Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 125179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125179 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 501(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Her shoulders sagged. “I hated it.”
“So did I,” mumbled Noah. “Likewise, our fellow Aeons would hate being caged in their own town.”
“It would not truly be an act of mercy,” said Seth. “A cage is still a cage, no matter how comfortable and spacious it is.”
Rima sighed. “You’re right. I just wish things could be different.”
Eve again took in both Cain and Seth. “Would you allow me to help you attempt to break your prison? The power of four Aeons are woven into it. I am not one of them, but perhaps my power could nonetheless aid you all in unraveling it.”
Cain hadn’t expected the offer. It shocked even his creature. She might care for him and Seth, might even love them, but she wasn’t a mother in the typical sense of the word. They didn’t have the sort of bond that would pull at her to protect them.
Plus, Eve was something of a pacifist by nature. To help free the Ancients would also be to indirectly help them launch an attack on her old home. In that sense, she would be an accomplice. And since she had stayed out of all previous wars, preferring to remain neutral, he had thought it would take time to convince her to help them. He’d even been braced for her to refuse point-blank to do so.
“I let you down during the first war.” Eve swallowed. “If I had stood up to Adam, if I had sided with you, perhaps I could have helped. Perhaps I would have instead simply died. In any case, by doing nothing I have always felt that I played a loose part in imprisoning you. The least I can do is assist you in righting that wrong.”
Appreciative of that, Cain dipped his chin. “You hold no blame in this, you have nothing to atone for. That said, we would be grateful for your assistance.”
He wished her words could have moved him somehow. Wished they could have punched through the wall of apathy he’d seemingly erected between them. Wished he could feel something as he looked upon his own mother. But still, he struggled with that.
Noah stroked a hand down the front of his shirt. “I will help as well.”
Cain exchanged a stunned look with Seth.
Rima gaped at her brother. “Noah. I’m not siding with Adam—far from it,” she hurried to assure Cain and Seth. “But I’m also not keen on the idea of Aeon and its last inhabitants suffering for his sins.”
Noah thrust a hand through his hair. “Neither am I, but—”
“The place will be ravaged,” Rima went on. “The people there will be killed.”
“Aeon is already being ravaged—the decay is more prevalent than ever,” Noah pointed out. “And if the Ancients don’t take the war to Aeon, Adam will bring it here. Where we are. And then we could very well die. Not sure about you, but I want to live.”
Rima pressed her lips tight together.
“And you know full well that the Aeons there aren’t all goodness and light,” Noah said to her. “They follow Adam. They always will. It was why we didn’t dare ask if any wanted to leave with us. We didn’t trust that they wouldn’t report it to him.”
Wynter took her napkin from her lap and carefully set it on the table. Her eyes soft, she said to Rima, “I get it. Aeon holds the home you shared with your mother; you hate the thought of it being destroyed.”
Cain blinked, not having looked at the situation from that angle.
“I understand,” his consort went on. “I do. My mom lived there too, for a time.”
“You don’t care for Aeon, though,” Rima pointed out, her voice clipped.
“Because my mom might have spent many of her years there, but she also suffered greatly at the end,” said Wynter. “She was exiled—or, more specifically, marked for death—as I was. Completely paralyzed, she was tossed over the falls where she then drowned, powerless to help herself. So no, I don’t care for Aeon. But I do understand why you so hate the thought of the place meeting its end.”
Detesting the pain in his consort’s voice, Cain rested his hand on her thigh and gave it a comforting squeeze. He knew that part of her anguish came from not realizing until recently that her mother had never truly left Aeon; that her dead body had been so very close all along.
He also knew that there was some guilt mixed in with her hurt. Not only guilt at believing the lie that her mother was alive and in exile. Wynter also felt that some of the responsibility for her mother’s suffering lay with her. Because Davina Dellavale had given her life to spare that of her daughter’s; had pled guilty to bringing a ten-year-old Wynter back from the dead so that no one would know the truth.