Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 97188 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97188 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
That’s not the role Maeve has played. “How were you recruited?”
Once again, she seems like she doesn’t want to answer me. Once again, she does anyways. But she surprises me. “I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine. One for one.”
I consider her offer. I don’t particularly want to share details about myself with this woman. We’re already in a situation of forced intimacy, and it’s only going to get more complicated as time goes on. I don’t often bite the same person repeatedly, especially if they’re not already intimately acquainted with how bloodline vampires work. It’s far too easy for them to get the wrong idea. Their blood might taste good, but I’m not feeling the same level of pleasure that they are from the bite.
Unless we’re in the middle of having sex when I bite them.
Allowing Maeve closer is a risk. For her. Maybe I shouldn’t care about it . . . Actually, I don’t care about it. She can make her own decisions. If she wants to know more about me, then that’s her problem. My logic feels a little flimsy, but I ignore it and press on. “If you insist.”
“You’ve already asked me about my bag. I want to know about how you came into Threshold.”
I blink. I expected her to ask about the jewels, or perhaps about Evelyn. That seems to be what everyone is focused on since they’ve met me. No one asked what it took to get here. “I came the same way that everyone else seems to. I walked through a portal.”
Maeve gives me a stern look. It’s cute. “You’re not honoring the spirit of the agreement, Lizzie. Tell me the story.”
I could push back, but I’m curious about her. If I don’t play along with this little game of tit for tat, then I won’t get answers to my questions. That’s the only reason I give her the full story. “Evelyn demolished the portal in my home that she entered Threshold through, so that way was closed to me. I’m still not sure how she made it to Threshold, since that portal wasn’t supposed to work like that. It took me two weeks to figure out that she hadn’t exited somewhere else but was caught in the in-between. There was another month of hunting down the truth of what that means.” During that month, I was convinced Evelyn was dead, torn apart in the space of nothingness. I should have left off the hunt, but I needed closure. I used the excuse of attempting to reclaim the family heirlooms, but I breathed a deep sigh of relief when I finally got the truth.
She wasn’t dead. She was in Threshold.
A space between realms. One that is entirely survivable if you are clever and resourceful, both things that Evelyn is in spades. “From there, it was only a matter of finding the actual portal to Threshold. It seemed too risky to attempt what Evelyn did—using a portal meant to travel within our realm and frying it—so I took a more traditional route. It moves, so I had to figure out the exact time and location when it would appear so that I could step through.” For Evelyn, only a week or two had passed since she fled my house. For me, it took nearly a year to reach Threshold. Each day, my anger at her grew until it was a fiery thing inside me overwhelming all else. And even in a fit of rage, I couldn’t kill her.
My mother would be so disappointed.
“You must have been very driven to find your ex-girlfriend.”
I don’t dignify that with a response. Instead, I turn back to my original question. “You have your answer. How did the rebellion recruit you?”
Maeve leans back against the side of the boat. Unlike when she was sharing information about the cave system on her island, she seems significantly more relaxed with this topic. “They didn’t. It kind of happened by accident. I knew Nox because they were one of the few Cŵn Annwn I could stomach when they stopped by on their way north. Or south. All sailors invariably end up in my family’s tavern, drinking themselves under the table. Once I reached adulthood, my mother would often send me away during the nights when those sailors were Cŵn Annwn.”
Easy enough to read between the lines. If there’s one thing so many of the crews of the Cŵn Annwn do, it’s abuse their power. Maeve is stunning and draws the eye wherever she is. It would only be a matter of time before one of those bastards decided to take what she wasn’t offering. “And then?”
“On one of those nights, I saw Nox slipping out of the village. I followed. They met up with a shadowy figure not far from where we found this boat. I was close enough to hear their conversation, and when they inevitably caught me, they decided to recruit me instead of killing me.”