Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Maybe later on, when the grief wasn’t so fresh, it would be a solace to look into them. Right now, it was a dagger straight into her heart.
Going across the grand and glorious space, she had a thought that she should eat something.
A thought that she should change out of the robe.
A thought… about something else, something practical, that likewise went right out of her head.
Lying down next to George, she put L.W. to her chest and let the tears fall. Then again, she couldn’t have stopped them if she’d tried.
Shifting her stare over to Wrath’s pillow, she moved the thing out of the way. There, under where he had put his head for all those days, a black dagger was pressed into the mattress.
She remembered back to their beginning, when he had come to her at her old apartment and told her that he was what she needed. He had been terrifying and beautiful—and also the explanation, finally, as to why she had always felt so apart from everyone around her.
He’d been the trailhead to her true identity, to the father she had always wanted to know, to her community.
How was he gone.
Even after the first night and day alone, and now after the funeral, she still could not get a part of her brain to comprehend that he was dead, that she would never hold him, or smell him, or hear his voice or laugh again. No more heavy shitkickers pounding the way into this suite. No more masculine beauty arching back under the shower to wash his long hair.
No more a whole.
Only a lonely half.
She supposed the fact that she didn’t want to go on was typical. But just because things happened to other people, that others had shared some or all of what you were feeling, did not lessen the impact when you were the one going through the experience.
Collective grief was not subject to the law of diminishing returns.
As she lay alone and contemplated the years ahead, she didn’t know how she was going to do it. She had thought a lot in the last twenty-four hours about how she had to live for L.W., and she liked to think she would embrace the only purpose she had, but she really could have used a sign—
The knock was soft and she closed her eyes, debating whether she could pretend she was not in. But like the entire household hadn’t watched her go up the stairs?
“Yes,” she croaked out.
The door slowly opened, and she thought it was probably Fritz. The doggen was having a terrible time of it. From the moment Wrath had pushed him out of the way of that bomb at the back door of the Audience House to the text he’d sent out to the Brotherhood as soon as he had come around on the ground… to the funeral preparations and the ceremony itself… the butler was suffering almost more than anyone else, for he blamed himself.
Even though it was absolutely not his fault—
Beth frowned and lifted her head. “Rahvyn?”
As the mysterious, silver-haired female stood in the doorway to the bejeweled suite, there was the strangest energy pouring off of her in invisible waves, the effect buffering across the space, distorting the air or perhaps the room itself.
I need you to trust me, she said in a deep voice.
Even though she did not move her lips.
A feeling of complete disassociation unplugged Beth from her body. Which wasn’t hard to do given how numb she was.
Trust me, the female said without speaking. When you are of despair, and even though you do not know me, you must trust me.
With a sudden surge of motivation, Beth found herself nodding. “All right. I will.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Well, the demon Devina thought, she was almost packed up.
As she looked around her lair, she regarded all the empty racks and the occasional empty hanger that had fallen on the floor. She had done the work herself, needing something to occupy her hands and mind.
Jesus, movers were not fucking paid enough.
Walking over to the kitchen area, she doubled-checked that the cabinets were empty—not that she’d had much in them, because outside of that stretch when she’d been on the human heart diet, she didn’t cook a lot. Fridge was empty, again, not that she ate here much. The tub and toilet areas were good to go, the drawers of the little storage compartments cleaned out.
Everything was carefully set in U-Haul boxes. Now, those she’d conjured, because who the fuck needed to lug back all that cardboard physically? Likewise, the truck waiting at the loading dock was an out-of-her-ass manifestation because she had not been in the mood to deal with the reservation process, even if she could do it online.
Staring over at the lineup of those boxes—there had to be fifty or sixty of them—she thought about the hours it had taken to get all her haute couture sorted and packaged. In a way, it had been nice, the handling of everything she loved. It felt… grounding in the midst of her pain.