Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 128061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
She knew about those feelings, a strange little offshoot of his magic that sometimes led them out of a dead end by some miracle or other. His sister had been a Seer, and the family gene pool had clearly touched him somehow.
But things always went wrong. Always. This was clearly why he hadn’t mentioned it before now. He hadn’t thought up this plan; it had come to him in a flash, in bits and pieces that never seemed to fit together perfectly.
That was where she came in. Her job was to keep their fragile house of cards from collapsing. She’d gotten them out of scrapes a million times, but there’d always been casualties.
“The goal is not to lose anyone, I thought,” she said slowly.
“We won’t. I know we won’t.”
She didn’t know if she believed him. Sometimes he focused too hard on the big picture and didn’t see the Mack truck bearing down on them. That was her job, after all. Damage control.
She paused, studying him. “Are you going to tell them about Momar’s numbers, or leave that as a surprise, too?”
“I’ll tell Austin some of what I found out. Basically that Momar is checking Kingsley’s defenses. That his goal is information gathering. Momar wants to preserve his people for the actual attack. The rest he doesn’t need to know yet. It’ll agitate him and pull his focus from what is most important right now—getting those gargoyles on board.”
“Austin is a very dangerous man, Sebastian. I don’t like the idea of sneaking around behind his back. If he finds out we planned an attack on his pack, on Jessie, while simultaneously keeping important information about his brother from him, he’ll skin us alive.”
“I know. He’s not cunning, though. He won’t know our plans unless we actually tell him, and we’re not idiots.”
“He’s not cunning, but he’s smart. He’s going to see how we dance around those gargoyles. He’ll see our tactics. What if he somehow puts two and two together and reads into this?”
“How would he do that? He’d have to know more than he does. That part I’m not worried about.”
She sighed, leaning against the railing. “I just don’t know. This plan isn’t just loose—it relies on a lot of factors we have zero control over. It’s almost reckless.”
“Maybe, but it’ll work. That’s the bottom line. All we’re doing is pushing Jessie a little, like we’ve done in the past. Besides, if we don’t get the gargoyles, we can call off the attack before they go dark. Going dark only lasts three to six days, depending on the team. We should know by then.”
She didn’t comment, looking away to think.
“We won’t be able to keep her from helping Kingsley,” Sebastian said softly. “If we told her and Austin the risks, they’d go anyway. They’d do everything they could to help, and they’d likely die trying. Securing those gargoyles will go a long way to saving her life. It’s worth trying to make this happen.”
He had a point there. So why did she still have a very, very bad feeling about this? Why did she feel like the price for success would be incredibly steep?
SEVEN
Nessa
The sound of doors creaking and opening echoed down the hall. Other doors popped and then opened—those to the secret tunnels within the house. From all the rooms, the lights flared and then glowed brightly.
“That’s a yes,” Sebastian said, looking down the hall. “That’s Ivy House’s yes to the plan.”
“I forgot that the house got a vote,” Nessa murmured. “Will the house help me try to patch up all the holes in the plan as it gets underway?”
“You know it will, if it can. We’ll be able to do this, Nessa. Maybe it’ll even be easy, since those gargoyles don’t know what they’re walking into.”
Famous last words.
She’d think this all through later.
“Let’s see what’s in that attic,” she finally said, starting up.
“Why don’t you tell me where we are with the gargoyles?”
She did so, quickly telling him about the huge amount of information Niamh had pulled together in such a short time, and their ability to hack into the cairns and get everything, from their guardian information to how much and what their production cairns were producing. They’d done good work in a couple days and now needed to lean into information gathering on any dark secrets the cairn leaders might be hiding.
“Yikes,” Nessa said, finally taking a look around the attic and noticing the rows of weaponry hanging on the wall. A grin wrestled with her lips, and then she burst out laughing. “They’re named.”
Sebastian had a lopsided grin as he investigated. “Who did it, do you think? Mr. Tom or Edgar?”
“Mr. Tom. Edgar doesn’t get to make decisions about the inside of the house. Just the outside.”
“And vice versa?”
“Yup.” She chuckled, tracing one of the names. “Jake the battle-ax. They aren’t even interesting names. They’re all common. Ron, Ralph, Carl…”