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)
“A man doesn’t give his coat away to just anybody on a cold winter’s night.”
She remembered standing in front of him and was relieved to recall how tall he’d been. How broad through the chest and shoulder.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she mumbled. “Maybe he just happens to have good manners.”
Hadn’t he said something about his mother raising him right? Jesus, even their conversation was spotty in her memory.
“In January around here?” Her granmahmen made a dismissive sound. “Plus you are the most beautiful female he’s ever seen.”
“You are biased.”
“I am accurate,” came the retort. “Oh, Lyric, my namesake, my granddaughter, you have the world ahead of you because you have time at your disposal. Use that blessing. Find him and follow your heart. Everything will work out in the end between you two, and if it’s not working out, you’re just not at the end yet.”
Okay, that was crazy talk.
Still, she brought her granmahmen’s hand up and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “I didn’t know you were such a romantic. And I hate to bring this up again, but he’s a human, so there’s no—I mean, there’s nowhere we can go with… anything.”
“Then let it end as it does, on its own terms. Surely that is better than nothing at all? And when it’s over, you can be glad you knew him, and you can keep him in your heart for when you’re an old female like me and on your deathbed. You’ll be so glad for that reflected warmth. It’s the only hearth for old bones, those memories of when we were young.”
Lyric opened her mouth to refute her granmahmen’s pronouncement as to her condition. Except they both would know who had uttered the lie and who had had the courage to speak the truth.
As her tears started to come, she couldn’t stop them. The collision of the near death she’d been spared with the certainty of what was coming so soon was just too much to hold in.
Her granmahmen reached out and brushed her cheeks with a gentle, wavering touch.
“I don’t want you to go,” Lyric said hoarsely.
“I don’t want to go, either, but it is not my choice.” That smile returned. “Have I ever told you how proud of you I am?”
Lyric had to laugh in a messy burst. “All the time.”
“Good, I want you to remember that when I’m not here anymore.” Those beautiful, sunken eyes grew grave. “I cannot think of anybody better to carry my name on than you.”
As her throat constricted, Lyric shook her head. “How can you say that? I’m not doing anything with my life… I’m going nowhere.”
“That’s just this particular stage.” Suddenly, her granmahmen’s voice grew stronger, steadier, the force of her resurging. “You’ll find your stride and your path, and someday you’ll think back to this moment, and you’ll remember what I’m telling you. Lyric, blooded daughter of Qhuinn, heart daughter of mine own Blaylock, the future you want is waiting for you. Go out and grab it. We must live while we can so that when we go from this earth, the only thing we regret is the people we are leaving behind. Not all the things we didn’t do because we didn’t have the courage.”
Lyric closed her eyes. “I love you so much, Granmahmen.”
“And I you, dearest one. Always.” The deflation came on as fast as the momentary surge of strength had so unexpectedly arrived. “I’ll be waiting for you in the Fade, granddaughter mine—but take your time down here. Life is… wonderful, even when you’re confused. Promise me… that you’ll go find the man who gave you this coat.”
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“Love is magic. And everybody needs magic in their heart…”
With that, her granmahmen drifted off, those eyes closing, her lips going lax. But there was breathing, slow, yet steady, and the hand remained warmed.
Taking a deep breath, Lyric followed her elder’s example and gave in to her own exhaustion, drifting away until all she knew was whose palm she held on to, the tie that was soon to be broken…
So deep was her slumber that she missed the redheaded male who came to stand in the doorway, staring at the mahmen who’d brought him into the world, and the daughter he and his hellren lived for.
Blay had to wonder how your heart could be so full.
While at the same time shattered with sadness.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Déjà vu.
That’s what Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, was thinking as he materialized in the snow. With his blindness, he shouldn’t have been able to see anything, and technically, he didn’t. But from memory, he placed the Pit to his left, and the mansion up ahead of him, the latter being on the far side of the winterized fountain directly in front of him.
When he started forward, with his shitkickers punching through the snow, the wind’s whistles orientated him, the subtle shifts in cadence and tone confirming everything he already knew to be true about the property’s layout. So complete was the composite created from what his brain recalled and what his senses provided, that he was able to accurately anticipate the first step of the grand entrance’s unshoveled stone stairs.