Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Dropping to his haunches, he grabbed Whisper’s jaws, careful not to catch his sensitive whiskers. “Look at that face. You know exactly what I’m saying and remember when we first met, don’t you? You know I would never hurt you and also know that you were destined for great things.”
“So you knew he was going to be given to me?” Lucien’s face was unreadable.
“Of course. He was tailor-made for you. A friend that would never leave you—for a long time anyway.”
Lucien’s entire body went stony. “Then that means you knew about me. About what I was.”
With a soft sigh, Frank straightened and nodded. “Not even through the door and you’re already asking the hard questions. But yes...I know you. I know everything about you. I’ve known about you your entire life. And we’ve met, not that you would remember.”
“Tell me,” Lucien snapped.
Frank nodded, not getting flustered or rushed. I supposed after years of dealing with the board, employees, and the demands of my workaholic parents, nothing fazed him anymore, even standing cramped in a little building on a glacier.
“Seeing as you’re keen to put all the cards on the table, let’s get the glaringly obvious stuff out of the way, shall we? And then we can all be friends.”
Cracking his knuckles as if he was about to enter a punching match instead of delivering facts, Frank said, “I know who you are and why Marcus Ward requested us to provide you with a mental health companion. I know the base ability of your Requiem anomaly is yang, which means your emotions wield fire but can also feed on other forms of energy. Including, but not limited to, sunlight, electrical currents, other creatures’ lifeforces, and even strong emotional states like rage, lust, and violence. Unlike Rook who is the exact opposite.”
He glanced at me. “Your R gene is yin, little snowflake. That means you’ve always fed off ice, moonlight, and...as morbid as it sounds...death.”
I choked on a breath as Lucien stiffened.
Not waiting for our response, Frank studied Lucien as if he could see everything he’d just listed percolating beneath his skin. “In simple terms, you’re a living spark with a volatile temper, while Rook is your calm harbour thanks to her yin characteristics. Rook can soothe you, but when you were younger, you needed to be kept alive, rather than sedated, so when Marcus phoned me to say you weren’t coping as a boy, I knew you would require an equally strong yang companion. Something you could siphon energy off on those days you were in pain.”
He shrugged almost distractedly, his thoughts back in the past. “No other mammal apart from large predators would work. And all cats—lions, cheetahs, leopards etc—only have a lifespan of early twenties in captivity which wouldn’t be long enough. Sure, you could’ve been given another animal once Whisper passed on, but the emotional devastation of losing him might very well have triggered an ascension that would kill you.”
“So you were working with the very man who trapped and harvested me all this time?” Lucien spat.
“Excuse me?” Frank’s eyebrows disappeared into his hair. “He...he was harvesting you?”
“Oh, please. Don’t act like you didn’t know when you’ve just clearly proved you know everything.”
Genuine horror filled Frank’s weathered face. “That can’t be. He was supposed to be your guardian once your parents passed away. He said he loved you like a son. That was why you were enlisted in the program to begin with—to heal your heart defect and keep you alive. When he learned that the R gene was breaking you, he said he’d do anything to take away your pain.”
“He was a liar,” Lucien hissed. “A manipulative bastard who wore a thousand faces to get what he wanted. I was imprisoned for twenty years. I was kept weak and hurting. They inserted a vitalsync core to—”
“Vitalsync core?” Frank cut in. “What’s that?”
“This.” Lucien wrenched his shirt aside, revealing the warped piece of metal that vanished each time we slipped into the dreamscape and reappeared each time we woke. “This poisoned me every fucking moment of every fucking day.”
“But...” Frank glanced between us. “If you were imprisoned, then...how did you meet? How on earth did you find each other after all this—?”
“I’ve tried telling you there are forces in this world that you just don’t mess with, Frank,” Dillon muttered where he waited in the lift. “Yet you didn’t believe me.”
Frank whirled on Dillon. “I’m not in the mood for your metaphysical theories, Brooks. I don’t care how many times we’ve argued about those forces, life follows certain rules.”
“And that rule was fate.” Dillon smirked and cocked his chin at me. “From the very moment that little flight risk started travelling the world, she seemed to be chasing something. I thought she was looking for inner peace, but...she was searching for something else—even if she didn’t know it.”