Page 93 of The Legacy of Ophelia
“Winged things…like Ophelia. Armies of them. And”—another gasp—another tightening of her eyes and her hands on my leathers—“Malakai, it’s her. That woman.”
“Tell me about her,” I urged. She needed to keep talking to me. Needed to stay present. Memories of the Gates of Angeldust tightened my throat.
“She haswings.” Mila shook her head, and when her horror-stricken eyes met mine, my heart pounded faster.
“Wings?” I echoed, forcing my voice to be calm. “Like a seraph?”
“No. Hers are leathery. And her eyes…” Mila shuddered, horror lacing her tone. “Spirits, she’s closer. But I don’t think she can see me. She keeps walking right by. Pacing back and forth with a child in her arms.”
A child this time, too. Why did they always have children when Mila saw them?
“What about her eyes?” I asked as I situated us on Ombratta, Mila tucked in front of me, and snapped the reins. Luna galloped behind us.
“They’re bright red,” Mila whispered, voice smaller than ever. “And she has fangs; there’s blood dripping from them.”
The fangs were new, too. I cradled Mila tighter to my chest as we raced back toward the city, the woman long gone now.
“I think this is another realm.” She breathed faster. “I think this is wherever they came from, and I think I’m seeing…what they want to do.”
“What is that?”
“They’re studying a map with markings of their targets, and…it’s us, Malakai. All of us. Echnid is sending them after Ophelia’s closest confidants.”
“He’s making sure she’s not raising anymore seraphs without his knowledge. Or maybe he wants her to so he can gather us…” Why did the god want seraphs anyway?
“Yes, and,” she said, and I clung to her every word as we sped through the city gates, needing them to keep coming, “the children. He wants children.”
Fucking Spirits.
Echnid wanted demigods.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Santorina
The human traineeswanted nothing to do with Lancaster. Or me by association.
Last time I visited, I’d floated among the ranks and conveyed the very helpful instruction my warrior friends had taught me. Today at the training circuit, I was only met with wary glances and averted smiles.
“At least they’re being polite when they refuse me,” I huffed, striding to where Lancaster had perched on the hay bale border of the ring. “It certainly is the nicest rejection I’ve ever received.”
“Do you receive many rejections, Santorina?” Lancaster drawled without looking my way, an innuendo dragging out his words.
There he was again, using my full name in a way that sent a tingle down my spine and plucked the string in my chest. He’d done it this morning, too, when he made tea while I was readying myself in the cabin’s bathing chamber.
For you, Santorina.
It had been made precisely the way I liked it, with a single spoon of honey stirred in as soon as the water was poured. I supposed he had endless room to fill in his non-immortalmemory; observing my habits was simply a piece of his Hunter instincts.
For no reason I could decipher beyond his insufferable studying of me, I wanted to challenge the male beside me. “I’m not normally the one making advances to get rejected. So, I would say no.”
Lancaster looked me over, gaze lingering on the weapons belt accentuating my waist. “With knives as sharp as those, I would think men and women would be afraid to approach.”
His eyes were on that one dagger—deadly to no one in this camp other than him—and I wondered if a part of himdidfear it. Fear what I was capable of with a cypher weapon. If I would choose to use it on him.
“Only the ones who aren’t worth my time,” I answered, voice lower than I realized. I leaned back against the hay bale beside him, a few inches between where our hands hung casually.
Lancaster’s stare flicked back to the sparring ring, whatever snare had formed between us shattering. The heat I hadn’t realized was crawling across my skin dissipated.
