Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Driven by some kind of paranoia, he’d stuck with her for every moment of every hour, the sense that something was coming making him extra protective. She, on the other hand, had seemed perfectly calm, and outwardly speaking, there had been nothing unusual to anything, the glymera a constant simmering threat, Lash and the Lessening Society all over Caldwell, the demon fucking shit up, the normal stresses of the Brotherhood and their grown families ever present.
When Rahvyn had announced she wasn’t going in tonight to the Audience House and had canceled the session, it had been a relief just to chill.
Sensing his mate’s presence beside him, he shook his head.
“You knew about this,” he whispered as he stared across the kitchen at a reunion that seemed as shocking as the tragic loss of Wrath had been all those years ago. “Didn’t you.”
He glanced over at his mate as the King pulled his son into the clinch as well, the family made whole once again.
Rahvyn was invisible to everybody but him, and she was wiping tears from her eyes, her silver stare worried. “I wanted to tell you. It’s been eating me up for all this time. But I had to be the only one who knew. The demon Devina has the ability to travel through time as well, and though Wrath experienced the time jump as but a moment, his soul has been in the in-between for thirty years. If anyone had known, there was a risk that it would get out to her somehow and she could have gotten to him. If we’d lost him at that point? There was no coming back, and he would have ended up in a place that was worse than Dhunhd.”
“You hid him in time,” Lassiter whispered with awe. “That night… when I saw the meteor in the sky, that was Wrath.”
“And me. I swept him up the second before the explosion went off.” She reached for him. “Please… forgive me—”
Lassiter opened his arms, and as she became corporeal, he drew her in close to him. “Oh, my God, there’s nothing to forgive. You’re fucking brilliant!”
As she snuggled in to his chest, she said, “The Book let me know what was going to happen, and I fought going down and getting involved. But then I thought of Beth. It all happened so quickly, and this was the solution that came to me.”
“Genius. Absolute genius.”
She pulled back. “I hated lying to her. To you.”
The torment was in her face, her eyes luminous with the conflict she’d kept to herself.
He shook his head and turned her so she could see the clutch of the First Family. “That is all that matters to me. Whatever sacrifices we had to make, known and unknown, don’t matter—as long as we can have that.”
Lassiter wiped his face, and as he brought his hand down, he regarded the shimmer of silver on the pads of his fingertips.
And then Wrath looked up. “Rahvyn! Lassiter!”
There was more hugging at that point, and then the King wanted to go find Fritz. As the First Family, and the golden, descended down into the basement, Lassiter glanced around and marveled at how the house seemed full again. Even though it technically hadn’t been empty.
He looked into his shellan’s silver eyes. “You’re a miracle, you know that?”
“I’m not an angel, though.” Rahvyn reached up above his head. “I don’t have a halo like you do.”
“You don’t need one, you’re my Gift of Light.” He smiled. “Like I always tell you, you brought it back for me. Forever.”
As he stared into her eyes, he felt the future before them all, stretching out into time. He could see no details, none of the grand events or nightly minutiae, neither the sunshine nor the rain. He knew there would be both, of course. That was the way life worked—and because you couldn’t predict any of it, and could control only some of it… the most important thing was who you were with, who you surrounded yourself with.
Who your friends were.
Maybe that was why The Golden Girls was his favorite show.
And why he knew the great Betty White got it right when she’d spoken his favorite quote of hers: Replay the good times. Be grateful for the years you had.
That was everybody’s immortality right there.
“Hey, you want to go down and watch some TV while Wrath shocks the shit out of everybody we know and love?” Then he murmured, “And maybe a little somethin’ more, you know, if you’re interested in a religious experience?”
Rahvyn smiled and linked her arm around his waist. “You bet, angel mine. It’s a date.”