Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
“Hey, boys,” he said as he approached. “Where’s Rhamp?”
“In there with her.” Shuli rubbed his eyes like they were burning from lack of sleep and an existential exhaustion. “We’re getting ready to leave. He wanted to say goodbye—see you later, I mean.”
“Where you going?”
“Oh, you know. Just out. She’s stable, so we’re gonna go food up and have showers back at my place.”
“No field work,” Qhuinn warned. “Everybody’s off rotation. The King’s orders.”
Even L.W. nodded at that, which was a relief. Talk about your wild cards. The heir to the throne had been making everybody nervous for years, and now was not the time for any reminders of that dynamic.
Qhuinn cracked the door. Lyric was sitting up in the hospital bed, and Rhamp was in the chair next to her. The two looked impossibly old, no trace at all of the young they’d once been showing. He was proud of the fact that they were adults, but sad to see the maturity, too.
Their innocence was totally gone now, the final vestiges of it seeming to have been burned away in the last twenty-four hours.
“Let’s give them a moment,” he murmured as he let the door re-close without entering.
* * *
Lying on a hospital bed she could barely remember being brought to, Lyric searched her brother’s face and tried to understand what Rhamp was saying to her.
“What do you mean… he was there.”
Sitting next to her on the clinic’s chair, her twin shook his head. “I don’t know what else to tell you. At the moment your whole body bounced back to life… I saw that guy standing over you at your feet, with his palm outstretched. I don’t fucking know.”
With a sense of heartbreak, she thought of being up at the door to the Fade. And what she and her grandmahmen had talked about. “Well, it doesn’t matter if he was there or not.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“I think he was the one who brought you back, Lyric.” Her brother put both of his hands forward. “I don’t know what went down between you two, and it’s none of my business, but I wanted you to be aware of what I saw.”
“You know who he is, right? He told you, I heard him.”
At least… she was pretty sure she had? Things remained blurry.
Rhamp shrugged. “There were a lot of things said last night. And you know, given everything that’s happening right now, I think it’s best that we should just let it all go. I mean, if you’re serious about never seeing him again—”
“I am.”
“Then talking about it is just going to kick up a lot of drama that no one needs. Besides, like I’d be in a big hurry to tell everyone I’d just dated the Omega’s grandson?”
“I wish you wouldn’t put it like that,” she muttered. “Although it is the truth.”
“So we don’t say anything. He was just a human as far as they know. By the time they got there, he was nowhere to be seen. Let’s just keep it clean.”
Lyric found herself nodding. At this point, she only wanted to put the whole thing behind her anyway. Her grief and sadness were so profound, almost as profound as her sense of betrayal, and she also found it difficult that she’d never guessed any of it. It was only now, as she relived certain exchanges on things, that she saw the clues that had been there all along.
Forgettable by design, wasn’t that what he’d said in the beginning? Forgettable on purpose was more like it.
Brushing under her eyes, she listened to the steady beat of the monitor behind her, proof positive—her being conscious aside—that she was, in fact, alive and kicking.
“So I went to the Fade,” she blurted. As her brother’s head ripped up, she nodded. “I saw the door… the knob… the whole thing. And Granmahmen.”
“She was there?”
Lyric nodded again. “And she smiled a lot. She wants us to know she’s waiting for us, but to take our time down here.”
She could still picture it all, hear that voice, see the buffering clouds all around. “It’s beautiful up there. Better than mortal life, for sure.”
Rhamp cleared his throat. “I, ah, I don’t know what I would have done… if you hadn’t come back.”
Reaching out, she squeezed his hand. “Well, the good thing is, we don’t need to think about that, do we.”
“No, we don’t,” he echoed.
With a brisk nod, he released a breath, as if she’d given him permission to put the whole nightmare aside, stuff it down deep, and never dwell on those moments again. The radical compartamentalization wasn’t quite what she’d been going for, but if that was the way he handled it, what else could she do?
Other than make sure she stayed alive.
“How did you three know I was there?” she asked.
“We tracked two lessers to the address.”