Elena had never seen such hair: waves of purest lilac that fell down her back like water, arresting against the woman’s pearl white skin. Her wings were lovely arcs of violet so deep it was blue, and her eyes . . .
“Why can I see your eyes?” Elena crossed the grass to sit on the swing that had appeared beside Cassandra. Though they had met only in thought, she had no doubts that this was the Ancient cursed with the gift of foresight. And she felt no surprise that Cassandra was here, in this place that was Elena’s pocket of memory.
Those eyes of an extraordinary and unexpected seafoam green that bled into indigo with edges of clear-sky blue turned incandescent with the light of Cassandra’s smile. Twin auroras of breathtaking beauty.
“This is your dream, child, and it appears you do not wish to see blood.” A deepening of Cassandra’s smile. “I have not seen the serene and the peaceful through my eyes for an eternity. I had forgotten such hues existed.”
Elena kicked off the ground to swing gently beside Cassandra. The skirts of the Ancient’s dress rippled in the wind as they swung. Her own legs, Elena saw, were clad in black hunting boots and black pants. “I thought you went to Sleep?”
“I did, but still I dream.” A sigh. “I wish I did not, but the dreams are so vivid they disturb my rest.”
“Your voice is different.” Young, without the weight of incredible age.
“This is a young place.” Hands clasped around the ropes of the swing and bare feet held off the ground, Cassandra looked around. “Happiness lives here.”
“Yes.” Elena nudged aside the nagging feeling that the happiness wouldn’t last, that the sunshine would soon be clouded. “Did you just come to visit?”
Cassandra stopped swinging and gave her a strange, thoughtful look with those eyes so lovely and haunting, strands of her hair flirting with her cheek. “I have not just visited anyone for . . .” Her hands tightened on the ropes.
“You don’t have to remember,” Elena reassured her. “Sometimes, I don’t like to remember.” Shadows danced in the kitchen windows, and Elena told herself that was her maman, moving about as she made Elena’s favorite cookies. Or maybe it was Belle grabbing a soda after her dance lesson. It might even be Ari, come to find a snack. That was all. Nothing else. Nothing dark.
“It has never been the remembering that is the problem. It is the seeing.” Despite the lonely darkness of her words, Cassandra began to swing again. “I came to give you a gift, prophecy of mine, but I find it difficult to form the thought. Most of me is Sleeping.”
“I’m resting, too,” Elena shared, suddenly certain of that. “My wings are nothing but color and hope.” Her back felt empty, a needed weight missing. “Do you think I’ll fly again?” In the dreamscape, the potent emotion of the question was a distant cloud on the horizon.
Lilac hair streamed behind Cassandra as she pushed herself higher and higher on the swing. She didn’t answer for a long time, but that was all right, because Elena was swinging, too. It was on a whoosh back that she heard Cassandra call out, “We are flying now!”
Elena laughed and kicked her feet even harder.
And she forgot that Cassandra was in her dream for a reason.
14
Coming awake on a yawn, Elena rubbed knuckled fists over her eyes. “As far as my dreams go,” she muttered to no one in particular, “that one wasn’t too weird at all.”
A rustle that sounded like wings settling. But not angelic wings. The sound was too small. She lifted her lashes and found the room draped in the deep orange-gold light of late afternoon or very early evening. Someone had pulled back the blackout curtains but left the gauzy curtains as they were.
Those curtains were moving in the wind, the balcony doors having been cracked open. The latter couldn’t have been for long because the room was nice and warm . . . but it had been long enough for a snow-white owl to wander inside. It stretched its wings again before looking at her with eyes of shining gold.
It looked so real, not an illusion at all. When it walked back out through the doors, the curtain draped over its body. She saw it sweep away into the sunset light, silent and lovely. A second owl joined it moments later. Beautiful, unearthly creatures who’d never done her harm, but who’d been harbingers of so much pain to come.
I came to give you a gift.
Elena gasped in a breath; she’d inadvertently held her breath since her first glimpse of the owl. “Thank you,” she whispered; she knew how much Cassandra loved her owls.
No ancient mind in her head, not even a faint sign that Cassandra had heard.
Oddly disappointed, she sat up properly . . . and saw the crutches leaning up against the bedside table. “Nisia, I love you.” It had to be the Tower healer who’d thought of that; she’d been around Elena enough not to expect good behavior. Sans crutches, Elena would’ve probably settled on crawling to the facilities.
She did not need an audience while she did her business.
Too much the hunter not to understand her body, however, she spent several minutes stretching in bed before she slid her arms into the crutches, took a firm grip on the handles, and got herself up. “Woohoo!”
Unfortunately, her celebrations proved premature; her knees began to crumple the instant she tested putting weight on her legs rather than the crutches. “Okay, then, no miracle cure.” She hadn’t expected one, but a girl had to try.
At least her arms and shoulders were working well enough to utilize the crutches. She managed to close the balcony doors and reinstate the thicker curtains, then get herself to the bathroom and do what needed to be done. The lure of the shower was too much to resist so, after a moment’s thought, she turned on the water, then sat down in the huge shower cubicle designed for wings.
She shampooed her hair half expecting the teeny feathers to fall off, but nope, they stayed happily attached to the strands on her head. Truth be told, she was kind of fond of those feathers. They were a marker of survival as far as she was concerned. It felt luxuriant to put conditioner in her hair, then run a loofah over her skin after she lathered it with a special macadamia oil-infused soap that she’d bought from a stall in Times Square before everything turned to custard.
“I’ve been in a chrysalis for months,” she muttered. “I deserve fancy soap.” The scent of the soap, the heat of the water on her skin, it was pure heaven, but her muscles were quivering by the end.
Not in the mood to be hauled out naked even by Keir and Nisia, she congratulated herself on having had the foresight to put several towels right outside the shower. After switching off the water, she grabbed the top towel from the pile and dried off her hair and most of her body while still seated.
She then spread the used towel on the floor of the cubicle so she wouldn’t slip as she got to her knees, grabbed the crutches from outside the door, and hauled herself to her feet. The maneuver left her breathless, her huge heart pumping double-time, but she wasn’t sorry in the least.
Her next achievement was to get her skinny ass to the glass shelf on which she kept her pampering supplies. Managing to grab a thick tube of body lotion using her teeth, she carried it back to the bed. Not elegant but it got the job done.
Collapsing onto her back on the bed, she gave herself a good few minutes to recover before she sat up and, switching on a bedside lamp, began to work the body lotion into her skin. She examined her body with a critical eye at the same time. Her skin continued to glow, but it had quieted down to a significant extent. Looked like the glow-in-the-dark phase of her life was on its way out.
Eerie inner luminescence aside, her skin was its natural hue—a dark gold that came to her via her grandmother’s Moroccan heritage—but it appeared fragile, her veins dangerously visible. In better news, her bones did appear to have a normal heft and strength to them. She’d ask Nisia to check for tunnels or hollow patches but right now, her bones looked to be the strongest part of her body.