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)
That didn’t mean she had a bland, forgettable face. No. Never that. Her face was arresting, had haunted him for ten years. Lush lips that looked too soft against the sharp cheekbones, hollow cheeks, and clean jawline. Eyes of a light hazel tinted with brown in one light, green in another, so direct it was striking—and then, when you looked deeper, there, the merest glimmer of a yellowish gold in the iris.
Look long enough and you’d convince yourself she wasn’t Psy at all but a changeling of unknown origin.
But Adam didn’t really care about any of that.
He was fighting a rage such as he hadn’t felt since the day his parents’ murder had been ruled an accident. Their murderer had paid a fine. A fucking fine. And the smug bastard had believed he’d gotten away with it.
If Adam’s clan had left it to the Psy, he would have.
Now one of the killer’s accomplices walked toward him in a black suit that was a little worn at the edges paired with a white shirt that she’d buttoned up to the neck, and scuffed black shoes that were closer to trail boots than dress shoes.
Thin, she was thin. Not fragile or weak, however. This was the thin of someone who ate just enough and possibly forgot to eat at all when concentrating on other matters. There was muscle on her, a kind of fluidity to her walk that told him whatever her eating habits, she put time into maintaining her strength.
She’d been softer back then, less akin to a puma ready for the hunt.
He drew in a breath and, though the changeling falcon sense of smell was closer to that of humans than other wild predators, caught a scent that had no threads of metal to it, as happened to those Psy who were so far in their Silence that they were never going to get back out. But her face was expressionless, those distinctive eyes so flat as to be disturbingly lifeless.
When she came to a stop two feet from him, their height difference was enough that she had to tip her head slightly back to meet his gaze, but she did so without flinching. “You were right,” she said in a tone that held nothing but her voice. No emotion, no fragment of personality. “Reagan lied that day in the courtroom.”
Whatever Adam had been expecting her to say, it wasn’t that.
His falcon cocked its head, its talons still pricking the tips of his fingers, but no longer shoving. “Bit late to speak up.” It came out shrapnel wrapped in icy calm; he was no longer the barely eighteen-year-old boy still naive enough to be shocked at the cruelty people could dole out with such ease.
His rage had had time to settle, become a thing of unbending steel.
“Yes,” she said.
Adam flexed his hands at his sides, then curled his fingers back in. “You think it’s that easy? That you just admit liability and it all goes away? I forgive you?”
“No.”
He stared at her, as did his falcon, both parts of his nature weighing up this Psy who’d looked over at him in that courtroom with a shocked gaze that had made him believe she’d stop what was going on, make it right.
But she’d said nothing.
He could no longer fully recall the face of the J who’d actually lied, but her, he remembered. Would always remember.
His muscles grew painfully tight.
“You know he’s dead?” he drawled, watching to see her reaction with a falcon’s focus. “My parents’ murderer.”
“Yes. Wayne Draycott vanished without a trace two years, six months, and four days after he walked out of the courtroom. I kept track.”
He asked the question without ever using his voice.
“Changelings don’t forgive such crimes; I learned that during one of my very first cases.” A direct gaze with nothing behind it that he could read. “Psy might believe we can cover up crimes, avoid justice, but changelings don’t accept the authority of the courts when it comes to crimes against their people—you’ll cooperate for the sake of appearances, and if things are open and fair, you’ll accept the verdict. But this trial wasn’t fair.”
The falcon resettled its wings inside Adam, its eyes emerging through Adam’s humanity as the wildness in him fought to get out, claim vengeance. The falcon’s vision was far sharper than Adam’s human sight—it could see the very pores on Eleri Dias’s skin, catch even the most minute flutter of expression…but there was nothing to catch, nothing to see.
The woman might as well be made of stone.
“You don’t seem concerned about standing in front of a changeling you seem convinced executed a Psy,” he said, well aware his voice wasn’t wholly human any longer.
“Execution is the changeling punishment for premeditated murder. You may have let it go had he been sentenced to the Psy equivalent of psychic and physical imprisonment for life. But he had influential friends, so he walked out of the courtroom a free man—and the second he did so, he signed his death warrant.”