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)
It had mostly meant increasing the depth of a vehicle to comfortably accommodate wings. There were no back seats, either, and the roof could be fully retracted to permit for an aerial exit or entrance. These modified vehicles started at twice the price of normal ones, but sales were brisk. Especially for the sleeker, sportier models.
Turned out more than one angel had a need for terrestrial speed.
“You’re chattering,” Eve said, gray eyes narrowed on the other side of the door and her tone that of a hard-ass ground troop commander who expected people to listen when she spoke. “You never do that. What is going on?”
Elena got into the car, forcing Eve to follow. She’d been awake since five this morning, had gone over how to ease their way into the conversation at least three hundred times. So she opened her mouth and blurted out, “I’m pregnant.”
Eve’s head swiveled so fast toward her that Elena winced—while keeping her eyes resolutely on the jetport’s landing area beyond the safety fencing.
“Did you say you’re pregnant?”
“Yep. Confirmed by Nisia.”
“Wow.” Eve sat back. “Wow.”
A minute later. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
“I’m going to be an aunt again!” Eve’s voice held her grin as she reached over to grab Elena in an awkward, tangled, crushing hug. For a tiny woman, Eve was a powerhouse. And she loved in that same huge way.
“For real, I mean,” Eve said when they drew apart, both of them laugh-crying. “I love that Beth’s and Amy’s descendants stay in touch, but it doesn’t feel the same. Not so far out from when we were all sisters together.”
Elena nodded as she wiped off her tears as Eve did the same; she got it. The descendants were family, but not as they’d once been. The ties between them grew ever more nebulous with each new generation. A thing held together by memory but not stifled by it—because neither Elena nor Eve would ever want to stop their mortal kin from growing into their divergent lives.
“Tell Illium he’s going to have to wrangle babysitting duties into your schedule,” Elena managed to say, shaky with how happy her sister’s happiness made her. She’d been so tangled up in fear and worry that she hadn’t allowed herself to just be excited like any expectant first-time mom.
It felt good.
“Hah! He’ll be fighting me for those privileges—you know he’ll hijack the baby the instant the kid’s grown-up enough to spend summers elsewhere?”
Elena laughed, and the drive home was exhilaration and discussions of pregnancy and baby supplies Elena would need, and Eve pondering what she could gift as “Baby’s first weapon.” The creamy hue of her skin flushed with color, she looked young and vibrant and so alive that it hurt.
A sudden acute cold in Elena’s veins, a chill reminder that life wasn’t guaranteed, that Eve being a vampire didn’t mean she’d live forever. Eve could die. As Ari had died. As Belle had died.
“Come here, little hunter. Taste.”
10
…one must have intellectual challenges or one fades away into ennui, and that’s a waste of near-immortality, is it not?
—Mr. Walter Battersby to Holly Chang (Unexpected Wisdom from a Broker to the Immortal Rich)
It wasn’t until much later, after Eve had showered and grabbed a snack from the premium bottled blood Montgomery stocked for guests, that Elena’s sister said, “How’re you handling it, Ellie?”
She leaned against Elena’s potting table inside the greenhouse, her defined arms visible in the dark gray of her tank top. Her snug-fitting jacket, created of armored fibers interlaced with discarded communications wires, lay forgotten on a wooden bench tucked in between a small flowering cherry and a miniature Japanese maple—both trees were permanent elements of the greenhouse.
Elena had shaken off her earlier sickening fear, but the impact lingered in her bones, in her heart. “Past the first shock.” She began to deadhead a plant that had ended its show for the season.
Eve waited, no longer the young girl who’d known nothing of the tragedy of her father’s first family.
“I worry,” Elena admitted, fighting against instincts that wanted to see Eve as the child she’d been when they’d first met. That wouldn’t be fair to either one of them—and it would spit in the face of the bond they’d forged over hundreds of years of sisterhood.
“Logic doesn’t have much impact on that kind of visceral fear.” Elena had literally killed her personal monster, chopped off his fucking reborn head. And still he whispered in her ear when her guard was down. “I know it’s irrational, but…”
“You know what I think?” Eve came over to wrap one arm around Elena’s waist, lean into her as she’d done when she was young. “Your fear is evidence of who you are—and that’s not a jaded immortal for whom nothing matters. Things matter to you, Ellie, and always will.”
Elena slid her wing over Eve’s back, her throat thick. “When did you get so wise, Evie?”