Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Except today, apparently.
He was still dressed in the simple black sweatpants he’d been wearing to spar with Dmitri . . . and nothing else. No shoes, no T-shirt. All wings of a massive span, tumbled hair, and that naked muscle just gleaming with sweat—while a cut yet scarred his cheek and bruises bloomed down one side of his chest.
“No real damage?” she said archly.
A wicked grin. “He looks worse. And it’s already healing.”
The cut was sealing right in front of her eyes, but the fact it hadn’t already done so was a sign of how bad it must’ve been to start with. Gripping his chin, she turned his head this way and that. “Hmm. If he does look worse, then keep a wide berth from Honor.”
The grin widened before he leaned in to kiss her cheek. He looked young and wild and beautiful and she had to stop herself from hauling his sweat-slick body closer and licking him all over.
Later, she promised herself. “We need to search the Legion building.”
It took him the merest second to make the connection. “They didn’t bring anything with them out of their rest in the ocean.” But he was moving toward the building with her as he said that.
“But they did collect interesting items once awake.” Small things, lost things, like the bracelet her father had seen one of them pick up. “Maybe they found the Compass subcomponent and it’s been sitting here all this time—same reason as with Hannah.”
“Because it knew it was accessible to me at any time.” Raphael shoved a hand through his hair. “When I think of the kind of beings that created artifacts that hold power through an endless span of time . . .”
“Fucking scary, right? Good thing they put themselves in permanent deep freeze.”
“A cold truth indeed, hunter-mine.” Gaze grim, he pushed open the door hidden behind a wave of falling vines, and they entered the lush and humid atmosphere inside the building.
52
The Legion had designed their home well—the external greenery died back in winter and rejuvenated itself in the spring, but inside, plants thrived all the seasons of the year. Certain things might slow in growth in the colder months, lose their leaves, or go dormant, but other trees and plants and bushes came alive in the cold, the Legion’s garden a wonderland throughout the year.
Small birds twittered a bright welcome to them, Elena and Raphael so familiar to the smaller creatures that called the building home that they’d come to their hands if invited.
The bigger birds circled above, below the open roof.
When they closed the roof in the winter, they left open a small hatch protected by a secondary “roof”—because many of these birds were permanent residents, and not all had worked out how to get in and out through the “doors” on the upper levels that were nothing but sheets of thick, insulating plastic.
Elena exhaled, her soul opening up at the caress of green.
Raphael’s mark came alive at the same instant, wildfire racing through each line.
He rubbed absently at it. “I’ll go up,” he said, sounding distracted.
“Go.” Elena wondered if now he was close to it, he could feel the call of the ancient object.
She watched him take off, his body carved with the muscle of a warrior archangel. The large birds cleared a path for him, but didn’t startle or scare. To them, angels were simply bigger birds.
As he ascended through the core of the building, the deliberately broken floors and ceilings creating a spiraling wonder of dense, dark green peppered with unexpected bursts of color, Elena decided she’d look on the ground level. The Legion had often put their finds in an old iron chest they’d salvaged from the ocean.
She hadn’t touched it since the loss of the Legion. Neither had anyone else; everyone knew this was the Legion’s place and these were the Legion’s things. She might’ve taken charge of it, but the entire Tower watched over it. So it was no surprise to find the chest undisturbed.
Covered by vines, with grass and tiny pansies sprouting around it, it appeared an object lost in time. A grasshopper sat on top, its spindly legs carrying a body that was all but weightless.
“Sorry, buddy,” she murmured, and reached down to lift the lid.
Skittering away at her telegraphed movement, the grasshopper nonetheless didn’t go far. Instead, it perched on a glossy green leaf of the ornamental shrub next to the trunk, watching as she examined the items the Legion had considered treasures.
Her heart ached.
Right at the top lay an old throwing blade she’d discarded after the tip broke. Next to it sat the fragment of a gauntlet that she recognized as being part of a set Raphael used to own. She couldn’t remember when it had been damaged—perhaps even in the battle that had brought the Legion to them?