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)
Elena took in Sara’s glowing, unlined skin, her dark hair, her strong body. “You never come see me. I figured it was because you were happy beyond the veil.” Her heart twisted. “You are, aren’t you? With Deacon?”
“You always worry so much, Ellie.” Sara scowled, but she nudged Elena’s shoulder with her own at the same time. “I had to go, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to add another ghost to your long list. But”—a narrow-eyed look—“I think you can handle it now.”
She kicked her legs up onto the ancient coffee table, which they mostly used as a footstand. “So tell me about your new best friend.”
Elena bit down on her lower lip. “I’m trying, okay? I haven’t quite got to the best friend stage, but she calls me on my shit.”
“Good start at least. You can be hardheaded.”
It was Elena’s turn to scowl. “Did you come after all this time just to insult me?”
Sara grinned. “So who is it?”
“Greta.”
“Greta, who—no!” Sara almost dropped her drink. “Not Dmitri’s admin? I dealt with her. She was efficient, which I appreciated, but I always got the sense that she hated people.” A sip of her drink, a sigh that made her breath mist the air. “So tell me about her.”
Elena did and, in the doing, realized how much the other woman meant to her. “I’ll do better,” she promised Sara, but her throat was thick. “Zoe is amazing, Sara—she shines brighter with each new year.”
“I know.” A glance at Elena’s belly, and suddenly, Elena’s drink was plain hot chocolate topped with marshmallows. “Your kiddo will be amazing, too.” She took Elena’s hand. “Because you’ll be an incredible mother. Trust yourself. I do.”
Elena’s lower lip trembled, and she leaned her head against Sara’s shoulder. Her best friend put one arm around her, and they sat there in the cold as the stars began to emerge overhead.
“Roof walk?” Sara murmured a long time later, after Elena complained of an ache in her back.
When Elena nodded, Sara helped haul her up.
“I’m waddling,” she complained to her friend.
“Like a duck,” Sara agreed.
They laughed.
The lingering echo of it had Elena smiling when she woke.
* * *
* * *
She was well rested by the time they arrived at the snow-dusted landscape of the Refuge, thanks to their final stop having been only two hours from the angelic stronghold.
A stop at which Galen had stashed a jar of her favorite pickles alongside the other supplies. Because contrary to all predictions, Elena was not yet sick of pickles.
“Look,” she’d said to Raphael while eating them straight from the jar. “I like Galen, and we get along fine these days.” She’d punctuated the air with her pickle. “But this was two thousand percent not his idea. He only does warm and fuzzy, and possibly even cute, with Jessamy.”
Her archangel had bitten off the top of her pickle before saying, “I may have shipped two crates of that stuff to the stronghold, and suggested the staff include them in the provisions Galen was to stash.”
She’d given him a kiss tart with pickle juice. “Now, that’s true love.” She’d then eaten the rest of the jar, because Keir and Nisia had both confirmed that her craving for these pickles was doing nothing to harm their child. Turned out the super-parasite was burning through everything.
But those rogue mortal cells…they continued to concern the healers.
“The rate of energy usage leans ninety-nine percent toward an immortal babe,” Keir had said during the last checkup he’d done in person. “But we won’t know for certain until the birth.”
“It’s all right, Keir,” she’d said, feeling oddly wiser than him for the first time in her life. “We’ll live our baby’s timeline.”
A simple, ineffable choice that had given her and Raphael the ultimate peace.
Now, belly full—of more than just pickles—but tension taut in her spine, she headed not for their Refuge stronghold, but to the Medica. They’d had word a bare ten minutes ago that Hannah had been admitted to the Medica even though she wasn’t yet at full term.
But Hannah, Eli’s arm around her shoulders, was just walking out of the main Medica building when Elena landed. The other woman’s dark skin held a golden shine, it was so full of health, her black curls currently in a loose updo that suited the rounded softness of her face.
Which lit up at first sight of them. “Ellie!”
As Raphael greeted Elijah, Elena hugged her friend. “I was so worried when I heard!”
“I’m fine. I felt as if I was having contractions, and well, everyone is always on tenterhooks with angelic births, so they said I should stay here while they kept me on watch, but Keir has confirmed those were not contractions.”
She exhaled. “He assured me my babe is healthy and would’ve come through if I’d had to give birth a touch early. But I’m very happy I won’t have to rush; I want to enjoy every minute of this experience.”