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)
He’d refused that, because no one wanted Aria as anything but the leader of WindHaven, but he had agreed that Naia—already WindHaven’s healer at the time—would monitor her blood bond with Aria to ensure no possibility of a delay in an emergency.
“That’s our deal, kiddo.” His grandmother’s thin but strong fingers against his jaw. “If the bond begins to flicker, you step into position as wing leader.”
Truth was that Aria should’ve still been alive. Yes, she’d given birth to Adam’s mother at forty-five, but she’d still only been a hundred at her death. Most changelings of her generation were healthy and strong for another two, even three decades.
“Losing her daughter and the son-in-law she adored wounded her to the core,” his mother’s best friend, Jenesse, had said to Adam after the clan scattered Aria’s ashes to the winds. “Her heart was broken, as was your grandfather’s. They kept going because she knew her duty as wing leader—and he would never abandon her to that duty alone.”
Adam’s grandfather, Luis, had been a man as patient and calm as Aria was a storm force. He’d loved her with a quiet devotion to his last breath—and he’d stood by her through all the seasons of life, as he’d stood by Adam and Saoirse…until his heart just couldn’t take it anymore. He’d gone to sleep one day and never woken.
“But duty alone wouldn’t have kept either Aria or Luis here so many years,” Jenesse had added. “That was you and Saoirse and those babies of Saoirse’s. I think if Luis hadn’t passed away, Aria would have fought on, but losing him? It was too much, Adam. Even for that powerful, generous heart that sheltered WindHaven for so very long.”
Adam had known that, his bond with his grandmother one that wouldn’t permit her to go without giving him warning, but hearing Jenesse speak the words had fractured his heart all the same.
The night after his grandmother’s funeral, Jacques had sat with Adam for hours on a remote plateau while the stars glittered above. As those stars faded into the coming dawn, he’d clapped Adam on the shoulder, and said, “For life, Adam. The two of us. To the end.”
The memory of Jacques’s deep voice meshed with that of his mother.
Just wait until you have a fledgling. I’ll be sitting right there with a glass of wine watching you lose your mind as your baby bird flies the nest.
Adam had lost too many people. He couldn’t bear to lose his best friend, too.
• • •
Eleri couldn’t sleep.
Her sleepless nights had begun to increase over the past weeks, though she wasn’t as bad as Bram and could still snatch a couple of hours here and there without medicinal assistance.
Today, she got up, showered, and dressed, though it was only four in the morning. No point in pretending she might fall back asleep—she wouldn’t, not given the message that had been waiting for her when she returned from the site of the falcon shooting.
Eleri, you received another letter from the Sandman. Sent to the task force HQ as usual. We’re processing it now, but I’m attaching a scan for you. —Tim
Senior detective Tim Xiao had worked with her many times over the years, their relationship built on mutual respect, but she knew that even he thought she was going off the rails with her obsession with Raintree.
He’d said so to her face.
It had, she knew, been an attempt to help. Tim didn’t want her to tank her career. But Tim, for all his experience, was human and had no comprehension of what happened to Js, why they tended to “retire” so early and vanish off the face of the planet.
Eleri didn’t intend to educate him.
He was a good cop, would’ve been a good friend to her if she’d had the capacity for friendship any longer. There was no point in bringing him into her hell—better he think she’d just “lost the plot,” as he’d put it, than that he realize this was the last throw of the dice for her.
Eleri had no need to protect a future career.
Once dressed, she made herself a glass of nutrients because her personal comm device had a flashing alarm that told her she’d missed two doses. It tasted like nothing, and she had no reaction to that, either.
At times, a distant part of her brain tried to scream, to tell her that she should be angry about her utter lack of response to the world. But that part was so deeply muffled by the wall of numbness induced by multiple reconditionings that she was barely even aware of it.
“I envy you sometimes,” Saffron had said once. “That you’ve disassociated to that degree. The rage that burns in me…I’ll go insane before I ever hit Exposure.”
She’d shaken her head almost immediately afterward, the intense red of her hair a shock of color against the gray winter’s day. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It must be terrible for you, to see our people experiencing life without emotional chains only to be unable to participate in it.”