Series of Blood Book 2) by Emma Hamm (best short books to read .TXT) 📕

Lyra felt its hot breath against the back of her neck as it fell onto the ground. Death was never pretty. She remembered vividly her first kill as vomit rose in her throat.

“I’m going to be sick.” She listed to the side, and the Lich King let her go.

She hit the ground and wretched. Snot trickled from her nose, and water leaked from her ears. But the remaining army of Malachi’s stared at the giant man standing next to her. He was larger than life. Powerful and feared by so many now.

As one, they took a step back and then another. Just like that, the battle was over. The Lich King had won as Malachi’s army fled in fear of the unnatural monster beside her.

She was so tired. Lyra slumped towards the ground, just managing to hold herself up by an elbow.

“I want to go home,” she whispered. “Wolfgang, please bring me home.”

“Your Wolfgang is not here.”

She looked up at him quickly, and fear bloomed in her chest. He stared down at her with no expression, no emotion. She was stuck in a dream that he was steadily turning it into a nightmare.

“You promised,” she pled.

“Come. We go to strengthen my army.”

His hand was reaching for her. She shook her head firmly and tried to crawl away from him. “What are you saying? No!”

The Lich King wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the remainder of his army and her team. His blue eyes were critical as he surveyed them and nodded. “They will be a welcome addition. Generals, they shall be; it is an honored position.”

Her heart broke. Shattered. She could hear the sound of breaking glass as everything Lyra was disappeared. She was a shell of herself because her world had been reduced to ashes.

She choked on a sob as she sat up and slowly reached for him. She sniffed loudly. “Wolfgang—”

“Do not argue.”

Lyra fell silent as he pulled her against his chest once more. She entertained the idea that perhaps he wanted to hold her because there was some remnant of himself still there. Deep down, she knew that was a lie.

Her hands traveled up his shoulders and neck as she turned his head towards her. “Wolfgang, I love you.”

He did not respond. But of course he did not respond. He was not himself anymore.

Her face crumpled and more tears fell down her cheeks. He was going to kill them all. He had accepted his decision to be the Lich King and lost himself. Wolfgang had been so wrong.

She could not control him.

Her head fell until it was tucked against the cold metal of his armor. Once last time she whispered against him, “I love you.”

She plunged her hand underneath his armored chestplate and curled her hand into a claw around his glowing red heart. It beat against her palm as she pulled it from his ribcage with a quick yank. It was not sticky, nor was it warm. But it was his heart, and, therefore, it was precious.

A long wheeze rattled him. Blue, glowing eyes began to burn ever brighter and stare down at her. He clutched her harder to his chest as he brought them both to their knees.

She did not apologize to him. She couldn’t. “I will remember you as the man who made me laugh. I will remember the man who gave me butterflies. The Magician who found more beauty in giving me a golden wind than the greatest of magics.”

He gasped and listed to the side. He fell hard on his shoulder and rolled onto his back. She lay atop him as tears dropped onto his skull.

“You were the man who saw me not as a beauty but the woman underneath this flesh. You were the man who never disappointed me because you were so brave and good.” She gasped as the words poured out of her. “I will always remember you not as the Magician. Not as the Graverobber, but as Wolfgang. The man I loved.”

She caught her breath as she rubbed her thumb against his cheekbone. His blue burning eyes slowly dimmed. A tear dropped from her eye into his socket and extinguished one of the flames.

Lyra shook her head and smiled through her tears. “There are my mismatched eyes.”

The last remaining light disappeared. She squeezed her own eyes shut and let out an aching sob. Her head tilted back as the flames around them slowly diminished, and rain began to fall.

Only then did she feel the loss of him. Only then did she realize how broken she was going to be without him. She had lost so much in her life, and now she had lost the only man she had managed to love.

Her shoulder shook. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse and deep. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to end like this.”

She leaned forward to press her lips against ragged edges of his teeth. She would hold onto his memory like the rarest of stones. A sob made her inhale quickly and exhale long and low.

Out of her mouth trickled the faintest blue light.

When she opened her eyes, she froze. Wolfgang’s soul trickled past her lips, down the skeleton’s mouth and into the long line of its throat. It was weak and struggled to even emit the smallest of lights. Then it disappeared underneath the armor.

Frantic now, she began yanking away the offending aged metal. It clanked as she tossed it away from the two of them, and the skeleton was jostled back and forth. She did not care about harming it. She had to see his soul.

“Easy,” Wren’s voice told her. “Easy, you have to stop.”

“No,” she muttered. “No something’s happening.”

“Lyra, he’s gone.”

She pulled away the chestplate to peer down into the cage of his ribs. The thread of blue light blinked once, twice, and then held its light as it swirled in a circle where his heart had once been. The heart she still held clutched in her