Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Auden’s mind faded out again, her thoughts filled with images of large jungle cats…and flashes of things she’d done for which she had only snapshots, no context to the memories. Was that her? Sitting at a meeting table? Being hooked up to a machine that scanned her belly? Lying on a table while…while…
Almost all her thoughts slipped out of her grasp.
Only one remained.
A large, shimmering fragment that rippled with a single word: pregnant.
Then the word vanished, forgotten, while another memory floated to the surface: a comm call with a business associate. She’d attended it. Not today, or yesterday, or even two weeks ago. But at some point.
She hadn’t had to do much, mostly just show her face while Charisma undertook the negotiations. Her job, she’d understood, was to ensure the cutthroat businessman believed that the family had a powerful heir waiting in the wings.
Not her father’s family. Her mother’s.
Scott was her mother’s last name. Henry had used it publicly to foster the image of unity he and Shoshanna had agreed to portray as part of their agreement to work together. He’d been a Jackson by birth: Henry Ignatius Jackson.
“A Scott must lead these negotiations,” Charisma had told her. “A direct line descendant. Not a secondary branch as applies to your uncle and cousin. You are from the first bloodline, and it’s important that you start to become visible now that you’re in your twenties. It will assure a smooth transfer of power in the future.”
Auden didn’t know why any of that mattered when Shoshanna ran everything, but her brain hadn’t been working well enough for her to ask Charisma to explain. So she’d played her part, spoken the words that Charisma telepathed her to speak during the introduction phase, and then she’d sat back.
No one had trusted her to actually undertake the negotiations.
“Won’t he be insulted I’m not interacting with him?” Auden had asked Charisma in a rare moment of clarity.
The other woman had stared straight at her. “Astonishing. Your mind truly is returning to its previous acuity.” Then she’d answered Auden’s question. “No. It is understood that you are a young woman who is learning the ropes.
“Your presence, however, makes it clear that you do intend to take over when your mother is ready to retire—and they are used to dealing with me as her proxy, so there is nothing unusual in that. Everyone understands that the former Councilor is a very busy woman.”
Auden’s mind had begun to fade in and out toward the end of the meeting, and she’d had to fight to hold on to reality with a grip as sharp and hard as the claws of the man to whom she’d spoken in the forest today.
Topaz. Feral yellow-green. Glints of gold in that tumbled hair.
Big frame…but fluid movements. Feline.
Was this a memory? How could it be a memory? What reason would she have to stand face-to-face with a changeling in a forest? Her upper arm pulsed, an echo of fingers hot and strong holding on to her.
Threads unraveling, the memory being eaten away at the edges.
A faint growl, those yellow-green eyes following her into nothingness.
Chapter 4
Failure is total. The malfunction has burned lesions into her brain. Probability of full recovery is negligible.
—Dr. Nils Verhoeven in report to Shoshanna and Henry Scott (11 November 2075)
AUDEN WOKE IN her bed, dressed in a nightgown of plain white that reminded her of a hospital smock. Looking at her bedside table, she took in the date and time as projected by the small device attached to the wall just above.
Three days since the day she might’ve come face-to-face with a feline changeling.
Auden was used to losing time, but of late, since she’d begun to regain a semblance of coherence, she usually had basic awareness of what she’d done through the day. Fuzzy and faded and confused memories, but memories.
But when she looked back through the past three days, all she got was a blank.
Yet her legs and arms ached as she got up, as she moved. Not the ache of pain. The ache of exercise.
Rising, she padded across the carpet and into her bathroom suite. Her arm brushed the inside left wall to bring up a soft light even as she continued on to stand in front of the mirror. Her hair was in braids tight to her skull. The work was clean and precise, intricate; it would’ve taken three hours at the very least.
Yet she had no memory of strands tugging at her scalp.
As she had no memory of making the decision to adopt this style. It wasn’t her. Her father’s mother had taught her that it was an excellent option to protect her hair from breakage, and had made her wear her hair that way through her childhood.
No choice. No discussion.
Perhaps that was why adult Auden never utilized it. She liked to pull her hair back into a single knot, or—when she was at home, with no outsiders around—to leave it out but pushed back from her face using sleek hairclips.