Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 141492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 707(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 707(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
The tarot cards were such a part of her. “Others have the same cards?”
“Not the same. Kahina agreed that others could use the idea, but they had to design them, and they could not be traced back to her. Nothing could give Petru the idea that he was part of their makeup. The first person to actually design the next cards could take the credit, and that would help with Petru’s journey of natural discovery.”
“The others holding the cards are demon fighters?”
“Yes,” Aura nodded. “Like you. They keep the demons from slipping through. And they help the one guarding the gate. I never fully explained the beast and the gate to you because I knew evil was going to rise here and we would have to make a stand. Your training took precedence over everything else.”
“And you think I’m ready.”
“I know you’re ready. I believe Lilith is the one attacking us, and she waited all these years, believing your family would give in to the modern ways. She thinks you would have grown lazy over time and forgotten the war. My guess is she is attacking Petru with everything she has in order to slow him down or stop him from getting here. She will try to kill you before he can make it. With the two of you out of her way, she believes she will have an easy victory.”
“The cards say she is not wrong.”
“She is wrong. She’s wrong in that your family has taken these centuries to prepare yourselves. Generation after generation, you’ve improved your fighting techniques.”
“But we still can’t succeed without Petru.”
“She won’t believe you can succeed even with him. She won’t believe for one moment the skills you or your people have when it comes to fighting her demons or the vampires. You are no child, Safia. That is what you are in her mind. That five-year-old. But you’re a warrior, one very skilled. You have command of the creatures she thinks she controls. You can take them away from her, and you can do it with ease.”
That was true. She was very skilled, and she did connect with all kinds of reptiles and raptors, Aura had seen to that. She’d drilled it into her that she had to practice every day.
“You trained my grandmother and then my mother.”
Aura nodded. “As well as all who came before them. The interesting thing was each generation became more skilled than the one before them. It was as if your mother would pass what she learned on to you before you were born so that you had the reflexes and skills. I had the feeling that as time progressed, the true fighter was emerging.” She smiled at Safia. “And then you were born.”
“You paid a very steep price, having to be a child over and over again,” Safia pointed out.
“I had the privilege of living with your family at night and getting to know the way of your people. They are so lovely and honorable. They accepted me despite my differences. My parents had the most difficult time, not me. My father suffered an injury that should have killed him. He stayed in this world for as long as possible because my mother couldn’t leave me alone when I was portraying to the human world that I was a child. She’d made that promise when Petru won the war for us. Carpathian couples do not leave one another. When one goes, the other follows to the next life. Eventually, my father had no choice. He said to her those were their consequences, and he would wait for her in the land of shadows.”
Again, Safia heard the sorrow in Aura’s voice. She really didn’t fully understand what her friend was trying to tell her, but she knew Petru’s choice to save so many people rather than her had caused a huge ripple effect on so many others. She might never really comprehend why, because she didn’t really know or understand the Carpathian culture, but she had great empathy for Aura, and her parents’ separation weighed heavily on her.
“I begged my mother to follow my father, but she said she wouldn’t leave me alone until she was certain it was safe for me to be in the world without her. She was so . . . diminished. It hurt to see her that way. At the same time, I was in awe of her and loved her even more for her tremendous sacrifice for me.”
Safia knew that Aura had lost her mother recently. What did all that mean? Had her mother not really been ill but instead pining away for her spouse? What had Aura said about lifemates? Once the binding words were spoken, they could not be far from one another.
“I would have liked to have gotten to know your mother better. I only was able to meet her that one time. She was lovely and very welcoming.”