Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
His gaze was cloudy for a bare moment before it grew sharp, alert.
His shoulders straightened, tension back in his face. Not the tension of pain or worry, but the tension that made him Jeffrey.
After a sip of water to wet his throat, he looked at them in turn. His eyes lingered on Gwendolyn, who tearfully kissed his cheek, then rested on Beth, Amy, Eve. Elena, who was to his left, came in last for his attention.
She tried to work out if he remembered anything of their first conversation in this room, but saw no indication of strong emotions on his face. Then Amy laugh-sobbed and said something, and the moment moved on.
It wasn’t until she rose from his bedside an hour later that his fingers brushed her wing. Thinking she must’ve not held her wings close enough to her body while turning, she looked back.
Her father made a motion for her to come closer.
Gwendolyn and Beth were at the door chatting to a nurse about Jeffrey’s upcoming move out of the ICU. Amy had gone outside to call her husband, while Eve was on a coffee run for the entire group.
No one else would hear what Jeffrey had to say to her.
Bracing herself, she bent close to his lips.
“Do you think we should dig her up, Ellie?” A whispering rasp. “Disturb her peace?”
Her heart slammed into her rib cage. “I don’t think Maman is at peace,” she whispered back. “She never wanted to be in the ground.”
Swallowing, Jeffrey stared over at Gwendolyn and said nothing further. But what he had said . . . he remembered.
It changed everything.
* * *
* * *
Seven days after his meeting with Minjarra, and Raphael stood atop a mountain that offered a three hundred and sixty–degree view over this corner of Qin’s territory. Green and lush beneath the glowing rays of the setting sun, it was a far cry from the red sands and desert at the heart of this island continent.
“You’ll hold Australia together with Celesta,” he said to Andreas.
The experienced and deadly angel crouched on the edge of the cliff, his wings—a dark amber with filaments of gray—pulled back as he took in the territory now under his command.
Lip curling at Raphael’s words, he glanced up. The pale green–tinged hazel of his gaze was striking against the dark hue of hair he’d cut back to his nape. “The Knife? You’re leaving me alone with Caliane’s Knife?”
Raphael hadn’t had many reasons to smile over the past weeks, but now his lips twitched. “You’ll be fine. Celesta doesn’t murder most people.”
Andreas gave him the finger.
Throwing back his head, Raphael laughed for the first time in what felt like an eon. Many people would have been appalled at Andreas’s lack of respect to his liege, but while Raphael was his archangel, Andreas was also a warrior who’d fought tirelessly beside Raphael. They were friends.
“Celesta isn’t so bad,” he said in the aftermath. “She babysat me once upon a time.”
“That explains why you like women with a penchant for knives,” Andreas said sourly as he rose to his feet. “Did you ever think about that? That she imprinted you to enjoy bloodthirsty women?”
“No, but you’ve opened my eyes.” Celesta had been his favorite babysitter, even though she was rarely called upon to do the task. She hadn’t seemed to realize that small children shouldn’t be doing certain things, so had happily tied a rope to his ankle, then tied the rope to a tree when he’d wanted to dive-bomb a waterfall. The rope was so she could pull him back up if he got too tired to fly there on his own.
Andreas sighed. “I suppose she’ll stay in the other half of this country. It’s a big one. We’ll never have to interact in person.”
Raphael looked at the other man with a bit more interest. “Do you two have a history of which I’m unaware?”
The barest hint of a flush on Andreas’s cheekbones. “Let’s just say the Knife has a taste for young angelic flesh and leave it at that.”
That particular statement could be taken many ways. Celesta, after all, was a vampire. But while he and Andreas were friends, they weren’t close enough friends for him to push it any further. “With the work Aegaeon and I have done to remind the vampiric population that the Cadre is watching, they shouldn’t give you too much trouble. If they do, come down hard. We have no time or room for a softer touch.”
Andreas gave a curt nod. “I heard the Refuge suffered another significant quake yesterday.”
“Worse, it’s spreading. I just got word of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, while another previously dormant volcano in Iceland has begun to spit smoke.” The Mantle was also retreating faster with each day that passed; at this rate, it’d fail in a matter of weeks.