Dear Esteemed Readers (and those who are decidedly less so),
I have been unable to wrest any updates from the absentee authors as they have refused to look up from their manuscript in between bouts of illness from the tiny disgusting germ factories with whom they cohabitate. (HR has informed me this is an inappropriate way to refer to children, but I live by no man’s rules).
However, they have finally deigned to respond to my many requests for information, and I have thusly gleaned several important things from them:
They have submitted the final portion of Evander’s story, and allege that their lateness can be forgiven due to a mere 100,000 words over the expected size of the story. Though in the opinion of this humble raccoon, it is no one’s fault but theirs if they can’t wrangle their own characters into submission, that assertion has been met with muttered responses about Evander’s alleged stubbornness.
Alas, the book in question will be on your reading devices no later than January 17, solidly twice as long as the first volume.
Though the audio for volume I is well underway, the authors have also informed me that their narrator, though both talented and accommodating, will be working to squeeze in the entire book they did not account for in the upcoming year. Even I must admit that Adam’s dulcet tones are well worth such a delay, the organic Irish butter to the biscuits of our eardrums.
Additionally, the bonus scenes in the vault will be added to that same day. If you have not yet gained access to the ElBin Vault, kindly sign up for the newsletter on the home page. I can’t personally understand why anyone would rather read from the authors themselves when I provide all that you need to know, but in the event that they revert to the cavedwelling swampdragons of this most recent deadline, I suppose it is not without merits to have another means for keeping apprised of their actions.
And, of course, the bonus chapters are not without enticement…
I would say more, but I’m afraid I have reached my limit of conversing with the sort of peasants who spend their time in yesterday’s pajamas citing reasons of recent overexertion due to the demands of Evander. Truly, gentle readers, there are crumbs on their shirts as we speak, not unlike the crumbs that Rowan left on Evander’s desk, and the horror can be sustained no longer.
Charlie Bonus Scene:
(This scene takes place after Chapter 28 of Rowan, or Chapter 27 of Onyx Cage, Volume II)
I poured one glass of whiskey for myself and another for my oldest daughter.
“She’s going to be all right,” I told Avani, pushing the drink into her hands.
It was as much a consolation for her as it was an order to the universe itself, a world that had already taken so much from me. From us.
You took my parents and my newborn son and the boy I loved like my own. You will not take her, not from her father and not from her sister and sure as hell not from me.
I stared at my secondborn where she lay, her curls just as wild today as they had been when she was a child. She had been restless, even in the womb, keeping me up all hours of the night with her squirming. Then she had come into this world with a set of lungs to put a banshee to shame.
Tiny and perfect and ready to make her presence known.
Gallagher had assured us as much as he could that Rowan should be safe now, but I had always hated that word. Should meant little in a world of uncertainties.
There were no statistics that mattered when death was on the line.
At least Logan wasn’t here. I could have used his support, but it was too easy to break when he was around, and I needed to be strong for both of them right now. He was tracking down every person associated with the men who hurt our baby girl.
Then I would happily see to their executions myself.
After all, it was important to keep things official.
I twirled one of Rowan’s curls around my finger, just like I had when she was a child, brushing my other hand across her smooth cheeks.
She was still tiny and perfect, but far too quiet right now. It reminded me of the castle after she had been taken. Mac was already gone. Then she and Davin were right behind him, taking their laughter with them.
When Logan left to retrieve her, I was sure he wouldn’t return either. That I would be walking these silent, hallowed halls surrounded by ghosts. Hell, Avani had half been a ghost herself.
She still was, most days.
Even now, she sat watching her sister with empty emerald eyes. I half wanted to down this bottle of whiskey and join her, but that was not my role anymore. She wasn’t queen yet, and I would not burden her with this life a single moment before I had to.
There was no time to grieve once the crown was on your head, but that was not a lesson she needed to learn just yet, not while she still had parents alive to carry that load for her.
Taking a breath, I sought to distract her instead.
“This feels familiar,” I said quietly.
“Sitting at Rowan’s bedside while she’s injured?” Avani guessed.
Well, that too. The child had fallen out of more trees than I could count. If it hadn’t been for Gallagher, she would have had more scars than skin.
“No. Her being here with two men stalking the hallway outside.”
Two decades ago, that had been me, while Oli and Logan paced in the snow outside.
It wasn’t so different. Oli had stayed from a sense of duty. Logan, because he would sooner have set fire to the entire kingdom than have been separated from me.
This wasn’t exactly the same. Theodore did love Rowan in his way, even if he had a somewhat distorted view of who she was. But Evander prowled the hallway like a panther, practically vibrating with the barely contained rage he felt at being kept from her.
Avani wrinkled her nose. “It’s still weird to think that you almost married Uncle Oli.”
I shrugged. “We probably would have been happy, had we not already been in love with other people.”
Avani’s face was dubious, a reminder that she had lived a relatively short life, for all that she had lost. She had only ever been in one relationship, with one person who she loved with everything she had. They hadn’t been together long enough for life to try them, to force them to come to terms with the way that love alone could not sustain a marriage.
“Compromise and communication count for a lot,” I told her, glancing from Rowan to the hallway.
We both knew that only one person in that hallway was well suited to either.
“You’re saying Da’ doesn’t compromise?” she asked with mock surprise.
I let out a wry chuckle. “I wouldn’t say it comes naturally to him.”
“So you wish you’d married Uncle Oli then?” There was a teasing glint to her eyes, so much better than the nothingness that had been there a moment ago. I shook my head.
“No, heathen child. As I said, once Logan and Jocelyn were in the picture, that would have been quite impossible.”
Avani surveyed me under a furrowed brow, emerald eyes assessing me the same way her father’s always did.
“You want her to choose Evander,” she finally determined.
I raised my eyebrows. “I think we both know there is no other choice.”
“No, not for her. I’m just surprised you support it. She would probably have an easy life with Theo. Whatever she has with Evander is…slightly toxic, at best.”
I shrugged again, thinking of the sound of bodies dropping in the dead of night. Logan’s furious face when he found me with the rebels. The way we both killed without remorse for the people we loved.
I loved Oli, but I wouldn’t have willingly killed someone for him. There was no one on this earth that stood a chance if they were stupid enough to stand between me and Logan.
Or, stars help them, me and my children.
I shrugged again, taking a sip of my drink. “Real love always is.”
