Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 93948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
“It’s too late for that.” For the first time since I met her, she actually looks defeated. “I came to you because you’re the best shot we have. That doesn’t mean we have a good shot, Nox.”
I’ve never known her to be one to let impossible circumstances beat her down to dust the way they do to us mere mortals. When the rebellion was first getting off the ground about ten years ago, Siobhan and I worked together quite a bit. I try not to think about those days often, because we were so damned young. The very idea of the rebellion was exciting and filled with possibility, and I certainly didn’t have any concept of what it would cost in pursuit of a better way.
Now look at us, worn to the bone and as weary as people twice our age.
Before I can think of all the reasons it’s a terrible idea, I take her shoulders and shake her. “What did you tell me after our first fight?”
My shake barely moves her. She stares down at me. “How am I supposed to remember that? It was a lifetime ago.”
No reason for that to sting. Just because she’s been a figure who looms large through my life doesn’t mean she feels the same way. She obviously doesn’t. “We had gotten word about an entire family who ended up in Threshold by mistake. Hedd had his orders to scoop them up, and we were only days out from their location.”
The memory lights up her eyes. “The Tu family.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t think I could make it there before the Audacity.” She speaks slowly, her gaze distant. “You were afraid to risk me.”
“I was.” I still am. I drop my hands. “You told me that hope wins more battles than pure martial prowess. You told me that despair kills.”
Her full lips curve, just a little. “That was rather clever of me.”
“I certainly thought so. And you were right. You got there before the Cŵn Annwn and were able to see them home.”
“I almost killed myself to make it happen,” she murmurs. “I don’t know if that’s the moral we should cleave to.”
If she were anyone else, I would use this opportunity to flirt, to distract with sex as much as with words. But she’s not anyone else. She’s Siobhan.
And she’s in love with Bastian.
I just hope he treats her with more care than he treated me. A hope that dims as I consider how he could have possibly been so foolish as to be caught after all this time. Everything else has changed in the last fourteen years; surely Bastian has changed as well. I shove the worry away. We’ll rescue his goofy ass and then I’ll get my answers.
For now, I have to inspire hope in the woman who’s inspired me from the very beginning. I clear my throat. “It’s time to bring the rebellion out of the shadows and change things once and for all.”
“Easy to say. Significantly more impossible to pull off.”
“One step at a time.” I don’t exactly know how we so effectively reversed roles from when we were young and fearless. I frown. “Are you manipulating me right now?”
Her smile, small as it is, disappears. “It’s a fair question, and I’m not above doing so, but not this time. It’s just…” She starts to turn away. I don’t think, I just catch her biceps and keep her in place. Siobhan raises her brows. “It’s been a full decade, Nox. And we haven’t moved the needle even a little.”
“We’ve saved countless people.”
“Yes, and the Council has harmed countless more.” This time, when she pulls away, I let her go. She walks to the massive window overlooking the wake of the Audacity. “Remove the current Council and the noble families will just elect new representatives. It changes nothing. We have to make an example of them and purge the rot that exists in the Cŵn Annwn.”
It’s nothing more than I’ve considered in the past…and no less impossible. “Even if that was the plan, how do you decide who to purge and who to pass over? The crews have spent years fighting monsters and terrorizing the population. One ship isn’t an easy mark, let alone the whole fleet.”
“I know.” Siobhan’s shoulders drop. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. The Cŵn Annwn—the originals—hunted monsters, regardless of the skin they wore. The monstrosity was the intent to harm, not what they looked like on the outside. This whole thing is wrong.”
“I don’t know if it matters what the originals did. They’re gone. They’ve been gone for so long, we don’t even have written history about them.”
“I know.” She drops into the chair in rough proximity to my bed. “But we have stories. I have stories.”
Best not to think about the bed now. Certainly not in relation to Siobhan. I thought I had locked away my disastrous desire for her, but the longer she’s on my ship, the harder it is to deny the truth. The desire never disappeared. I was simply lying to myself about it. The lie only worked as long as I didn’t see her, and now it’s crumpling around me.