Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 280(@200wpm)___ 224(@250wpm)___ 187(@300wpm)
“That doesn’t sound right. They’re so lumpy.”
“I think it is, lumpy or not. You’re right that they are lumpy,” Casey throws Cadence a bone.
I sit, stunned, listening to the two of them bicker about the theory of survival when it comes to babies. There’s something wrong with them. There’s something wrong with all of us. What happened to Wrath? What happened to Lettie?
“Did you install those systems in the bridge, too?”
“Oh yes. Lettie will be fine. She’ll still be insane, but her body won’t be broken, and that’s the only thing we can do anything about,” Casey says.
“We’re limited in our scope,” Cadence explains.
“Very limited,” Casey agrees. “For example, I don’t have the first idea where we are right now.”
“Looks like dense primordial forest on the verge of what I’m hoping is a dormant volcano, because magma flows are the last thing we need right now,” Cadence snorts in an oh my god can you imagine sort of way.
“Oh my god, can you imagine?” Casey laughs. “Oh my god. We’re sitting here, in the wreckage of our spaceship, which means oh my, we’re not going back to space any time soon, are we?”
“Haha, no!” Cadence giggles madly.
“And then, oh… here’s a gigaton of molten lava hot enough to melt this whole thing into oblivion.”
“It would be like the ship never existed at all!” Cadence shrieks with laughter.
“I know!” Casey joins her in her mirth.
I don’t know what’s funny about that, but the two of them are absolutely rolling with laughter. It’s probably shock. People handle stress in all sorts of different ways.
“We are going to need to try to salvage some survival things,” Casey says when they stop laughing. “There’s plenty on this ship to help us. This is basically camping.”
“Better than camping,” Cadence replies. “We’re always saying we don’t get out enough. Now we’re going to be outside all the time.”
Bits of the ship start to shift. A panel is pushed up and over. A sense of pure relief floods my body as I see a horn emerging. It’s Wrath. He’s alive. The foam worked.
As he emerges from the remnants of the ship, I see that he’s holding Lettie’s body in his arms. She is limp, her head rolled back, no movement of life obvious in her. I feel some part of me break at the sight. This is not how this was supposed to happen. We were supposed to make everything better. I wanted revenge, I suppose, but not like this.
Cadence and Cassie rise to their feet at the sight of him.
“What happened? Did the foam not work?” Cadence asks the question.
“The foam didn’t work,” Casey says solemnly.
“Oh my god. The foam didn’t work.”
I don’t know if they are more upset at the failure of their mechanical system, or the fact that Lettie is gone. I know what I am most upset by. This was all so unnecessary. This didn’t have to end this way. This didn’t have to happen at all.
“Mr Saurian! Is she dead?” Casey calls out.
“She’s unconscious,” Wrath says. “She’s still breathing.”
“Yes! The foam worked!” Cadence and Casey high-five.
“If you mean that infernal substance that made me absolutely certain I was going to be smothered to death at the precise moment of the crash, yes. It worked,” Wrath growls as he lumbers toward them, not to mention me.
“That’s exactly what it is supposed to feel like,” Casey says. “It’s ironic, don’t you think?”
“A little too ironic,” Cadence replies.
These two are so damn thrilled to be in a disaster it’s almost sick.
I rise to my feet to greet him, filled with sudden, ecstatic glee. It’s like I finally understand what the engineer girls are so excited about. Cheating death with someone you love is the greatest rush of all time.
“Allie!”
Wrath’s eyes are widening at me. He is staring at me as if he is seeing a ghost. For a second, I assume he is just happy to see that I am alive, as I am happy to see him alive. But then I remember…
He forbade me from coming onto the ship with him.
I’m not supposed to be here.
The look that comes across his face in the aftermath of his surprise sends chills through to the very core of me. He looks determined in a way I do not want him to be determined.
Wrath strides across the wreckage, Lettie’s body in his arms. He hands her off to the engineers almost without looking, leaving the two of them to take the load of her and lower her down to what passes for the floor in a shattered ship.
I’ve never really understood the fear of Wrath until this point. Lettie and others talked about him like he was the most terrifying creature on the planet, but he has always been nice to me, soft even. I thought they’d really exaggerated things.