Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
Not sure how he can protect me from the truth of what I am, but I appreciate that he’s on my side. I nod and brace myself for the worst.
Sparrow answers the door, Squeaker in her arms being carried like a baby. “Oh.” She looks at Raptor and then at me, her expression wary. “If you want Hawk, he’s with his students. They’re talking about…ah…”
“We know. We were there,” Raptor says.
“Oh, good. I mean, not that it’s good. It’s just good that you know already and I don’t have to break it to you.” She adjusts her grip on Squeaker. “I’m feeding the cats if you’d like to join me until he comes back?”
We step inside, following her as she heads through the dorm toward the kitchen. As she does, more cats emerge from rooms and follow her, meowing their hunger. I’d laugh at the sight except I don’t know that I’ll be able to even breathe until this entire situation is resolved. Sparrow sets Squeaker down on the main table in the kitchen and then goes to the counter, where a large boiled chicken sits on a plate. She shoos one of the cats away as it jumps up, and picks up a knife. “Have a seat, you two.”
Raptor glances over at me, but I shake my head. I can’t relax. He puts his big hand on my shoulder and I cling to it, needing the reassurance. “We’re here to talk to both of you, actually.”
Sparrow turns to look at us, her eyes wide. Her gaze lands on him and then on me. “Oh, by Asteria. He knows?”
I swallow the knot in my throat and nod. “He knows.”
“It’s true? She really is a mancer?” Raptor asks.
Sparrow waves her hands at him, the knife flailing in the air. “Not so loud!”
Fighting the urge to bury my head in my hands and moan with horror, I manage a tiny smile. “He figured out something when I knew about Hemmen’s death before anyone else did.”
“And the body,” he adds.
“The body?” Sparrow’s eyes grow wide.
“The one she found in the training tunnel that had been there for decades,” he clarifies.
“Oh, Gwenna.” She sounds like she’s disappointed in me.
“It’s not like I was trying to find a dead man,” I hiss. “It just sort of happened.”
She clucks her tongue. “How many is that now? Four?”
I bite back a grimace. “More if you count all the people in the crypt where we found the ring.”
“Oh dear,” Sparrow says, turning back to the chicken. “Oh dear.”
“And you knew about this the entire time?” Raptor asks her. He moves toward the table, pushing aside a cat and sitting on the edge. His hand goes toward me, palm up, and I realize he’s offering it to me. A warm rush sweeps through my belly, and I hold on to him tightly.
“Well, yes. I haven’t said anything to Hawk, though. It isn’t my secret to share.” She hacks at the chicken’s legs, and the cats meow louder, rubbing against her skirts.
“I think we should tell him. He needs to know about this latest development, because right now it looks like Gwenna is working with our thieves…unless we point out that there’s another reason why she’s been tied to all the bodies we’ve found.”
I hold back my anxiety, clinging to Raptor’s hand. “I need to know everything that’s going on. This whole deal with the thieves? Tell me all you know.”
He does, and the more I hear, the more worried and dismayed I become. Raptor’s been in on this the entire time, and I never knew. He was watching us, reporting back about us. Only his hand tightly clutching mine tells me that he feels differently about me now than he did when our Five first formed.
Raptor wraps up his story and gazes down at me. “It’s why I’m acting as a fledgling. They demoted me so I could help them hunt down the thieves from the inside. I was supposed to be watching my Five, and Hawk is watching his. We knew someone was working with the fledglings and thought to get the inside information, but so far it hasn’t led anywhere.”
“You think Hemmen was one of these thieves?” Sparrow asks, delicately pulling chicken free from the bone and dicing it. Or trying to. She’s bad with a knife, and the cats are growing impatient. As quickly as she chops the chicken and dumps it into a bowl, the cats are trying to fish the tidbits out to eat. I should go help her…but I don’t let go of Raptor’s hand.
“Aye, that’s what we think. If he wasn’t the one thieving, he was working with the thieves.”
“How do we know?” I ask.
“Because he died the same way everyone else did. We have to assume that they’re working together, the thieves.”