Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 113332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
“What’s… where is Marcel? What did you do?” he shrieked, looking around as if the earth shaking for the past ten minutes was news to him.
Laurent dreaded the rumble somewhere far away in the sky, knowing it was only the prelude for yet more unnatural lightning. The earth beneath them growled, hellhounds surely digging their way up to the surface.
“Help me carry him!” Laurent repeated, opening the passenger door. “We don’t know what else to do. The egg has cracked. Lana has betrayed us, she’d made a pact with Baal to protect the trees, and now this hell broke loose because two people got killed.”
As sad and afraid as he’d been, the prospect of losing more than they’d already had made Laurent focus on the present. He pushed Lana’s dead eyes, Joker’s bloodstained face, and even Knight’s sorrow to the back of his mind. There would still be time left for mourning, if the world survived.
Magpie went so pale Laurent couldn’t believe human skin was even capable of showing that kind of strange purple-gray hue. “No. No. How could this happen? The trees were weakened. Incompetent creatures! That’s what you all are,” he roared, regaining the color to his face. He pushed past Laurent and hauled up the backpack, staggering as he moved it away from the car. His eyes darted toward the fractured ground, which at this point was emitting the same icy glow as Knight’s sigils, but as soon as he placed the backpack in the grass and unzipped it, the tension in his shoulders eased somewhat.
“It’s… not cracked,” Magpie said in a whisper that was barely audible as the wind began to howl. “It’s hatching.”
Laurent’s heart might have stopped beating for a second, and he stared down at the deepening crack in the shell, unable to speak. This wasn’t how he’d planned the hatching. They’d intended to keep the egg on a pile of warm comforters, between Beast and Laurent, so their son could learn associating their scent with safety. But Beast wasn’t even here, and there was a risk that he’d never see the baby they’d created. He could die not even knowing if Marcel was safe or not.
Grief was a physical pain in his chest, but it sobered him up, and he fell to his knees next to the beloved egg. “I should have never brought him into this world when I knew we still had to face Baal. I’m so selfish.”
Magpie’s lips remained still when he took in the ruby shell, which cracked on the side, sending glitter-like dust into the air.
Laurent shrieked, but Magpie placed his hand on the other side of the shell, as calm as if he’d forgotten about the raging storm above and the ground breaking apart. “Perhaps, but it’s here. Our baby,” he whispered as the fracture budged. The child was pushing at it from the inside.
It didn’t matter how strange it all was, or how rapidly the world around them was falling apart. When Laurent glanced at Magpie’s amazed expression, he felt warmth spread in his heart. The demon took off his robe despite the wind branding his bare skin with goosebumps, and spread it on the grass to transfer the egg onto the black silk.
“Is there anything more we can do? Maybe I could still reach Beast. A trick to fight the tree roots? Please, Jasper, there must be something,” Laurent said, but his eyes never left the cracks spreading all over the shell.
But Magpie was too taken by the miracle unfolding before their very eyes to think of matters as trivial as the end of times. He didn’t even flinch when the right side of the facade Laurent remembered from William Fane’s house collapsed into the cleft between two bulging rims that used to make up the yard in front of the clubhouse.
Dust blew their way, but even as it clung to Magpie’s wet hair, he touched the shell with utmost gentleness, before pulling on either side of the gap to open it further.
A tiny hand out of proportion to the size of the egg emerged from blood-like liquid inside, and Magpie let out a tiny whine of wonder. Laurent couldn’t think of anything but the sight in front of him. As the membrane under the hard shell tore, the goo drizzled down the sides of the egg, the tiniest of fingers moved against Magpie’s digit.
With his heart unable to handle all the love he felt for this small human being, Laurent kneeled next to Magpie and stroked the back of the miniscule hand, ready to pull Marcel out of the shell.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered, despite knowing that the child wouldn’t understand language yet. Perhaps it could at least feel the love of his parent in the tone of his voice.
Baal couldn’t spoil this moment in the midst of the infernal storm, even though Laurent choked up thinking of Beast fighting for them so far away. His absence was a hole that couldn’t be filled, even by the tenderness blooming in Laurent’s heart.