Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137226 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“So you’re to be my wife,” I say under my breath, picking up a honeycake and nibbling on it, so as not to seem like I’m outright leering. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.”
The elderly woman beside me looks up from her cake in elated surprise, perhaps thinking I’m talking to her, but once she realizes who I am, she gives me a quick, frightened nod and scurries away.
I have that effect on people.
And in time, my reputation will only get worse.
I think back to my chambers, to the drawer beside my bed, to the locked metal box inside that drawer.
To the vial of pale blue suen that lies inside it.
They never saw me extract it. Steiner had his back turned.
Back on the ship, when Brynla first handed the egg of immortality to Steiner, he put it away. When it was just the two of us in the room and he was occupied by preparing his incubator, I quickly extracted the suen from the egg, inserting the needle just below a scale, a shallow prick that only resulted in a quarter of a syringe, but perhaps that’s enough.
It must be enough. That egg is now gone, squandered, supposedly, by Andor and Brynla, though I have my doubt it was destroyed. Part of me thinks they’re lying, that they’ve already taken it, but of course it would be foolish of me to test the theory.
It doesn’t matter anyway. Whether they have it or not, I do.
And the future will belong to me.