Semua Bab AURORA- The Last Phoenix : Bab 11 - Bab 20

The woman who walked through the door didn't look like a monster. In fact, she looked ethereal, almost magical.It was just a woman that looked like something out of a fairy tale. Her skin was so fair, she was almost translucent. Her hair dark and wavy moved like the waves of the ocean behind even though she was standing very still. She wore clothes that covered most of her skin but from her visible neck area, I could see scales on her neck. When she stepped forward, she moved like every step had already been decided three steps in advance, like the room had already surrendered and simply hadn't been informed yet."Selene." Orion said the name like a curse.I guess there is no cause for alarm if they knew each other, I thought to myself."Orion." She inclined her head, mild, almost polite, and her eyes moved past him, past Cillian, landing on me with an attention that felt like being weighed on a scale I couldn’t see. "So this is her. I expected more fire. Literally." She tilted her h

We didn't sleep that night, scratch that, we couldn’t sleep even if we tried. Everybody tried to play it cool but we were all on high alert. My body was weary, my mind was not at peace, my heart was heavy but I didn’t dare close my heart for fear of what would happen if I did. Orion took the first watch by the mended window after doing some kind of magic to cloak the house. Selene sat apart from all of us in the corner with her knees drawn up, eyes closed but clearly not resting, from where I was I could feel the wheels in her head turning. Cillian found me on the back steps sometime past three in the morning, staring at nothing in particular."You should be resting," he said, easing down beside me, careful of the side Selene had gotten a good hit on."So should you." I said without raising my head to look at him"I asked first."The night had gone very still, the particular stillness that comes right before a sky decides whether to stay dark or start turning grey, and somewhere behi

I waited with bated breath but whatever had been watching us didn't show itself. Orion finally exhaled and said that we'd either lost it or it had simply finished whatever it came to do."Which of those should I be hoping for," I asked, "because neither sounds especially good.""Hope for lost," Cillian said. "Finished is worse. Finished means it already has what it needed.""You have a real gift for making every available option sound really irresistible.” I said sarcastically with a sweet smile."It’s one of my better qualities. Ask anyone." He quipped back."Nobody has asked," Orion put in, not looking back, "and yet you tell them anyway. That’s the part that impresses me."I chuckled lowly and he glared at me. That interaction made me ease up a bit."Is this normal?" I asked, mostly to fill the silence, mostly because I needed my voice to still work. "The two of you, sniping at each other constantly. Should I be taking notes for later, or is this a one-time performance?""Ongoing,"

"That's not possible," I said too fast, the words tumbling out before my brain had finished processing them. "We crossed hours ago. How does an entire governing body already know?""Because Calum has been waiting for this specific crossing for twenty-five years," Orion said grimly, "and because the veil scar we left behind sings to the right ears, the moment it opens. I was afraid of exactly this.""You could have mentioned that fear before we crossed.""Would it have changed anything?"It wouldn't have. I hated that he was right. I didn’t have a comeback for that so I kept quiet."So what do we do?" Cillian said, already scanning the tree line with a new urgency. "If the whole committee knows, we can’t just walk to Orion’s contacts the way we planned.""No," Orion agreed. "We can’t. That means we are going to improvise, starting now, and I would very much like to be somewhere with better cover while we do it.""Do you have a second plan? A backup for the backup?" I spoke up."I have

“He can stay,” I said after a while. Orion, Cillian and Selene looked at me like I had gone crazy while Blake looked at me with hope in his eyes.“Are you being serious right now?” Cillian said with barely contained anger. “He’s the son of the man trying to get you killed.”I took a deep breath and sighed. “If we can give Selene a chance, why can’t we give him a chance?” Selene rolled her eyes at me.“If you don’t like me, that’s fine, but don’t compare me with him.” She snapped and moved away from the crew.Boo hoo, cry me a river, girl, the voice in my head taunted. I managed to cap it before it could make me burst out laughing.A part of me wanted him to stay because I felt like an outsider in this world, and from what he had said, he could be the only one I could relate to. The other part just wanted to taunt Selene. She knew the boys well, and that didn’t sit right with me.I have no real reason to believe him, I just did.“Orion?” I turned to the only person that could be reason