She prayed she could trust Darion’s word as well, because she wasn’t only placing her heart in his hands, but the fate of her entire realm.
CHAPTER 38
“Is this the book you want, Jenna?”
Caleb stood across the archives room from where she was working on some notes. He held up one of her journals that seemed nearly as big as he was.
She smiled at the sweet boy. “Yep, that’s the one.”
He brought it over to her, setting the thick book on the table beside a dozen others. She and Caleb had been hanging out together quite a bit the past couple of days. Tonight, while Brock and the other warriors were on patrol in the city, it was more a matter of simply enjoying Caleb’s company rather than needing his help with her work.
She and Brock both adored him. Over the years they’d had more than one conversation about how much they would love to raise a child together. Getting to know Caleb had only given those conversations a new sense of clarity--and urgency. Neither one of them was eager to tell the little boy that no family had come forward to claim him, even after the Order had put out feelers with the Breed community at large. The thought of sending him off to one of the area Darkhavens to live with total strangers was unthinkable. Brock felt so too. They just had to decide when to sit Caleb down and ask him if he might want to stay with them on a more permanent basis.
She reached over and tousled his silky hair. “You’re not bored sitting down here with me, are you, kiddo?”
He smiled. “Nah-uh. I like books.”
“Me too.” She went back to the new journal she was starting, and paused as an odd chill swept over her. Her skin suddenly felt damp and clammy, her head a bit woozy.
“Are you okay, Jenna?” Caleb’s voice took on a distant tone, as if an unseen breeze was carrying it away.
“I think so,” she said, although she actually wasn’t sure at all. “Will you do me a favor, please? I’m just a little cold, so do you mind running up to the residence to fetch one of my sweaters for me?”
He nodded vigorously, then hurried away.
The strange sensation stayed with her, and sitting wasn’t helping. She got up and carried a small stack of unused journals back to the bookcase. She barely made it over there when she was overcome by nausea, as though waves were rocking under her feet.
She gripped a shelf to steady herself--and at the same time a vision jolted into her mind’s eye.
A cool, damp darkness all around her.
Waves rolling against the prow of a large sailboat moving at high speed across a wide body of water. Salt water. She could taste the sea’s brine on her lip, could feel the sting of it in her eyes.
On deck, a crew of dozens skulked under the thin moonlight. Big bodies garbed in everything from street clothes to rags, taking orders from a captain who stared with singular purpose into the distant horizon.
Shewas that captain.
It was his otherworldly eyes her mind was connected to now.
Mist began to cling to her face as the boat continued on its course. The captain pointed his finger toward the bow, a silent order to the crew manning the tall sails.
Almost there.
He knew this in the way the air was shifting, feeling thicker as the boat neared the perimeter of an unseen barrier.
It was time.
The captain bent to retrieve a metal box he had stowed near his booted feet. He lifted the lid and out poured pure white light.
His crew gasped at the sudden illumination, some of them swiveling their heads in alarm at the impossible brightness he had uncovered. Fangs glinted behind mouths gone agape in confusion and alarm. Their amber eyes glowed like lanterns in the mad faces of the Rogues.
“Steady,” the captain commanded them in the primitive tongue he knew they would understand.
The mist surrounding the boat glittered in the light pouring off the pair of crystals he held in their titanium box. The waves cut away beneath the prow as the vessel sped forward.
The veil couldn’t hold.
It shuddered . . . then broke, burning away to nothing under the power of the two crystals.
