Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Be quiet unless you want to end up on a slab, had come the clipped mental command, the man she trusted most in the world staring straight ahead at the judge without expression.
But the memory is wrong! She’d been taught all her life that Js never lied, that they were the truth sayers, the final arbiters in a courtroom.
It was the fulcrum of her being.
The merest glance at her after Reagan finished the broadcast. If you can sense it, then you can do it. A kind of exhaustion in his telepathic voice. Never, ever reveal that, Eleri. I did, and now here we stand.
She’d heard a commotion behind her even as she struggled to comprehend this thing that threatened to splinter her entire sense of reality.
She wasn’t supposed to turn, wasn’t supposed to make any kind of contact with the families of the victims, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. Heart yet racing, she’d shifted on her heel and met the pale tawny brown eyes of the eighteen-year-old boy named Adam who’d smiled at her in a way that had made her world tilt sideways.
That Adam was gone.
This one had dark, dark eyes ringed by a feral yellow and was being held back by two older men as he screamed, “Liar! You fucking liar!”
His grief was palpable, his rage a heat she could almost sense against her skin…and the truth of his words absolute.
Reagan had lied.
Eleri hadn’t known Js could lie, hadn’t known they could change memories. Not until that day in a courtroom in chaos as bailiffs rushed to control a changeling whose talons had thrust out of his skin as his eyes morphed into those of a falcon.
That same changeling stood in front of her SUV on this lonely road.
And the rage that pulsed off him…it was potent, more mature than that of the boy he’d been, a thing that had grown stronger with time.
Back when she’d still understood hope, she’d hoped this day would never come, that she could make it to the end of her life without losing the final shreds of the dream she’d never been meant to have, the whispers of a future that could never be hers. But it had come, of course it had.
The price always had to be paid.
Turning off the car, she opened the door and stepped out, ready to face the reckoning that had been written in the blood-soaked bodies of Adam Garrett’s murdered parents.
Chapter 5
To the winds we scatter the ashes of Taazbaa’ and Cormac, clanmates and parents of two cherished fledglings who mourn their loss and celebrate their love.
She was the child of my womb, the oh-so-wanted daughter who held my mate’s hand as she learned to walk, the generous and sweet friend who brought light into the lives of her clanmates, the mother who played with Saoirse and Adam with the mischievousness of a child—and the woman who loved her mate with all her dancer’s spirit.
He was the man who loved her and their fledglings so well that we could do nothing but love him, too, the falcon from a distant green land who made everyone in the clan laugh with his humor, the son who filled his parents with pride each and every day—and the father who was an oak, solid and strong, for Saoirse and Adam as they grew.
Fly now, beloveds, your wings entwined for all eternity. Your fledglings, your families, and your clan will ever remember your laughing spirits, the memory of you etched onto our bones and into the walls of our home.
—The last eulogy for Taazbaa’ and Cormac Garrett, spoken by Aria, wing leader of WindHaven, prior to their committal to the skies (3 May 2073)
The past ten years had sheared her to the bone, Adam thought.
There’d been a softness to her face in the courtroom, not a real plumpness—the Psy hadn’t permitted their children to buck the mandated values of perfection back then. Those who’d broken Silence since had shared that under the protocol, children were put on a regimen of nutrients designed to give them the exact right amount of fuel for their bodies.
No candy slipped to them by a favorite aunt or uncle.
No hot chocolates on a cold night.
No treats to celebrate a birthday.
So no, she hadn’t been plump. She’d just had that hint of childish softness to her cheeks and her chin that even a Silent regime couldn’t erase. Her dark brown—almost black—hair, however, had been tightly scraped back into a braid, not a strand out of place. No makeup on her face, the pale brown of her skin smooth and without flaw.
He had no idea of her ethnic background, her features such that she could’ve as easily slipped into a South American family portrait as she could an Iranian or Indian one. Word was the Psy mixed and matched genes for strong psychic abilities, so she was likely a combination of multiple lines that were themselves equally complex.