Dark Possession - Aja James Page 0,42
she lost herself amongst books in the Cove’s library most of the time. She started by understanding the organization of the materials, and in so doing, realized that the books and scrolls weren’t arranged in the most logical, easy to navigate manner. And, too, upon conferring with Devlin and Grace, they realized that only a third of the library was archived electronically in the Cove’s database. They worked out a process to upload more, and to ensure the security of the information so that it was safe from prying eyes.
They actually debated this for a while, because Medusa’s tech guru was extremely good. So good at what they did, in fact, that even Grace worked hard to stymie them. And, sometimes, they still slipped through the firewalls before Grace and Devlin could erect new cyber barricades.
As long as the materials in the library were limited to physical copies only, no one could access them through the Cloud. On the other hand, it was so much harder to find information they needed, cross reference and piece together puzzles when one had to pore through thousands of volumes and millions of lines of text and symbols.
In the end, they came to a compromise. Any material they didn’t believe to be “sensitive,” that they might even desire to make more publicly available, at least amongst the Immortal kinds, they would transfer into digital assets. Alternative versions of histories, stories that were passed through word of mouth, myths, legends and fairytales—even if these types of texts were stumbled upon by humans, no one would raise any eyebrows. After all, they were simply “stories.”
So, Eveline began sorting and organizing which materials were to be digitized and which she would leave entirely private and inaccessible. In the process, she often lost herself in the stories themselves.
Verily, she became rather obsessed with one particular time period in ancient history—the reign of the greatest Dark Queen that ever lived—the Queen of All Kinds.
She’d studied Queen Ashlu’s three thousand years of relatively peaceful, if heavy-handed, reign from the Pure Ones’ point of view previously. Now, reading about how events unfolded from the Dark historians’ point of view…it absolutely fascinated Eveline.
How the same history could be told in such different ways. And all the ways of telling it were representations of the truth, but never the full truth.
It was all about perspective, perception, and interpretation.
And then there were her dreams…they were so real they seemed like memories. Except clearer, as if events were playing out as she dreamed them. But even if that were true somehow, it was still one perspective out of many.
Eveline wanted to know the truth.
Aside from immersing herself in the orgasmic feast of ancient texts and literature, Eveline also spent a part of every day visiting with Clara, sometimes with Grace too, and she felt that she was forging a real friendship with the women. As well as the men, though Devlin was a lot easier to talk to than Eli. And Annie was always a wonderful treat. The little girl already started calling her “Aunt Eveline.”
This was rare for Eveline. She wasn’t the sort of female who was warm and fuzzy. She knew she was often off-putting with the way she talked, her interests, her boring-ness. She wasn’t physically demonstrative; she wasn’t naturally affectionate. And her face was usually stuck in a book.
Her comradery with the Pure Ones, for example, was just that: comradery. She did not have “friends.” When Sophia, the Pure Queen, was a child, and all through her formative years, she and Eveline never “bonded,” not like she had with Aella. And Eveline herself grew closer to the Amazon-supermodel Elite warrior only recently. She had a good relationship with Ayelet, the Guardian, but then, the latter woman’s Gift was deep empathy. Ayelet connected well with everyone.
All this was to say, Eveline was very pleased with the friendships she’d been building with the residents of the Cove. In a way, she felt like she was slowly coming out of her shell. And truth be known, she hadn’t even been aware until recently that she’d been holed up in a shell in the first place.
She’d always gone her own way, lost in her own world. The past, the future, other people’s stories, histories—there was so much to learn and absorb and understand. She’d never really focused on the present, and she’d certainly never thought about living her own story. She’d been perfectly content being an observer.
But now…since meeting Ramses…
She wanted to revel in the