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)
Qhuinn thought of the footprints he’d tracked down the hall, slowly disappearing.
Tohr’s voice got insistent. “It’s not your fault that your daughter is alive, and my mate and my young are not. And no matter what happens with L.W., the two outcomes are not tied to each other just because they happened on the same night.”
“I know that.”
“But you don’t believe it. It’s not tit for tat, Lyric for L.W. You don’t need to rack your brain over whether you should have traded her life for the heir to the throne’s. Hell, we don’t even know if he’s dead.”
Blinking to clear his vision, Qhuinn nodded again.
And then Tohr brought him in for a tight embrace. “Let this particular burden go. You carry enough, already.”
The brother released his hold and stepped back with an incline of the head, as if they’d come to an agreement. “You are forgiven, Q. And I’m going to get more coffee. Now go home to your family.”
At that, Tohr started heading to the break room. His strides, long and true, seemed a visceral reminder that he’d managed to keep going from his tragedy, and if anybody deserved another shot at love, it was the fighter.
His Autumn had healed him in ways all the time in the world couldn’t have touched.
Qhuinn waited until the door in the distance eased shut.
Then he took a last look at those cracks.
God, he hoped they found L.W. before dawn.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Given that L.W. had fucked off his ahstrux nohtrum, he knew what was likely to be waiting for him when he went “home.”
So at the end of the night, he didn’t fucking go “home.”
Side note: Working alone had all the perks as far as he was concerned. With his phone turned off, nobody dragging him down, and no reason for him to stop until the sun’s imminent arrival, he got three more kills in—and would have kept going for another couple hours. Things got a little slice-and-dicey on that last skirmish, though, and he’d had to pull out of the engagement and up-up-and-awaaaaay’d while he still could.
And dipshits thought he was unreasonable? Come on, he knew how to take care of himself.
As he traveled in a scatter of molecules north from Caldwell’s inner city, he metaphorically middle-fingered all the haters who said he was too reactive to be without a goddamn babysitter.
Re-forming in knee-deep snow, he confronted the mountain view ahead of him like it was something he could fight.
“Fucking idiots.”
The fact that he had to studiously ignore the way blood dripped off the fingertips of his dagger hand was another thing that further backed up his solo career. Thank God and Lassiter and whatever other sky daddies were above that Shuli wasn’t pointing out the obvious injury. Otherwise he would have had to smack the guy, and he wasn’t sure he could lift his arm up higher than his own rib cage.
That frickin’ aristocrat was the Toby Flenderson to his universe.
“And that does not make me Michael Scott,” L.W. muttered.
The reminder that he knew all nine seasons of The Office by heart was a blast from the past he could have done without, because he hadn’t volunteered for the binge-watching. When his mahmen had not been able to sleep in the bedroom next to his own, the episodes had played on her little TV like the audiovisual equivalent of mashed potatoes… so his youth had been background music’d by the show to the point where the references just popped into his brain, corks rising out of the murky stew of his subconscious with reflexive insistence.
Although it was true that every time Shuli walked into a room or opened his mouth, L.W. heard a chorus of No God! No, God, please, no!
Taking out a bandana, he made a fist and wrapped shit up, not because his hand was where the wound was, but to catch the blood. The pain was starting to ramp up, and not just from that bullet graze on the outside of his arm. All kinds of places were starting to talk to him, proof that swelling and bruising were joining the chat and making things all about them.
“What else is new.”
As he turned away from the snowy evergreen view, the towering stone mansion before him loomed into the night sky like something out of the Marvel Universe. With gargoyles along its slate roofline, and enough windows for all the ghosts of the past to stare out at him, the sculptural entrance had always felt like an abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here kind of thing.
Then again, his hope had been long lost well before the first time he’d come here as an adult, as a trespasser, to peel open its cathedral-like doors and wander its lonely rooms.
Proof that even the living could be dead.
Fighting his way forward through the snow, he looked down instead of up, searching for a set of footprints that had been left a number of nights before. The snowpack was all smoothed out, though, both from the additional inches that had fallen, and the gusting winds that had finally died down.