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)
When he put his hand on Elena’s shoulder, she shook herself out of her stunned state and raised her own hand to hold on to his wrist.
“It’s done.” Nisia turned the small, narrow screen toward them.
It was a vivid green with a scattering of black writing on it: Congratulations. The healer slid the device into her bag. “A small super-parasite will be making its arrival on the planet in thirty-four weeks, give or take a few weeks. Immortal or mortal, birth still comes when it comes.”
Picking up the bag, she said, “We’ll talk further once you’ve had a chance to absorb the news.” The merest glimpse of a smile. “I wish I were Aodhan, that I could paint the looks on your faces, but—all humor aside—I understand this is a shock.” Her voice gentled, becoming deeply kind in the way of healers near and far. “Come to me with any and all questions—for now, I can tell you that the readings are as expected at this point in the process.”
The healer left.
Raphael, his legs shaky, sat down on the floor, his back to the balcony doors, and Elena’s hand held in his as she leaned down from the chair. Then she was sliding down to sit beside him with his arm around her, the two of them staring at the wall opposite. It bore a breathtaking painting of Elena in flight, blades out.
A gift from Lady Sharine, the Hummingbird.
He slowly became aware of the tremor in her spine, the way she had her hand pressed over his heart. “Elena-mine?” He nuzzled the top of her head. “How are you?” The simplest and most important question.
Because there was a reason Elena used birth control when it was beyond uncommon for angels to do so—theirs was a race with a birth rate so low that decades—even centuries in rare cases—could go by without a single child being born. If he was remembering correctly, it had been eighty years since the last angelic birth.
“I don’t know,” Elena whispered. “My brain’s all fuzzy.”
He cuddled her close, wrapping his wings around her. “Do you want me to ask Eve to come to New York?” Elena and her sister remained incredibly close, notwithstanding that Eve was attached to Illium’s team on the other side of the world. “Or Keir?” Nisia was a wonderful healer, but Keir had watched over Elena during her transition from mortal to immortal, helped her understand her new body—the bond between the two was of a different magnitude.
But Elena shook her head. “No…I just want to sit with the news for a while before we share it with anyone else.” Her fingers opened and closed against his heart. “Right now, it doesn’t even feel real.”
“No,” Raphael admitted, “it doesn’t.”
They sat there, wrapped up in each other as the sun warmed their backs…and in Elena’s womb grew a child stubborn and strong.
* * *
* * *
Elena dreamed of a room drenched in blood that night, and even in the dream, she knew this was wrong. It had been centuries since she’d fallen into the abyss, but today, she couldn’t escape it.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Blood beading on a fingertip that belonged to Belle’s murdered and brutalized body, only to drip to the floor in a loud crash of sound.
It hurt, that sound. A reverberation that wouldn’t stop.
She clapped her hands over her ears, but her hands were wet, and when she brought them down, she saw that they were soaked in her big sister’s blood.
“No, no.”
She tried to wipe it off, but smears of red covered every wall and counter in the kitchen, the red dripping downward until the lake of it reached her ankles and began to crawl up her legs.
Elena screamed and scrabbled back, but someone was gripping her shoulders, a fetid breath in her ear. “There you are, sweet little hunter. I’ve been waiting such a long time for you to return.”
Elena!
The storm-lashed ocean crashing into her mind, the scent of steel and salt in her every breath as her eyes snapped open.
“I have you.” Raphael crushed her close to the hard warmth of his chest. “You’re safe, you’re home.”
Her throat felt scraped to the bone, and she knew she’d been screaming. “I went back. To Belle and Ari and Mama. To that day.”
4
I would rather die as Elena, than live as a shadow.
—Elena Deveraux to Archangel Raphael (Once, high above Manhattan)
One hand cupped around his consort’s head, his other arm tight around her, Raphael released a jagged exhale. Elena’s pain devastated him. “No one will hurt our child,” he said, because he knew it was that fear that lay at the heart of her nightmare.
She’d survived a monster, but that same monster had stolen the lives of her two elder sisters—and ultimately, the life of her mother. Marguerite Deveraux might have taken her own life in the aftermath of the murder of her daughters, but the reason for her suicide had been the irreparable damage done to her soul the day Slater Patalis forced her to listen as he brutalized Elena and murdered Belle and Ari.