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)
He would not permit any harm to come to his consort or child.
“I’ve already activated all our defenses to ready status.” Dmitri’s gaze was of a man who knew what it was to love a woman, a father who understood what it meant to protect a child. You’ll get Elena to the bunker?
At Raphael’s nod, Dmitri left for the Tower’s war room, which was built to provide a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view with no impediments to the sight lines. Raphael, meanwhile, turned to Elena—who’d put her knives aside and was rising to her feet using the edge of his desk.
He didn’t make the mistake of thinking her unarmed.
“He told you to hide me, didn’t he?” She scowled.
Already at her side, he took her hand. “We must, Elena.”
“Ugh,” she muttered, but kissed him. “I get it. Annoying as it is, I’m not as mobile or as able to defend myself as usual and would just be a dangerous distraction. Let’s—”
Snapping off mid-statement, she stared at his temple.
“Raphael”—quick, breathless—“the Legion mark is glittering as bright as during the Cascade.”
Aeclari.
At that long-silent whisper, both their heads jerked toward the water visible through the balcony doors. They were out on that balcony within seconds, scanning the horizon as a gust of wind swept Elena’s hair back into a pale banner.
He curved his wing around her to block the wind.
“I don’t see them,” she said, pushing back her hair as it fell around her face.
“They’re some distance out.” Dropping his wing when the wind settled as quickly as it had come, he took her hand, held her from jumping off to fly oceanward. “No, we wait for them on the roof. They have certain patterns of behavior.” The gray beings had adapted in the years they’d been in the city, but he didn’t know which version of the Legion had returned.
“Right. Let’s go.”
It took them but a moment to fly up to the roof. Once there, Elena rubbed her belly through the vivid blue tunic top embellished with golden embroidery that Mahiya had gifted her at the “baby shower” party her sister had thrown two weeks earlier.
Raphael had thought it would be a women’s gathering, as had Dmitri, but apparently such was no longer the case as it had been during the time Dmitri’s children had been born.
Instead, Eve had talked Raphael into wearing an armband that said Father to Be, while Elena’s Mother to Be sash had crossed her body.
To see Elena so filled with sunshine and happiness…he’d even have worn a sash if Eve had thrust it at him.
The party had been organized and entirely hand-decorated by Eve with help from Elena’s women friends—and Montgomery, because apparently, Montgomery “would have a coronary if we didn’t let him join in and use all the decorations he’s saved up in his hoard”—as stated by Eve.
The day had involved colorful drinks called mocktails, tiny foods, many balloons, games that had made his consort’s eyes sparkle, and the simple, irreplaceable company of friends and family. The latter had included five of the descendants with whom Elena was particularly close—and who she knew wouldn’t spill the secret.
Jessamy had flown in just for the event, the exquisite magenta-fading-into-cream of her wings strong and striking against the fall sky. Of all that he’d been able to do during the Cascade, Raphael was perhaps proudest of this—getting gentle and kind Jessamy on the starting blocks when it came to flight.
She’d had to do the rest on her own, literal years of painful physical therapy, to stretch and condition wings that had never known the sky. In the end, she’d also undergone two significant surgeries to excise internal parts of her wing that had never grown right and meant she couldn’t sustain true flight longer than a few minutes.
There’d been no way to perform the surgeries without also taking part of her external wing structure. A decision that must have tormented Jessamy. In the end, however, she’d decided the risk was worth it. “I would rather be earthbound than to only get a taste of the sky,” she’d said, her thin face resolute. “Sky or earth, not caught in purgatory.”
No one had known if the sections would grow back structurally sound after the excision, but Raphael’s interference with her wing growth pattern had held in the aftermath.
“I now see the surgeries as a gift,” Jessamy had told him, despite her continuing pain as she healed. “I’ve been so afraid that should I cause damage to a wing, it would grow back as it was when I was born.”
Her smile had been luminous. “Now I know the healing is irreversible—Keir is near certain the changes you made were at the cellular level. Should I ever lose my wings in a catastrophic accident, they will grow back as they are now.” Shining brown eyes. “Thank you, Rafe, for giving me the sky.”