Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
A glance down. “You’re wearing a loose tunic. You never wear that particular style of tunic. You told me once they made you feel like a badly designed parachute waiting to go up.”
While Elijah shot his consort a confused look, Elena pressed her teeth together in a smile that wanted to crack her face.
Hannah screamed. “NO! Ellie!” It was her turn to stamp her feet in a dance of unbridled joy. “How far?”
“Six months. You?”
“Seven. Oh my havens! Ellie! We’ll be in the Medica close to the same time!”
Only then did Elijah’s eyes widen and meet Raphael’s. “Surely not, Rafe?” It was a measure of his surprise that he slipped up and used that nickname from Raphael’s youth.
“Most surely yes, Eli,” Raphael said with a grin.
And Elena felt a tear roll down her face. “Sorry. Stupid hormones.” She dashed it away using the back of her hand. “It’s just—”
“—to share the experience with a friend?” Hannah said through her own tears. “I never, ever expected to have such an opportunity.”
Elena’s returning nod was jagged. “I didn’t even know how much I wanted that until just now.”
Hannah’s lower lip quivered. “I have seen it among my mortal maidens and coveted their shared journeys. And to have it with you, my friend.” More tears, more joyful laughter—and plans being made to meet at the Refuge.
* * *
* * *
It wasn’t until much later that night that Elena came awake on a stab of fear.
“Hbeebti?” came a sleepy question from the archangel beside her, his wing over her body.
Today, he’d actually hit the point at which he needed deep sleep, so she stroked her fingers through his hair and said, “Just the baby moving.”
He fell back asleep with his hand on her abdomen—while her mind continued to race. Two consorts pregnant at the same time in a species with a catastrophically low birth rate? How was this possible? Was it some type of portent, the sign of another rising Cascade?
“Let it go,” she mouthed to herself. “Be happy like Nisia ordered.”
But the worry continued to nag at her until she gave in and said, Cassandra? She spoke in a mental whisper, loath to disturb the Ancient unless she was already drifting in the borderlands.
No answer…until deep into the night, when even New York took a quiet breath—and Elena found herself in a dreamscape where a young woman with hair of rippling lilac and eyes of seafoam and indigo that faded into cool blue, her wings an intense, deep violet, and her gown a froth of pale pink, sat in a playground swing.
Elena sat beside her in her own swing, both of them pushing off with their feet as they soared.
“You came!” Elena yelled over the sound of the wind as it whistled past their ears. “I’m sorry I woke you!”
“I’m not awake!” Cassandra called back before using her feet to slow herself down. “I’m in a dream. A lovely one.” She looked around at the soft green grass, at the gardenias that bloomed a creamy white at the back of Elena’s childhood home. “This place is rich with love, and I can hear children playing.”
“Yes,” Elena said, able to smile today because their home had been full of love and the sounds of children’s laughter. “I was so happy here.”
“Your child will be happy, too.” Cassandra swung up a little, legs out, but not so hard and fast that they couldn’t speak.
Her hair trailed almost to the ground as she leaned back to look at the sky.
“But two consorts being pregnant? That’s weird.” She twisted the swing so she could face the other woman. “Angels are barely ever pregnant at the same time, much less with the children of archangels.”
Cassandra sat back up, then twisted in the swing, too, to look at Elena. “Oh, this is fun.” She twisted again, let herself unravel while laughing, then twisted back. “Yes, it is weird,” she said, sounding heartbreakingly young…and Elena had the realization that this was who she’d been before her terrible gift.
“But sometimes, Elena,” she added, “a rare sometimes, the slipstreams of existence bump into each other at just the right time and place for a beautiful coincidence. It happens with such rarity that even immortals forget—but I don’t.” She tapped the side of her nose. “This has happened before, the occurrence lost in the mists of ages past.”
“What happened to those children?” Elena whispered. “Were they safe?”
Cassandra laughed until her eyes sparkled as bright as the diamond-coated strands of Aodhan’s hair. “Well, Marduk was stomping around being his usual bad-tempered self when I was a child, so I should think so.
“As for the other who was born on the same day at almost the same time…yes, the same day, such a closeness that it is beyond yours and Hannah’s. Well, she…you have met her, have you not?” A sly smile.