Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
“I was in prison. For two hundred years. Spare me your version of suffering.”
“We have suffered, too.” She gestured about her. “This estate was attacked by the lessers. We hid for three nights after they slaughtered our servants and ransacked us—”
“Yes, this shit looks sooooo messy. Wow.”
Her regal head lifted. “Your language. Please.”
“By all means, do correct me on that. Because you’ve gotten so many other things dead right.”
She cleared her throat. “However did you find release?”
Like this was a formal gathering and she was inquiring about plans for the festival season.
“I escaped.” As she recoiled, Kane shook his head. How did she think prison worked? “You ruined my life.”
“We did not intend to. And I am honestly sorry.”
The strangest thing was, he believed that. He believed, down in her soul, she was sorry. She just had absolutely no frame of reference for the implications of what she and her bloodline had done.
“My mahmen is dead,” she said. “My brother, too. He died in the raids. He was defending his property. I live here alone. I never mated.”
No, you never did, he thought. Even when she’d been with him, she hadn’t really been a shellan.
“I have to go,” he heard himself say.
“Kane…”
“Shut up, Cordelhia. Just stop talking.”
“But of course,” she retorted in an icy tone. “Allow me to escort you—”
“No,” he said roughly. “I’ll see myself out.”
He had a thought he would go to the front door, and do it properly. But that was a misfire of the old ways.
Kane went back to the French door she had opened upon seeing him standing outside her house. As he reached for the handle, he glanced back.
“They’re all gone, then,” he heard himself say. “Your family? What of your brother’s young?”
“They were lost in the raids as well.” Her voice choked up. “So, alas, it is only me. And I came back to this house after the difficulties with you and my sister because I have always favored it.”
Thank the Virgin Scribe his aunt was gone unto the Fade, Kane thought. She would have been destroyed by all this.
“You will not see me again.” He stepped out. “And lock this door behind me. You better keep protecting yourself from the real world.”
“There is no reason to be rude.”
“Goodbye, Cordelhia.”
Outside, he looked down into the flower bed. He’d managed to plant his boots in the exact same position they’d been in when he’d peered through the glass.
There was a subtle click behind him and he glanced over his shoulder at the French door that had been closed on him. The female he had thought he loved was standing on the other side, staring out. He wasn’t sure whether she saw him or not.
He didn’t care.
Intending to dematerialize, he closed his eyes. But there was no way he could focus to scatter himself—
Abruptly, Kane’s head cranked to the right as a scent was carried over to him on the breeze.
“Nadya…?”
* * *
Nadya had intended to leave the moment she saw the elegant female dressed in pale yellow race out and throw her arms around Kane. But emotions were the most powerful, invisible source of energy on the planet, and so she was felled by sensations that were not physical in the slightest.
No one had stabbed her in the heart.
Though she certainly felt that way.
Faced with the mated pair’s embrace, she had blindly walked off, but she hadn’t made it very far. When she’d passed a wrought iron bench that sat against the brick wall of what she assumed was a very formal garden, she’d fallen into its cold, hard palm.
The next thing she knew, Kane was standing in front of her.
As she looked at him, she discovered that the cloud cover overhead was breaking up some and the moon was making an appearance. Measuring its position, she was stunned to find that there was still some night left.
She felt as though it was time for dawn to arrive and burn her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“How is your shellan?” She put her hand up. “I saw the reunion, actually. I’m so happy for you—”
“That was no reunion.”
“Oh, so she ran into someone else’s arms. My apologies.” She touched her eye. “My vision is bad.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His words were dead, his tone level to the point of being stony. And as she searched his face, it was that of a stranger.
“Why did you follow me,” he said dully.
“I didn’t.”
Shaking his head, he looked back at the house. And remained silent.
“Allow me to spare you excuses.” She got up. “I do have a question, though. Was anything you told me true? Or was it all a delusion—or something that didn’t matter because I’m a commoner.”
As she put the demand out there, she wasn’t sure whether she was talking about what he’d told her in the last couple of nights… or what had come out of his mouth back when he’d been hovering on the brink of death. What she was certain about was that the female who had run into his arms had been his mate, and that she was alive and well.