Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“Thank you.” I pressed a soft, sweet kiss into his lips. “Ask your question.”
Tracing his thumbs along my cheeks, both gentle and rough, he murmured, “Do you think we’re doomed?”
I softened and warmed, even as an ache bloomed. “I think…our fate can still be decided. What we do next matters.”
He studied me. A moment rife with longing, dread, and heat. When he released me, I missed his touch as I would miss a limb.
“Create a waterway to the palace.” He motioned to the tub with a clipped wave. “Let’s get this done.”
26
HONEY, I’M HOME
Istood before the tub, trying everything in my power to open a waterway. Despite my desire to return to the palace, I failed.
“I don’t understand. Why can’t I do it?” I wanted it more than air.
Didn’t I?
Of course I did.
“A hike it is, then.”
Did Jasher sound relieved?
He waved me to the door. “Let’s go. If we hustle and avoid trouble, we’ll reach the palace in three days.”
I snorted. “I can guess the odds of avoiding trouble while on a quest in Hakeldama, and it’s zero.”
“But we’ll be together, so we’ll make it work.”
Traversing Lawless Forest side by side. Overcoming every obstacle. Meeting each challenge with strength and determination. I admit, excitement washed over me.
Here we go again.
He led me into too-bright morning sunlight. But oh, wow, the scenery. An abandoned village nestled in a valley. Huts, huts, and more huts, all shaped like cupcakes, with frosted windows and colors faded but still sweetly alluring. From the outside, the walls appeared to be gingerbread, the tiered roofs sugar-spun, with candy-striped chimneys. They could’ve been designed by a child’s imagination. Peppermint lampposts and partially withered gumdrop trees lined cobblestone paths that appeared paved with iced sugar.
Thick spiderwebs wove through misshapen fences. In the square, what might have once been a bubbly water fountain had become stagnant, a tar-like substance coating the surface. The stench of burnt caramel clung to the breeze, wafting from a carousel of motionless horses with gouged-out eyes and jagged mouths. Red ivy covered its floor.
While I easily imagined the echo of children running, laughing, playing, I also sensed an inner Armageddon in Jasher. A wealth of sadness, loneliness, and hopelessness. Born from memories?
“I’m glad to see your childhood home,” I said, treading carefully. “Are you?”
“I hadn’t planned to ever return here, but I’d hidden the serpens-rosa, just in case.” A grumbled admission.
So he’d returned for me. I reached out and laced our fingers. He held on, almost clinging.
“I’m sorry I let Ian hurt you.” Still he grumbled. “I didn’t break free of his command until I watched you fall over the side of the nest.”
“You came for me. That’s what matters.” I gave him a squeeze. “Where are your brothers?”
“The second batch of monstra—my batch—are ten years old.” We stepped onto cobblestone, following its winding path. “We spent our first nine years here, then moved to the mountains to serve the first batch of clones as they claimed more and more territory. We call them elders. They are…not kind.”
“So young.” To avoid falling behind and losing my grip on him, I kicked into a power-walk, mall-retiree style. “Just a baby.”
“When you’re one of thousands, created for the same purpose, you are disposable. When you are disposable, you do whatever it takes to make yourself…not disposable.”
I ached for the boy he’d been. “You are one of a kind, Jasher. Priceless. Beyond value.”
“Hardly.” The muscles between his shoulders bunched, his marching steps landing with more force. “Under the right circumstances, a single egg fragment can produce another egg, which can produce another and another. It never ends. Only takes a drop of Ian’s blood for the siren to start the process.”
“What happens when you’re born? Er, hatched?”
A quick, humorous smile. “Hatched works. Ian gives us to someone who raises three of us together, in a village like this one, filled with other mothers and fathers also raising a trio.”
“You, Anders, and Reese were given to Emma.”
“Yes. She was kind to us. I loved her, but I always sensed she kept her heart distant. I thought it was because she hoped to return to Texas. Had no idea she was a water maiden serving her queen.”
“She called you and your brother her boys,” I told him. “She loved you, too.”
“Perhaps.” Aggression rippled through his wings. “I remember our life here, but my memories are now mixed with others. Past lives, with other mothers. Other brothers.” All torment and desperation, he grated, “You appear in many of them.”
I wet my lips. “What am I like? In your memories.”
Motions jerky, he swiped up the axes buried in a tree stump and anchored them to the sheath hidden beneath his shirt. Said nothing.
“It’s that bad?” I squeaked.
“One in particular plagues me,” he admitted, casting a glower my way, as if I were the source of every problem, world-wide. “You wore a green dress, and you danced.”