Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,82
period of time, some trusted warriors for my Chosen, for I doubt they will be easy to find in the chaos-embroiled, lie-infested hive that remains.”
She paused in her plotting to emphasize the most important prerequisite.
“But only if Seth agrees. Else, I am content to remain with him here and help Ramses and the Pure Ones however I can.”
Eveline’s gray-blue eyes softened as she smiled.
“He will support you, Jade. You should tell him. Whether or not you want or need it, you are born to be a queen. That is what I think. You are as formidable as you are fair. The Dark Ones need more rulers like you.”
Jade took a bracing breath and diverted their attention back to where she began when she came into the library.
“Have you found what you’re looking for? Is there anything I can do to help?”
Eveline busied her hands with stacking and arranging some papers together.
“This is what I know: I believe we are nearing the end of a cycle, or perhaps the beginning of a new one. Past and future move in never ending cycles. Only the choices made in the present can shape the passage of time. History has been repeating itself. I’ve seen so many instances of it.”
“Such as?” Jade prodded.
“So many of our different Kinds are thrown in one another’s path. In the past, such…mixed unions…were strictly forbidden. Yet, in the present, we have chosen to forge a new future together, couple by couple, breaking the laws that have always governed the Immortals. We are making different choices. The future is completely uncertain. The Orb of Prophesy no longer speaks to me. Not since right after Rain chose Valerius as her Consort for the Phoenix Cycle.”
“Yes,” Jade mused, considering her words. “I understand what you mean.”
She and Seth were one of those forbidden couples. So were Ramses and Eveline. Tal and Ishtar. Inanna and Gabriel. And many more.
Perhaps there were even more that they didn’t know about, out there in the world. Perhaps this was all leading to something…
Fateful.
“Beings so rare that we once thought of as myths and legends are proven to be truth,” Eveline continued. “Animal Spirits. Elementals.”
She looked at her own hands as if the answers were written in her fingertips.
“I never knew my own powers until I met Ramses. I don’t think I’ve discovered all of my Gifts, but I think…no, I know I am a Fire Elemental.”
Jade looked at her alertly.
“There are others like me, I am sure of it. Right in front of us. Though they don’t know their Gifts either. Perhaps we are all preparing instinctively for what’s to come.”
“Dragons,” Jade murmured.
Eveline met her gaze.
“And the wrath of vengeful gods.”
Chapter Fourteen
Her creation had been silent as a tomb for the past twenty-four hours.
Rather apropos, since he was encased in a vessel that would have been a form-fitting tomb in the event that the transformation process killed him.
But more than the forced stillness, the Creature’s vitals were also eerily quiet, as monitored by the various machines she’d plugged him to. His faint heartbeat was an occasional blip on the monitor; his blood pressure so low, any human physician would have pronounced him dead already. His brain waves certainly showed no activity, not even the ghost of a thought.
He was alive, however. Though barely.
It usually took longer than this to turn one lump of clay into something different. Something other. But, then, she’d been dosing the Creature with various chemicals, both organic and inorganic, for almost as long as he’d been in Medusa’s “care.”
Sometimes, it was at Medusa’s behest. Sometimes, Lilith slipped in a few tests, as well as slipped out blood and other fluids, bone marrow and organ tissue, from the shape-shifter, unbeknownst to both of them.
After all this time, several millennia of experimentation in a sense, he was putty to be molded in her hands, primed for transformation. It could be any moment that the keys in his body would click into place. Any moment, he could awaken in a new form, even though he would most probably still retain his original Gifts.
He just needed the right trigger.
Presently, he was simply…hibernating. Like a somnolent caterpillar inside its chrysalis. Perhaps his body was rebuilding the reserves it depleted to survive the transformation.
She unlatched a mechanism that overlaid the top portion of his coffin-cum-test tube, revealing his pale face beneath the thick, bullet-proof glass.
“You are quite beautiful in your true form,” she noted objectively, ever the distant, emotionless researcher.