Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Alexander’s heart clenched. “My mother is thinking of Sleep,” he said to Callie, without waiting for her to respond to his statement about power in the Cadre. “Father will go with her, of course.” Cendrion’s love for Gzrel was as enduring as hers for him.
“You know what I’ve always liked about your parents?” Callie said. “That they’re kind to each other. Did you ever notice? Your mother always makes your father his evening tea, and he always puts out her slippers in the morning so that when she steps out into the garden, her feet won’t be cold.”
Her voice turned contemplative again. “When I was a girl, I thought love meant high romance and great drama, but now I understand that love that lasts is a constellation of small kindnesses.” She put a hand on his shoulder where he remained crouched beside her, his wings on the ice and snow behind them. “You’ll miss them.”
He shrugged, but not hard enough to dislodge her hand—she was one of the few people from whom he’d accept comfort, for they had no imbalance between them, not even now that she was a member of the Cadre. Had he not been so powerful himself, he would have stood as her second. They might butt heads, but they also trusted each other without question.
“It’s foolishness,” he muttered. “I’m no infant or youth. I’m a full-grown man strong in my power.”
“Love has no use-by date, Alex,” Callie murmured. “You’ll love them all the eons of your existence, and you’ll miss them, too. But I think if they Sleep, it won’t be forever, not when they have two sons they so adore. They’ll wake now and then to watch over you. This is their way.”
Alexander couldn’t speak, his heart expanding hugely under the power of her words. He clutched at them a decade later, when his parents told him and Osiris that they would Sleep now. One last hug from his mother’s arms, one last touch on the shoulder from his father, memories he carved into his mind in stone.
“We tried so hard to stay awake for the next step on your journey,” Cendrion murmured to him. “But the tiredness weighs heavy on our bones now, son. We’ll wake in future times to see you in your glory.” A glance over at where Osiris was distracted with talking to Gzrel. “You’ll watch over Osiris? I know he’s your elder, but he becomes lost in his alchemical experiments these days, and we worry—”
“There’s no need, Father,” Alexander reassured the man who’d brought him up with a gentle hand—far too gentle for a child of Alexander’s rebellious bent had Osiris not also taken a hand in his raising. “I’ll make sure my brother is safe and protected, even as he wanders the pathways of the mind.” It was as if their positions in life had been reversed, with him the elder now, watching over his increasingly more cerebral brother.
The last of the tension washed out of his father, his face becoming startlingly youthful.
When he went into Sleep with his beloved Gzrel, it was under the watchful eye of two sons who made sure their parents’ place of Sleep was protected and inaccessible to anyone but the two of them. Afterward, Osiris returned to the island he’d turned into a giant laboratory.
There were no concubines now, only a small number of assistants and other staff.
“I am no longer of the body, little brother,” Osiris had said the last time Alexander and he had spoken on the topic. “I see so much.” A fist thumping into the open palm of his hand. “If only I could make it real.”
“I’d help you if I could, Osiris, but you’ve always been the smarter of the two of us.”
Deep laughter, his brother’s warmth embracing Alexander as it had done when he was a child—and yet there was a near-manic quality to Osiris now, one that unsettled Alexander. “In some ways, brother,” Osiris had said, “and in others you are the master—the strategist no one will ever beat in battle.”
As Alexander flew away from Osiris this momentous day, his thoughts went back to that instant, that conversation, and he had the sudden blinding thought that Zanaya would one day out-strategize him. It should’ve been an infuriating thing to imagine . . . but it wasn’t. Because should she get to that point, she’d be old enough and strong enough that he’d no longer have to fight his compulsion toward her.
Alexander’s entire body burned at the idea of it.
10
It was darkfall by the time Alexander flew into the territory that he “managed” for Esphares—the truth was that he did as he pleased with no oversight now that Akhia-Solay, too, had gone into Sleep. Alexander had been given the land because none of the Cadre wanted him out of their sight. He wondered if they thought he would foment rebellion.