Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
If anyone in the Colony ever learned how much he cared for her, she would become a target to be used against him—and she had spent too many years of her life already in danger.
He would not put her in that position, even though it meant that she would continue to hate him—and hate him she did.
“Forgive me, sister mine. My bath is concluding. You either need to shoot me in the head or leave me to my privacy. I am done talking—although I suppose you must be used to the silence with your mute mate.”
Blade winked at John Matthew—and got bared fangs in response.
As Xhex snarled across the cave’s rocky interior, Blade’s heart ached. But that, like so much…
… he kept to himself.
THIRTY-EIGHT
THE FOLLOWING DAY, the hours passed with an aching slowness for Lydia: dawn arriving, the sun drifting by overhead, night assuming prominence. Like every living thing on the planet, it was the cycle that she had always known, and yet now the components of minutes and hours were revealed as a very specific form of torture.
She spent most of the time in bed, staring at the door, hoping it would burst open to reveal Daniel’s return. When she did get up, it was to go to the bathroom. Take a quick shower. Ghost down to the kitchen to pick up food and bring it back—as if he would somehow change his mind only if she were laying her head on his pillow.
The day after that was exactly the same. Well, except that sometime after noon, her phone went off. She all but lunged for it on the bedside table—only to discover that it was someone who wanted to talk to her about the warranty on her car.
“You’ve got to call Candy for that,” she muttered as she hung up on the telemarketer.
Back onto the pillow—and it was then that she finally fell asleep. She knew this because she was able to be present in a dream that repeatedly laid claim to her, her hyperawareness causing her to be awake within her subconscious’s dance of delusions.
Naturally, it was about Daniel.
And he was dying.
The images, sights, and sounds were all based on memories. She had been present many times when he’d crashed. She had watched him turn blue and gasp for breath, or be unable to respond to simple commands. She had seen the medical staff rush in and had to jump back, jump out of the way. She’d begged and prayed for his survival. And naturally, all of that terror was where she went: She was at his bedside down in the clinic, and he was fighting for breath, clawing at the air in front of him for relief, nothing but a wheeze coming out of him—
Now is when you call for help, she told herself.
Straining with everything she was worth, she called out to the closed door. Screamed for Gus, even though she’d been told he’d left, hollered for someone, anyone, to—
Her grandfather was the one who stepped into the room.
And abruptly, she traded places with Daniel: Lydia was now the one in the bed and she had no idea where he had gone—no, wait. That wasn’t true. He had died, and now she was dying, too. Of a broken heart.
Her grandfather came up to her bedside. He was dressed in his tweed jacket and his wool slacks, his pipe in his hand, his bushy gray eyebrows down low, as if he were very concerned about her.
“Have you come to say goodbye,” she choked out.
As always, he said nothing. He just stared down at her.
“Help me, Grandfather. What shall I do?”
Wordlessly, her grandfather’s arm raised and swung around to the door, his knurled finger pointing out into—
Lydia woke up in a rush, the dim contours of the bedroom she had shared with Daniel familiar and strange at the same time.
“Grandfather? Are you here…?”
When there was no answer, she wrapped her arms around herself and wept. She wanted to be mad at Daniel for misjudging her as he had, for jumping to a logical conclusion that nonetheless made no sense. Instead, she just felt like he had died, even though he was still alive.
And that dream was right.
She was in the process of dying, too.
In her soul.
* * *
About fifty miles to the north, not far from the Canadian border, Daniel sat outdoors in front of a crackling fire, his eyes lost in the flames that spit and hissed inside their circle of stones. From time to time, he coughed, partially from the cold irritating his shot-to-shit lungs, partially from the smoke, definitely from the dryness of everything.
The campsite he’d rented for the night had been free. Which was what happened when it was off-season and no one was monitoring their property. He’d just driven right around the flimsy arm barrier across the entrance to the campgrounds and kept going until he identified the most defensible position. After that, he had liberated some cordwood from under a tarp by the communal restrooms, and settled in for the night.