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)
“Helps that mine is one hundred percent asshole.” He rubbed his chin over her hair. “No mixed feelings for him on my end. With you . . .”
“Yeah.” She didn’t say she wished he’d have a chance to build bridges with Aegaeon as she had with Jeffrey. Aegaeon had abandoned his son while Illium was just a little boy; Elena, by contrast, had had a father who cared for her for much of her childhood—and even when Jeffrey turned cold and hard, he’d stayed.
Stayed to fight with her. Stayed to be an asshole. Stayed to raise Beth.
He might have let her down in many ways, but he’d never abandoned his family. It was a fragile foundation on which to rebuild their relationship, but it might just be enough.
“Good luck, Ellie.” Eyes of aged gold awash in hope for her as she swept off the balcony—into the cold afternoon air barely lit by the sun. When she glanced back, he raised a hand to her in a wave, the funny and smart blue-winged angel who’d become one of her closest friends and who deserved a life lived free of the shadow of murderous power.
Fine veins of serrated gold.
Her hand fisted, her stomach in free fall.
51
Elena tightened her abdomen in readiness for her arrival at the hospital. She hated the antiseptic smell of the place even more now than she had before Jeffrey’s stay, but she’d learned to grin and bear it. She also knew her father waited for her to visit.
Conflicting with her desire to continue rebuilding their bond was the relentless urgency of the search for Raphael’s part of the Compass, the countdown having narrowed to a matter of days now. But she knew an hour wouldn’t make much difference. Not when she and her archangel had already exhausted every possible option and would be retracing their steps.
The rain crashed into her mind moments later, kissed by the salt of the ocean.
Aegaeon has recovered his subcomponent. It was in the palace he currently occupies, set into a display of decorative blades. That leaves Suyin and I alone who have yet to find anything—Suyin has the challenge of a vast territory, while I have the challenge of a territory so new there are no old places to search.
She could hear the frustration and exhaustion in his voice. While no new disasters had hit the wider world, the Refuge had suffered so many quakes over the past twenty-four hours that the senior team there—created of angels and vampires from across the Cadre’s people—had made the call to evacuate everyone but those who needed to remain.
Included in the latter were people like Keir and Jessamy.
The healer needed to be close to his charges, because a few of the patients in the Medica couldn’t be moved without catastrophic risk, and Jessamy because she was doing everything she could to preserve angelic history.
So far at least, the Medica had remained undamaged.
The Library, too, was still standing, but it was showing signs of an unstable foundation, while the Archives had been damaged enough that Jessamy was boxing up precious records and artifacts as fast as she could. Young couriers were then flying the boxes out to a mountain fort high in Caliane’s territory that was built into the side of a mountain.
Not in use and inaccessible to anyone without wings, with one of Caliane’s squadrons on guard duty, the fort would hold the records safe for the time being. Once Jessamy and her small crew finished with the Archives, she planned to begin packing up the Library, too.
Galen, Naasir, and Trace were all also at the Refuge, doing what they could to further shore up the Medica, since that was the one building that would be near-impossible to fully evacuate. One young angel inside had a spinal cord that was half-severed at the neck. Moving him, even with every modern advancement in the world, could end his life.
Elena began to turn, though the hospital was already within sight. I’ll head back.
No. Go see your father. I, too, am going to stop for the time being—I’ll have a sparring session with Dmitri, hope it helps me clear my mind. There’s no point in going over ground we’ve already covered; it’ll just be a waste of time.
We’ll find it, she said, though she was no longer anywhere near as confident as when they’d begun. It wasn’t that Raphael didn’t have old things in his possession—but he knew where all of those old things were.
A mental kiss against her mind, before Raphael withdrew.
It took effort for her to put their conversation to the side when she reached her father’s room. His visitor numbers were no longer severely restricted now that he was out of the ICU, and these days she often found him in the company of either Gwendolyn, Eve, or Amy.