Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
A classical piece by Doriana was playing, all sorrowful strings and plaintive winds, assisting me greatly in literally wallowing in my self-pity.
I heard the chimes of my Palm telling me I had an incoming comm, something that had happened a good deal since I left my parents’ house.
So far, I hadn’t answered. They had all been comms from my mom, which turned to text comms, and those I answered, assuring her I was all right (when I was not).
No comms from my father, but then again, I was an experienced hand with this.
Dad pulled some shit; Mom smoothed it over.
I’d always felt kind of bad for her, because that was an important (but it had to be frustrating) part of her role in our lives. Though, it wasn’t like she didn’t know what she was in for when she married a demon.
However, if this was her, it meant she was still worried about me, so I needed to lie some more to make her feel better.
I released my straw and called, “Accept comm, audio only.”
“Catla?” Gayle called when the comm engaged.
Damn, it wasn’t Mom.
I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, even my Gayle.
Too late now.
“Hey,” I greeted.
“Are you all right? How did the meeting go?”
“Not great. Tanyn was there.”
“Oh my gods. Seriously?”
“Seriously. And I was late, of course, so Dad dressed me down, brutally, right in front of him,” I shared.
Gayle, who was half fae, half human, not only knew demons because she’d been one of my two besties since we were in single digits, but because she’d lived among them her whole life. We lived in Night’s Fall, which was a shifter realm, but all the realms were fully integrated, unlike ancient times.
Thus, she knew what that meant, and her stunned silence said she understood just how far my father had leapt over the line.
“And our compatibility trial is happening the weekend after this one,” I continued.
“By all the levels of the hells,” she breathed.
Mm-hmm…she knew what all of this meant.
“So I have a text comm into Bash asking if I can meet him at his place tomorrow after work so I can break things off with him while I do that,” I went on.
“Oh, Cat,” she whispered.
“Yup. It’s going to be fun and games for me for a while,” I drawled.
“I…don’t know what to say,” she said.
“There’s nothing to say,” I replied.
After a long pause, she asked, “And you can’t speak to Mr. Truelock about this?”
“He circumvented that by having Tanyn there. I don’t know, because I didn’t ask, if that was his idea or Tanyn’s, but I’d hoped this meeting would be me making one last ditch effort to change Dad’s mind. Now, I have the trial date set, and Tanyn has his PR director working on this whole scenario to ease the citizens of Sky’s Edge into understanding their king is seriously courting a female. As such, with every passing moment, I feel the cage getting tighter.”
“So, the weekend after this one, you’re going up to Abyssinia to—”
“Not Abyssinia. Sigil Isle. He wants to take me to where he grew up.”
A shorter pause before she queried, “That’s kind of sweet, isn’t it?”
Tanyn Firefierce sweet?
Um…no.
“Sigil Isle is two hundred miles north of the northernmost part of Sky’s Edge,” I replied. “The only colder place on the planet is the tip of Mount’s Crest in the Seven Realms. There’s never a thaw on Sigil Isle. This means, after I get out of my serenity pool and take off this spa-visor, I’m getting on the panes and buying every piece of fur clothing I can find in order to prepare.”
“Oh, so you’re in a spa-visor. That’s why you sound weird,” she mumbled.
I felt the visor massaging something into my face when I confirmed, “That’s why.”
“You can’t buy fur, Cat. It’s outlawed everywhere but Mount’s Crest.”
“Fake fur, whatever,” I muttered.
Now she was going for casual, and failing, when she asked, “How was Tanyn while you were there?”
“Expressionless, yet arrogant.”
“But still gorgeous,” she added.
Yes, lamentably, still gorgeous.
I heard her take in a deep breath before she said, “During the trial, you’re going to have to…”
She let that trail off.
Even so.
“Oh yes,” I confirmed. “They try to pretty it up with a lot of language around compatibility and chemistry and time spent with no distractions so you can concentrate on nothing but each other to see if you fit. But this system was designed by males. In other words, it’s rigged. So that’s not the point. The point is to give the male the opportunity to have sex with the female and see if he wants her in his bed for the rest of his life. Therefore…yes, while freezing my ass off on Sigil Isle, I’m going to have to sleep with him.”
I was also going to have to pull off the impossible.