Throne of Fire (Celestra Forever After Book 5) Read online

  Throne of Fire

  Celestra Forever After 5

  Addison Moore

  Hollis Thatcher Press, LTD.

  Contents

  Books by Addison Moore

  Prologue

  1. The First Woe: Postmortem

  Gage

  Logan

  Wesley

  2. Dark Angel

  Gage

  Logan

  Wesley

  3. The Second Woe: The Battle Standard

  Gage

  Logan

  Wesley

  4. My Immortal

  Gage

  Logan

  Wesley

  5. The Final Woe: This is War

  Gage

  Logan

  Wesley

  6. Ever After

  Books by Addison Moore

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Edited by Paige Maroney Smith

  Cover Design: Gaffey Media

  * * *

  Copyright © 2018 by Addison Moore

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This ebook is for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2018 by Addison Moore

  Created with Vellum

  Books by Addison Moore

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  * * *

  *Be sure to subscribe to Addison’s mailing list for sneak peeks and updates on all upcoming releases!

  WEBSITE http://addisonmoore.com

  Paranormal Romance

  (Celestra Book World in Order)

  * * *

  Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)

  Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)

  Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)

  Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)

  Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)

  Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)

  Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)

  Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 8)

  Elysian (Celestra Series Book 9)

  Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)

  * * *

  Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)

  Season of the Witch (A Celestra Companion)

  * * *

  Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)

  Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)

  Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3)

  * * *

  The Countenance Trilogy Books 1-3

  Celestra Forever After (Celestra Forever After 1)

  The Dragon and the Rose (Celestra Forever After 2)

  The Serpentine Butterfly (Celestra Forever After 3)

  Crown of Ashes (Celestra Forever After 4)

  Throne of Fire (Celestra Forever After 5)

  * * *

  Romance

  3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)

  Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)

  Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)

  Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4)

  Rock Candy Kisses (3:AM Kisses 5)

  Velvet Kisses (3:AM Kisses 6)

  Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses 7)

  Country Kisses (3:AM Kisses 8)

  Forbidden Kisses (3:AM Kisses 9)

  Dirty Kisses (3:AM Kisses 10)

  Stolen Kisses (3:AM Kisses 11)

  Lucky Kisses (3:AM Kisses 12)

  Tender Kisses (3:AM Kisses 13)

  Revenge Kisses (3:AM Kisses 14)

  Red Hot Kisses (3:AM Kisses 15)

  Reckless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 16)

  Hot Honey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 17)

  Shameless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 18)

  * * *

  Value 3:AM Kisses Boxed Sets

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 1-3

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 4-6

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 7-9

  3:AM Kisses Boxed Set 10-12

  * * *

  Low Down & Dirty (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 1)

  Dirty Disaster (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 2)

  Dirty Deeds (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 3)

  * * *

  The Social Experiment (The Social Experiment 1)

  Bitter Exes (The Social Experiment 2)

  Chemical Attraction (The Social Experiment 3)

  * * *

  Burning Through Gravity (Burning Through Gravity 1)

  A Thousand Starry Nights (Burning Through Gravity 2)

  Fire in an Amber Sky (Burning Through Gravity 3)

  * * *

  Beautiful Oblivion (Lake Loveless 1)

  Beautiful Illusions (Lake Loveless 2)

  Beautiful Elixir (Lake Loveless 3)

  Beautiful Deception (Lake Loveless 4)

  * * *

  The Solitude of Passion

  * * *

  Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)

  Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)

  Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3)

  * * *

  Mystery

  Little Girl Lost

  * * *

  Young Adult Romance

  Melt With You (A Totally ’80s Romance 1)

  Tainted Love (A Totally ’80s Romance 2)

  Hold Me Now (A Totally ’80s Romance 3)

  But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. — 1 Corinthians 15:12 (NIV)

  Prologue

  Skyla

  Time—there is no escaping its heavy lumbering embrace. It wraps its thorny limbs around your being before you ever enter this weary world. It takes you by the hand, leads you deep into its unknowable abyss. It ties you up and makes you play by its ever-fleeting rules. It delineates your life in a series of breaths, actions, failures, and successes. It measures the depth and width of your heart by who you loved, who you hated. In the end it will arrest you, sentence you to death, and watch on the sidelines as you are laid beneath the soil. It is merciless in its dealings, unfurling far too quickly to ever be trusted, unstoppable, unrelenting in its bitter pursuit to press onward and forward with or without you. It is one race that you will never win.

  Death is its soulmate, its forever companion. It is your only guarantee in this world. Death greets you upon your arrival, waiting patiently to close your eyes one final time and devour your soul as if it were its favorite meal. Death is so very hungry, so very savage, an insatiable force that only God Himself can satiate. There is no hiding from its misery, no panacea, no cure. It is the plague of our world, a haunting reminder that we are but a breath, nothing but a vapor—fallible, every single one of us. But the ransom was paid in blood, over two thousand years ago. Its garnet promises echo from generation to generation. Its ebony shadow covers the entire world in the shape of an old wooden cross. Death is so very patient. It waits for you sti
ll this very hour. It is the game you never asked to play, and not one of us will win.

  This is my moment in time. Death is waiting for me. It has already captured so many that I love, inhaled their beautiful souls and banished them from the borders of the living. It is a cruel, cruel illusion to keep on breathing when the deepest part of your heart has already left this planet.

  Death was all around me, erasing my world, taking it down like a landslide as I hovered above it, watching helpless as everything I loved crumbled. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. We have disintegrated under the weight of our love. Both time and death swept over us like a torrent and we did not win.

  How great a gift it is to live and breathe. How daring to believe we will again enjoy life’s pleasures upon a distant eternal shore with those who have already perished. How arrogant to demand we have it both ways in the here and now. How remarkable to know that with Him who holds the world all is possible.

  It is all so very possible if you just believe.

  Bring my lover back.

  Bring him back to me.

  This is my deepest heart’s desire—my most ardent wish.

  Careful what you wish for.

  You might just get it yet.

  Today’s heart’s desire is often tomorrow’s inescapable regret.

  1

  The First Woe: Postmortem

  Skyla

  In my younger days, before I knew great sorrow, before I knew pain and despair intimately, I would have nightmares of objects, people who were larger than life. Their very presence frightened me into an unimaginable paralysis. I would wake up drenched in sweat, darting from sleep as if I had escaped a fire. But these flames, this new nightmare—there is no waking from it. As much as I refuse to believe what my eyes, my hands, my sticky skin tells me, I know deep down it’s true. The very thing I have feared all along was indeed larger than life, a looming demon with outstretched wings hovering over my existence, ready to plunge me into a deep ocean of despair. It was death.

  It had introduced itself in my life before I could properly understand the world when it took my mother, then later when it claimed my father, then Logan, the daughter I never knew, and now it’s taken my precious husband, my life-breath, Gage.

  My hands pound over the sticky liquid gushing from my lover’s flesh as the lights above in Demetri’s ballroom glow a sickly hue, washing this entire night in colors of purple and blue. I have no doubt Demetri is responsible for this horror. He has denied his favorite son the right to live out his life. He is denying Gage everything, right down to the color of his own blood.

  Faces appear all around me, bodies lining the room like foot soldiers. Someone is shouting as the sea of people drain from the periphery, but all I hear, all I feel are the howling cries escaping my lungs, cutting and painful. My fingers glide over the sanguine liquid pooling around my knees, dripping from my fingers like candle wax as I fall over his chest.

  “Skyla,” Logan barks. He yanks me off, opening up Gage’s bloodied suit jacket before ransacking the pockets. He pulls out a wallet and produces a phone from the pants. Logan is frantic, robbing a dead man, his eyes darting around the vicinity as he shoves the finds deep into his own suit pockets. There will be no identifying this corpse once he’s through with it.

  My body lunges forward to that precious place my beloved’s head once stood proud and an earth-shattering cry escapes my throat, sawing its way from me at supersonic speeds, shredding my vocal cords like razors.

  Logan wraps his arms around my waist, plucking me to my feet, but I fall hard to my knees again, my arms diving around that body I know so well. My face glides over his chest one last time. This is the body I love—this body from which we drew three precious beings. In my heart, I know it’s the last time I will ever be near it. This body, this life, is finished.

  Logan whisks me into his arms with a violent yank, shouting something to Barron whose face is white as stone. I lock eyes with Emma, her face frozen in a gruesome mask of agony and it should be. She’s done this. Emma was party to the taking of her own son’s life. Emma held the hammer. She nailed her own son to the cross. The way she flinches when our eyes meet assures me of this. The world stills, morbidly lethargic, as my gaze lies over hers, immovable as concrete.

  I know what you’ve done. I know who you are. You will pay, pay, pay. You are already paying the price of your misgivings. I hope it hurts. I hope you burn in hell. Yes, I do. I mean every single word.

  Logan twirls me to the left as the room picks up pace again. The walls bleed right along with Gage as they stretch out infinitely. Logan moves us at the haunting speed of light, turning the grand room into a morbid impressionist painting—my own husband’s blood the artist’s favorite medium. The Bastard’s Ball had come to a heart-stopping crescendo. And just as we’re about to leave the mouth of the grisly estate, I lock eyes with the bastard himself—Demetri.

  But Logan doesn’t blink twice in his direction. He trots us down the stairs toward Ellis and Giselle, shouting nonsensical words, shoving the keys to my minivan at him, telling him to find Mia or my mother to get the kids to the Landon’s—letting them know I would be with him.

  Giselle can’t stop screaming at the sight of me, her face the exact representation of her brother’s. Either it was Emma’s genes coming through or it was Demetri’s delight to convince my mother to duplicate his creation. Gage was his creation. He was designed for me, after all. For Chloe and me if I recall correctly.

  The icy air of the night is replaced with the sour interior of Logan’s truck. Paragon slices by at dizzying speeds. My voice still lassos itself around us like a noose, tightening its hold on my lungs as I strain to look back at Demetri’s mansion, to the final place that knew my husband while he still had breath in his lungs. My hand glides over the passenger’s window, leaving a bloody print smeared over the glass, but the river of tears, the agonizing cries that my entire existence has reduced to refuse to recede. The flood of grief, the agony of, this, my greatest loss, only seems to ratchet tighter, dangerously coiling around my soul like a vise that has the power to blink me out of existence. And a part of me wishes it would. Wishes it would blink me into eternity right into my husband’s loving arms. I can’t do this without him. The thought is incomprehensible.

  My heart is gone. My husband, my lover, my friend—the father of my precious children has been culled from this earth in the most brutal manner known to man.

  Beheaded.

  They say the first time you see a dead body it changes you on an intrinsic level. I contest that. Seeing your husband’s dead body—sans any trace of his precious face, changes you on an intrinsic demonic level.

  The truck comes to an abrupt stop, and in a daze I see Whitehorse, the house that Logan built for me out of love, dappled with fog, flickering in and out of reality like a flame. Logan who was ripped from the planet first. There seems no end to the shredding of my heart. It is evident now that my life was meant to exist in pain. Death and all of its infernal devices are the gravity to which my very being is centered. My mother designed it this way. Demetri solidified it.

  Logan jerks the passenger’s door open, unbuckles my belt as if I were a child, and carries me into the house. He speeds us upstairs to the bedroom I made love to Gage in not that long ago, straight into the bathroom, and lands me on the floor of that cavernous shower. Gage and I spent time in this very space. Gage said you could have a dance party in it, so we did. We moved our bodies in time to the music of our hearts. It’s what we always did when we were together. We were happy. We were one.

  The water peppers us from above—hot, cold, I cannot tell. It burns. It scalds my flesh as if it were trying to disintegrate me, and I couldn’t care less if it were acid pelting me from above. Logan turns a lever, and the ceiling weeps down a torrent over us at once as he glides down next to me. The two of us sit dazed, staring vacantly at the wall, looking right through it as if begging for a glimpse into eternity.

  And we weep. W
e wail and bow our heads toward one another for the one we love. The one we lost so violently.

  Logan pulls me onto his lap, his hot breath panting over my neck. It’s indiscernible where his tears end and mine begin. Instead, we watch as the water stains pink, the blood of my husband refusing to wash from our flesh. It screams, remember me. Do not forget what happened tonight. I did not ask for this. I did not welcome it. Avenge me, it pleads. We watch in sorrow as it circles the drain.

  Logan and I are lost children, sticky and wet, swallowed in grief.

  How could this have happened? How is it still happening?

  “Is it real?” I whisper, water and blood mingling on my lips. My tongue does a quick revolution and I taste him there, salty, sweet, so very precious. I want nothing more than to lap up my love, the very last part of him.