Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“They’re prepared,” he echoed. “We’ll get there in time.” He knew the couple needed them—and they needed to be there for the two.
Naasir had been in Dmitri’s heart since the day Raphael brought the feral little boy to the Refuge, and in the time since Andromeda had become Naasir’s, she’d also become an integral part of Dmitri and Honor’s family.
Though Andromeda’s relationship with Lailah and Cato was far better than it had been during Charisemnon’s reign, some wounds while healed, couldn’t be forgotten. Andromeda might never be at a place where she wanted the two by her side at such a vulnerable moment in her life—though she’d made it clear that once she’d given birth, her parents were not just welcome, but lovingly invited to visit.
Lailah and Cato, meanwhile, treasured their daughter’s willingness to allow them to be a part of their grandchildren’s lives. The two were yet on their own journey toward true peace, but had seemed genuinely happy the last time Dmitri had seen them.
“What if it happens before we reach them?” he found himself saying, remembering the second time Ingrede had given birth—how fast it had been, too fast for the midwife to get there. It was Dmitri who’d caught the slippery body of his newborn daughter in his arms, his heart thunder and tears running down his face.
She’d been so small, their Caterina, such a fragile life that had never had a chance to bloom.
“Hey.” Honor’s hand on his, his wife seeing right through to his soul. “Remember what we said.”
If I got a second chance, don’t you think our babies must have, too?
Swallowing hard, he squeezed her hand, his lover who had fought death itself to come back to him. “Yeah.”
“As for Andi, she’s got Keir and Jessamy with her,” Honor reminded him. “Neither she nor Naasir wanted us there too early.” A scowl in her voice. “Andi said our hovering added to Naasir’s might make her homicidal.”
Dmitri grunted. “I don’t hover.”
“Neither do I,” Honor said right before she laughed. “It’s possible we’re a wee bit protective, but who wouldn’t be? No one even knew if they’d be able to have children together.”
Nobody had been able to predict what might happen when the only known chimera in the world mated with an angel, but Dmitri had hoped, knowing how much Naasir ached for “cubs.” Keir had also been hopeful, because while Naasir did drink blood, he was no vampire. He was a whole different species, a true immortal akin to angelkind…and he had once been a feral boy who’d ingested the heart of an Ancient.
“I ate my enemy and it made me strong,” a young Naasir had told Dmitri once, his teeth bared. “I’m not sorry.”
Dmitri had shrugged. “Me either. Good job.”
Wings of blue in his peripheral vision, a sparkle of light from the other side of the vehicle that was going at speeds that turned the world into a blur. Two more warriors he’d known as children, grown until he could no longer see them as children. Funny how that had never happened with Naasir. Dmitri saw the warrior, but he also saw the boy who’d liked to linger on high shelves, just waiting to pounce on his unsuspecting prey, the boy who’d once eaten the school’s bunny.
And the boy who’d run out to greet him, shouting, “Dmitri! Dmitri!” until Dmitri’s heart broke from the memories of another boy who’d run into his arms. But catching Naasir’s pelting form, holding this living, breathing child close, it had healed him as much as it had healed Naasir.
“We have an escort.”
Said escort kept them company all the way to the airport that housed the high-speed jet. The flat, triangular vehicle with no apparent seams and no wheels was as different from the planes of yesteryear as those planes had been from blimps, but the verbiage stuck.
Getting out of the car after the system inside brought it to a smooth stop, he pointed at Illium. “Look after her. One scratch and I’ll pluck your feathers.”
“You better send us photos!” Raphael’s first general yelled as Dmitri and Honor ran onto the tarmac to enter the jet.
Once inside, Dmitri looked out through the sleek windows that appeared black from the outside to see Aodhan leaning on the other side of the red bullet of the car, the light of him dazzling as he waved…and his happiness even brighter.
Their Sparkle had come back piece by piece.
He wasn’t who he’d once been, wasn’t the boy who’d sketched a shirtless Dmitri eating an apple one lazy afternoon, but that was all right. Dmitri was no longer the farmer who’d courted Ingrede, either, but he was no less for it.
The flight felt endless no matter its speed, their nerves taut. It was at times like this that he almost wished the scholars who insisted that transportation by teleportation was a viable future goal weren’t as deluded as the alchemists of the past.