Page 57 of Shadow's Edge (Night Prowler 1)
She became aware of her heartbeat slowing. Something began to sink into her cells, softening time around her to a muted tick of the clock on the fireplace mantle, a hollow pale echo of Morgan’s breathing. There came a warm, sliding sensation, like honey poured over her skin.
And then it arrived with a breathtaking, silent lucidity as if it had been poised behind her eyelids forever, as if it had only been waiting all along for her to want to see.
Picture: A night sky, black, perfectly clear and cloudless, deep in the countryside where no other lights could pollute the virgin dark. Silence. Then, after a moment of suspended anticipation, a glimmer.
A star.
First one winked to life, a bright spot of white against a velvet black canvas, so near it seemed she would be able to reach out with her hand to touch it. Another shimmering light, again very close, this one burning a strong blood red. Then another, still one more, glittering bright, all close to the first.
Then, all at once, thousands of stars winked to life.
They blazed against the darkness, burning and twinkling, calling to her with the most beautiful, aching song. It ran through her senses like an intangible zephyr, like a silken, living wind, and settled down into her bones as if it had been waiting for years and years to arrive, for her to listen.
Here were clusters of light, like galaxies across the universe, beautiful and ethere
al and spread over a vast distance, all pulsing with heated power, every one unique in color and shape and size, every one crying out to her, every one her own.
The strongest song of all came from the glowing red star.
A shiver came over her.
It started in her core, in the very center of her stomach, and ran out along her arms and legs. The shivers turned to goose bumps, butterflies in her stomach transformed into scarlet bright flame, joy came up hard to consume her. She wanted to stare up at these stars forever, felt they were more than just brilliant points of light, they were something akin to...
“You can see them all, can’t you?” Morgan said with an awed, whispered voice you would use in church. “All the Ikati. All of our kind, all across the globe.”
Jenna opened her eyes and gazed at Morgan’s face. She spun with dizziness and had to swallow a few times before she pulled herself together enough to respond.
“I didn’t see anything.” Her voice was more tremulous than she would have liked.
Morgan gazed back at her with something like reverence. Reverence...and awe. “Yes, you did.”
“No, I did not.” She paused for just longer than a heartbeat. “And even if I did, it doesn’t mean anything. I’m just overtired.”
“I’ll tell you what it means.” Morgan straightened her long legs and rose unsteadily from the chair. “It means that you are connected to all of us, you can find us anywhere, even through pitch black or blinding snow or at the bottom of the ocean. This Gift is the strongest of our Blood, a Gift shared by only a few of our kind throughout the ages, a Gift Marie Antoinette herself was blessed with. It means you are bound to us all, in a way we’re not even connected to each other.
“As a matter of fact,” Morgan inclined her head and sank into a low, proper curtsy, one knee bent elegantly with the other behind, “it means you are the Queen.”
Jenna stared at her, blinking. “I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “I must be hallucinating. I thought you just said I was the queen.”
“Yes,” Morgan insisted. She rose up with shining eyes to look her in the face.
There was total silence in the room save for the longcase clock against the wall that ticked out the seconds in crisp, clicking notes. Five, ten, twenty...
“That is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.”
Jenna hobbled back over to the bed, sank down heavily on it, and stared around the gilded room in a haze of confusion. She yawned again, fighting the tide of exhaustion that wanted to pull her down into an ocean of blessed rest.
She glanced over to find Morgan beaming at her.
“No, Morgan.”
“Yes, Jenna.”
“No. No.”
Morgan just stared at her, smiling enigmatically. It unraveled the last of her patience.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing with me, but I’m not in the mood for it! I only came here to get answers about what happened to my father, and first I find out he was...he was killed here—and not only that, but I’m a prisoner—and now you’re trying to tell me I’m the—I’m a—”
