Series: Charmaine Pauls
Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Heart thudding, I study the delicate face that floats above the water on my palm. Her pale skin is black and blue in spots, her lips puffy and swollen, split in several places. Her sunset-colored hair is covered in mud and sand, and it’s strangely short, at most the length of my finger.
Did the Phaelix monsters do this to her? Cut her hair before they beat her?
My blood boils at the thought, and the water around us warms uncomfortably.
Gritting my teeth, I rein in my power once more. The torrid heat within me dissipates as I manage to somewhat calm my anguish. She’s safe now. I have her. Taking in a steadying breath, I position her so that her back is pressed against my chest and she’s propped up between my legs, unable to slip beneath the water.
Dozens of questions swirl in my mind, but I focus on what’s important right now—which is to repair the damage that’s been done to this wisp of a woman who, in the wink of an eye, eradicated the numbness that was slowly but surely turning my soul to stone.
“Bring Vitai and Kian here,” I instruct my sister in a clipped tone.
I don’t miss the hope that flashes in her eyes before she rushes toward the hallway, but her relief vanishes quickly when I use a fraction of my power to hold the wall together, preventing her from opening the entrance.
I’m not taking any chances. She’s not leaving my quarters until I say so. I have a very good reason for detaining her, and she knows it.
Her shoulders slump and then lift as she inhales deeply. A moment later, two portals open on either side of the room.
Kian steps through the one on the right, his mind already probing mine in search of answers as to why I summoned him.
“You called for me, brother?” he says as he fully materializes, his tall frame dwarfing the pillar at his back.
When he notices me with my clothes in the water holding a woman in my arms, he freezes.
Like Gaia, he knows immediately. Like her, he can feel it.
Panic washes over his usually stoic expression. He opens his mouth, but before he can question me, Vitai appears on the other side of the room.
Despite being the youngest of my siblings, Vitai displays the empathy and wisdom that normally only comes with very advanced age. Slender and leaner than Kian, he moves closer with eloquent and lithe agility, his expression guarded but his slate-gray eyes ablaze with alarm.
“What the dragon?” Kian mumbles.
I look at my miraculous find, making sure the opalescent water still covers her up to her chin. Just the thought that one of my brothers could catch a glimpse of her pearly naked skin is enough to unleash my wrath again.
As if sensing the pending catastrophe, Vitai stops a safe distance away.
The column of his throat ripples as he swallows. “Is that…?”
“Yes,” Kian says, both surprised and resigned. “It’s exactly what you think.”
Gaia comes forward, hovering at the far end of the bath. “How?”
How, indeed?
I’ll get my answers.
First, I need to tend to the injuries I feel so viscerally they may as well be my own. The pain in her mouth where the Phaelix knocked out her teeth throbs in mine. The cracks in her ribs mirror in my perfectly healthy bones. The rest of her vitals are normal.
The command I direct at Vitai is brusque. “Fix her.”
He’s an expert when it comes to dismantling and reassembling living matter. For that reason, we often use him as a healer.
Moved by his inborn need to repair anything that’s broken, Vitai is already inching toward the edge of the bath. The healing water has reviving as well as purifying properties, but it’s more suited for soothing aching muscles and disinfecting scrapes. Its most useful feature is its anesthetic property. I’d need a much stronger dose to knock me out cold, but the woman floating in my embrace is so tiny that the miniscule amount of medicinal salts added to the bath water was enough.
As Vitai heals her injuries, starting with her surface scrapes and bruises, I study her more closely. Throughout my life, even after I thought her dead, I’d see her in my dreams like this, all grown up and beautiful. Long after I could no longer sense her, I could still see her in my mind’s eye, the mysterious connection that exists between mates leading me to picture her first as a child, then as an adolescent, and then as a young woman.
And the bond proved true. Face-wise, she’s almost exactly the way my mind painted her for me, from the tip of her small, upturned nose to the long, reddish-brown lashes fanning over her pale cheeks. Her delicate chin is sharp and stubborn, her pouty lips pink and infinitely kissable. Her eyes are closed now, but their unique color, that of the tropical sea shimmering in the summer sun, is imprinted on my vision, as it has been for so many years.