Page 106 of Born for Silk
I exhale hard. “Am I safe?”
“With us?” Daisy’s shoulders deflate, her pretty eyes glinting with remorse. “Yes, of course you are. I know that I recite protocol and vows, but that is because I am trying to protect you. All of you.”
I smile at that. “I know.”
The quiet drags through the air as we absorb everything, as we make room inside our consciousness for moving forward with secrets and truths and… Trust that now wraps us together with twine made of silk.
And I am the one they are counting on.
For answers.
For guidance.
That wasn’t what I expected or wanted, but I feel responsible for throwing our peaceful, simple lives into disarray. Just by being me, I’ve messed things up.
Daisy shuffles along the emerald grass when Odio’s arrowed glare becomes too hot on us. “Do you think he can understand us?”
The great winged deity stares sideways, beady-eyed but magnificent, at our joined hands.
It makes me wonder how tame he is… Or not. Is he like Rome? Deep down, he is longing to have his feathers stroked. I doubt Rome ever offers him gentle attention.
“I don’t think he understands much,” I assure them, though I do not know for certain. “And what he does, he cannot exactly repeat, can he? Animals have energy. We do, too. I was never afraid of him. And even less today.”
I pull my hand from Daisy and hold it up at Odio’s head height, bracing my palm in the air.
He stares at it.
“Come,” I say to him. “Pet?”
He cocks his head and suddenly turns his neck as if sensing an itch, digging his beak into his wings and ripping out a mangled black feather the length of my forearm.
I lower my hand. “Next time, then, handsome boy.”
Across the courtyard, the breeze rolls steadily, the designed environment we exist in sometimes makes it hard to remember that outside The Estate walls, through the trees, there is a dangerous force of unrelenting power—Redwind. Odio sees it every time he hits the skies. Rome sees it when he leaves…
When he leaves Tuscany and me.
Without saying a word.
Not even a goodbye.
I don’t know what he knows.
But I’m going to find out.
“Odio.” I point to the courtyard wall, and the handsome beast cocks his head up from pruning his feathers, a coal-coloured blade in his beak. “Sire. Show me where Sire is.”
Chapter Two
Aster
I follow Odio's shadow as it soars over the grass like a black mist. The crown-light bakes the atmosphere. This time of day can be stifling, the air thick, but I think I am hotter than the environment. Fired with ambition and—nerves.
Small beads of perspiration collect on my brows, as Odio guides me through The Estate, between renewed Romanesque buildings and down lanes, until his shadow climbs up a stone wall?—
I stop, staring ahead at the entrance to a hall.
Right. I look up to the sky, to the cloudy outline of an eagle. “He is in there?”