Total pages in book: 362
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
The doll was disturbing.
But the little girl was adorable.
I rarely saw her in her mortal form while awake, but she’d arrived this morning as Ash and I finished breakfast, wearing a simple deep blue cotton gown, her hand held tightly in Reaver’s, and that doll dangling from her other hand.
I glanced at the door, wondering how long Ash would be gone. Shortly after he had finished writing the names of the recently deceased in the Book of the Dead, he’d been summoned to the Pillars of Asphodel. We’d planned to do more training today, and I looked forward to it. I needed the exhaustion—the brain drain—that came from doing something physical.
“I don’t want to comb its hair,” Reaver said. When I looked, a beautiful comb with green and black jewels down its spine lay on the floor between them.
It was a bit too fancy for a child, and I had a feeling it had probably belonged to her mother.
“Brush!” she demanded excitedly, thumping the doll’s head off the floor.
Reaver curled his lip. “I’m not touching that thing. It’ll fall apart, and you’ll blame me.”
“Nuh-uh.” She bopped the doll’s head off Reaver’s leg.
Reaver moved his leg away. “You were supposed to comb your hair. Not your doll’s.”
I arched a brow as I eyed Jadis. Clearly, she had not.
Her hair reminded me of mine. It looked like it had been caught in a cyclone. The long, waist-length brown locks were tangled and most definitely knotted.
She stopped banging the doll off Reaver’s knee. “No.”
“Nek told you to brush your hair.” Reaver picked up the comb and handed it to her. Leaning back against the base of the settee, he folded his thin arms. “If you don’t, you’re gonna get in trouble.”
Her chin dipped, and her eyes narrowed until only a thin slit of those vertical pupils was visible.
Oh, no.
I recognized that look, even if she was in her mortal form.
The hand that held the comb cocked back, and like a girl after my own heart, she threw it without an ounce of hesitation.
Snapping forward, I caught the comb before it smacked into Reaver’s face. “Let’s not do that.”
Jadis’s head swung in my direction, and I saw big, fat tears welling up in her diamond-bright eyes.
“How about I get the knots out?” I suggested, patting the spot on the floor before me. “I promise I won’t pull on your hair.”
The little draken glanced between me and her doll and then crawled over, sitting cross-legged in front of me. I guessed that was the go-ahead since Jadis was far less talkative in this form and much clearer when using the te’lepe—which I supposed made sense since it was more about communicating her thoughts instead of finding the right words to go with them.
Hoping I was half as good as Ash at doing this, I separated her hair into three sections and carefully began combing the tangles free. There were a lot of things I could be doing right now. I needed to practice shadowstepping and work on using the essence for more precise, delicate tasks since I still struggled with moving a glass without shattering it. I could have handed the young draken over to Aios and went to train with Bele since she was around, but gods, it wasn’t that long ago that I had feared I would never see the younglings again. Spending time with them was just as important as anything else.
As I worked on Jadis’s hair, she let out these little peals of giggles that tugged at my lips. It took me far longer than it should have to get the knots out, but as Reaver distracted her with the creepy doll, wagging it back and forth, my thoughts wandered. I wasn’t sure how I ended up thinking about the father I’d never known. It sort of snuck up on me and then struck me that I could visit him.
My soul felt like it left my body at the mere thought.
I didn’t need the vadentia to warn me that going into the Vale to find him—an act far too easy for me to do so as the true Primal of Life—was something the Fates would frown upon.
The dead were dead.
The living were alive.
Any interaction would upset the balance. But could I at least see him? Not speak to him, but just discover if the portrait of him was accurate? Maybe even hear his voice? I imagined it would be the same as it had been while he was alive. I didn’t see any harm in that.
I pressed my lips together as I ran the comb through Jadis’s hair. Either way, it wasn’t something I could do now. It would have to keep for later.
“Thank you,” Jadis said in her singsong, little-girl voice.
“You’re welcome, sweetheart.”
Her face broke out in a wide, beautiful smile, and then she planted the wettest, sweetest kiss on me. Gods, I melted right there, and even more when she scrambled toward Reaver and curled up in his lap. He didn’t shove her away. Instead, he moved the doll in tune with the melody she hummed under her breath. It was just as rare to see the two of them like this as it was to see her in her mortal form.