Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
His frustrated huff made everyone smile. “Yes. You’re Jackson’s family, so…I think of you as mine as well.”
“Me too,” Simon affirmed. “I feel the same about everyone.”
“That’s great and all,” Leith replied irritably, needing, as usual, to get us back on track. “And I appreciate the kumbaya moment, but that doesn’t answer the question of why we didn’t notice that Deidre’s people weren’t with us or hear them yelling. I mean, I would’ve been screaming my head off if the roles were reversed. So what kept them from coming with us?”
“As I said,” Raphael clarified, “my portal senses that you all, for lack of a better word, belong to me. You’re mine, and therefore remain at my side crossing planes. I am the rock you all cleave to; we can’t be parted. I have no ties to the others, so they couldn’t pass through. It’s as simple as that.”
“But you weren’t positive of that until now?”
“I thought maybe my power would still allow them to come. I mean, there’s no manual, right? It’s sort of hit or miss.”
“And why couldn’t we hear them?”
“Whenever you cross from one plane to another, you can’t hear a thing, even if it was right in front of you. Because even though you can see the two places, they’re actually separated by immense time and space.”
“Are all kyries so well informed?” Julian queried.
“We walk in between realms,” Raphael said matter-of-factly. “Of course we know everything.”
“Of course.” Julian chuckled.
“I can tell you the secrets of the universe,” he boasted, and I couldn’t help smiling at him.
Ryan exhaled sharply. “So now what, you and Jackson will hunt Moira alone?”
His words sobered us all up quickly.
“I don’t see another option,” I told him. “Do you?”
“No,” Ryan agreed. “And I’m sorry.”
“Let’s focus on this,” Raphael directed, and we all stopped talking as the ground that had been like smooth marble suddenly changed to white gravel. “We’re coming to the part where we’re going to get sucked through a wormhole, and you have to prepare yourselves.”
He’d told us this the night before. That it was like base-jumping, except instead of falling, we’d be pulled. There would be a feeling in our chests, and then we’d be off. He said to cross our arms and not open them until we touched down.
I had been skydiving years ago, and it was like that, the yank of the parachute when it opened, a catching, except this hit my chest, was suddenly inside, and then I was wrenched off my feet and traveling forward fast, very fast, and I could feel the wind on my face. There was nothing to look at and estimate how fast it was, no buildings or trees, no sky, just this feeling of air rushing over me. I was afraid of what stopping would look like, but suddenly the light was too bright, and I closed my eyes.
The next moment I found myself on my back, squinting up at Raphael. “What happened?”
He waggled his eyebrows at me. “That last step is a doozy.”
“Ass,” I muttered under my breath.
“You can take those off,” he told me, and I noted that he’d removed his goggles and they were hanging around his neck.
Sitting up, I saw that we were on the side of a wide road that people were walking on both ways. The grass I was lying on was soft, and when I removed my goggles, I took in a deep, rich indigo sky with big, white, fluffy clouds but no sun as far as I could see.
“This is weird,” I told Raphael.
“This is the third heaven. It’s always like this. I prefer Cerviel’s fifth heaven because she includes seasons, and I would miss those. Anahel likes it this way, so here we are.”
He helped me to my feet, gave me a kiss, and then we joined the four others. I was startled to see that Julian who, I realized now, had looked tired and drawn for weeks, at the moment appeared just as he had when I first met him.
“Holy shit,” I said, gesturing at him. “Jules, you feel okay?”
He nodded, turning away for a moment to wipe quickly under his eyes. “I feel great. I hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I felt like me, not tired or depleted, not in a fog, until I opened my eyes here and—thank you, Raph.”
My mate smiled at him.
Simon cleared his throat. “My lesion is gone too, like it was never there, and I’m so thankful, but I thought you said it just wouldn’t get any bigger, Raph. I didn’t get from you that it would disappear.”
He shrugged those wide shoulders of his. “It’s hard to know for sure what would happen. But the person who’ll know is Anahel, so we need to get to his home. We’ll bypass the hall of his Throne, which won’t be hard.”