Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156907 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 785(@200wpm)___ 628(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
I studied her.
Then I looked to Circe, who nodded.
My eyes moved to Hera, who dipped her chin.
Jazz’s attention was now in the cabin and even she indicated her assent, which was a shock (then again, her ongoing affair with Mac was getting serious, I’d noted, not to mention Cassius was not a man to dislike, when he wasn’t being an ass, and she’d learned that).
I then took in Frey and Lahn.
Lahn just stared at me with his dark, intense eyes.
But I sensed he agreed.
Frey was the only one who spoke.
“My wife is no fool and our marriage remains strong over decades solely because of it.”
“That’s not true, my handsome husband,” Finnie replied. “You’ve nurtured our marriage too.”
“Only as taught by you,” he returned.
Well then…
That was sweet.
“We best vacate the premises before they jump each other,” Circe suggested to me, and it was then I felt the current between The Drakkar and his Ice Princess, not to mention saw the heat of his gaze on his wife, and I moved to exit the daybed, considering it was their bunk.
As I left the room, Jasmine and Hera positioned close to my sides.
“That doesn’t mean going forth into that wasteland not fully armed,” Jazz muttered under breath.
“Absolutely,” Hera agreed.
I drew in a good deal of air.
And we all headed to Cassius and my cabin so I could prepare myself to meet this part of my destiny.
Fully armed.
But with a focus on the needs of “my man.”
Dear goddess, help me.
Sky Bay was not a wasteland.
I noticed this immediately when I came up to the deck.
I noticed it more as I rode at Cassius’s side through the black paved streets with my lieutenants and his men surrounding us so close, our legs and boots brushed.
It was austere, yes.
But the architecture was astonishing.
I thought the height and breadth and grandeur of Birchlire Castle was a spectacle, a visual feast. And when I had been there, I’d thought the golden domes and white-washed buildings and avenues of Go’Doan were a marvel, blinking blindingly clean and beautiful in the sun.
But everywhere you looked in Sky Bay was like that, and even more.
It seemed all of it, from the carvings in the black stone, to the domes and steeples atop the buildings, to the buttressed dormers, looming gargoyles, massive stained-glass rose windows, even to what appeared to be a colossal working clock atop a multi-storied building that looked like a temple (but Cassius had bit out that it was a bank), there was nowhere to look that did not hold some interest.
And in most cases…beauty.
It was true, it was not the beauty I was used to. The bright, sunshine dappling through the green leaves of The Enchantments or the rolling patchwork of Dellish fields and the quaint thatched villages there.
But it was no less beautiful.
Simply its own kind.
Indeed, even the thick, gray smoke drifting from the chimneys contributed to the overall mood.
Which, for some unknown reason, made me want nothing but a warm cup of something at hand where I was curled somewhere comfortable with a throw covering my legs, a good book in my hand and nothing on my mind but just relaxing.
As I would do on my deck in my treehome.
Or I wanted to be under the covers with Cassius, doing something far more active.
And these I did not feel were bad things.
But I would soon note, as we drew closer, the most beautiful of all, the beacon of this magnificence shone (in its way) from the Citadel that seemed carved (exquisitely) in the southwestern ridge of craggy peaks that surrounded the entirety of the city, making it somewhat of a bowl that had a break at the harbor.
Cassius’s home, the Sky Citadel curved along its side of this range that guarded the Bay, and even from afar, I knew the iron crosses over the windows and hostile wrought notions shooting from its towers and fencing its battlements were extraordinary.
Honestly, I could not wait to get there and discover every inch.
I did not speak of any of this.
Cassius was clearly in no mood, and because of this, the rest of us adopted his mood.
But regardless, every turn we made, my mind was taken with something new to discover.
For instance, on some streets, right through the middle, were cut waterways on which narrow boats were shunted up (or down) as a way to transport people, and a goodly number of them, so that the streets of the populous city did not get clogged with horses and carriages (and all the congestion and smells that came from them).
And down another street, I witnessed some sort of conveyance. It took up one side of the street. It was long (it had eight windows down the side), was on rails, and seemed to be propelled by men pedaling large apparatuses at the back.