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)
She loved the boys as if they were her own.
“Yes,” she said. “Our little spark.”
Izar continued to stare with an open fascination. “Ma said it’s only one?” He tilted up his head. “Won’t your cub be lonely?” His eyes were a translucent brown with a center of gold that starburst around his pupils; he’d inherited those eyes from his mother, and they were breathtaking in their beauty.
“Only one,” she confirmed, awash in affection for this powerful man whose shoes she’d tied when he was a little boy with fingers that didn’t quite have the dexterity—and who also thought shoes were weird and unnecessary inventions. As evidenced by his bare feet today—it was as if he didn’t even notice the snow.
“But,” she added, “Hannah’s having one, too, so I’m hoping they’ll be friends.”
Izar, who’d been one of three since birth, nodded solemnly at that. No matter where they were in the world, the triplets were always exactly that—triplets. All of them aware that they could call on their brothers and they would come, regardless of distance. As would their father and mother.
“Our baby will have a large pack,” she said, using the words Naasir used when he spoke about his brood. “Quite aside from Raphael and me, they’ll have you, Misha, Nasien, your parents, and so many more people around them.”
“Yes, but we’re not cubs. It’s good Hannah is having a one-cub, too.”
From his scowl, it was clear he didn’t agree with this whole business of having single children, and likely never would; all of Naasir and Andi’s boys had taken after their father in their mannerisms and views of the world—though Nasien was the image of his mother when it came to his intense passion for history and languages, while Misha loved new technologies.
“Did you bring me a present?” she said, joking with him because it was the one question a young Izar had always asked her each time they saw each other after a longer separation. Not because he was spoiled, but because the grinning child knew she always brought him a brilliant new color of playing clay, as she brought Nasien a book from his current favorite series, and Misha a puzzle game.
Izar gave her a sly smile, then bounded onto the balcony wall with the ease of a cat, before jumping off, his wings barely flaring out. She had no idea how the cubs all did that, how they never crashed—and how Naasir managed it without wings.
Poor Andi had lived with constant heart attacks when the boys were young. After she’d realized they’d inherited their father’s desire to jump from high places, she’d made Naasir move them to the ground floor for ten years, until the cubs had learned to actually jump and not just believe they could.
Not that Naasir would ever gainsay his adored Andi, but Elena had been able to tell that he was bursting with pride at his little clan of chimera-angels. The only ones of their kind in the world. But not one-beings, not when there were three of them. And in being born, they’d made Naasir no longer a one-being either. His joy in that, Elena knew, was limitless.
Izar actually used his wings when he came back up, but that was only because he was holding a box in his arms.
Landing on the balcony beside her, he put the box on the ground. “It’s heavy.”
It was also wrapped—badly—with silvery paper around which Izar had tied a ribbon of the same shade of indigo as in her wings.
Heart mushy, she put her feet down on the balcony, then reached over to undo the bow and pull off the paper. The box inside proved to be plain brown, but when she opened it, what she found within took her breath away—it was a small metal sculpture of her, with her hair out and a blade in her hand as she crouched on a rock as if on a hunt.
“Izar.”
“It’s the before,” he explained. “I will make one of you with the cub inside you, now that you’re here and I can see you, and the third will be the after, with you holding your cub.”
She lifted the statue despite his warning that it was heavy, and balanced it on her knee. “It’s breathtaking.”
“I’m getting better,” he said, leaning his body against her shoulder, as tactile as his brothers. “Aodhan says so.”
Because Aodhan, student of the Hummingbird, was now teacher to the half-feral boy no one had ever expected to create art—no one but his parents, who’d found him crying in frustrated anger as he attempted to shape mud pies into intricate patterns. It hadn’t worked, of course, and he’d been too young to do anything but react with emotion.
But Andromeda was a librarian, and she was best friends with Jessamy. Together, they’d figured out that Izar needed to play with something that would hold its form, and had given him the soft and malleable playing clay that had been a staple through the centuries for all children. Elena had helped by couriering—and hand-carrying—dazzling new colors of the material, hues they couldn’t make in the Refuge.