Graced
Page 31
“By those standards, you’d be marrying Dante next.”
“Nah,” Elle said with a grin. “He’s married.”
“Who is?” Dante asked.
Clay and Elle laughed.
Epilogue
Ralia, or Lia to her mostly absent friends, smiled as she wiggled her fingers through the finely grained white sand that ran across Limpinto Beach. After dotting a seemingly random spot on her work, she took a few steps back and brushed the sand from her knees. Yes, that would do it.
There were boxes and lines and waves and dots. Animal heads too, just for good measure. All drawn into the sand to be left there overnight. If any of the signs were altered—blown away or brushed over by the feet of an animal—it would be considered a sign. A foretelling.
Not that she needed help.
But the dark-skinned people who lived near Limpinto Beach didn’t know that. They thought her a future-teller, who could read signs and speak tongues no one knew. They thought from that, she could divine the answers only the gods could know. Except there were no gods and she needed no signs.
Footsteps sounded on the sand and she smiled. “Clay!” she called, before she turned.
The big werewolf rushed over to her, wrapped her in his arms and swung her around. From the top of her spin, she spotted two other people standing under a palm at the edge of the beach. Clay almost stepped on her carefully constructed design as he pirouetted her around, and she said, “Stop! Be careful.”
Eyes following her pointed finger, he looked at the designs and stepped away from them, closer to the water, where he set her down. “Lia, it’s good to see you.” He didn’t ask about the signs, maybe he understood. She never used to do them, back when they’d lived together.
“And you, brother.”
“How’d you know it was me?” he asked.
She smiled and ignored his question. Walking forward, her hands outstretched, she approached his friends. One was a tall vampire woman with a large straw hat, and the other was a young girl, who’d pushed her hat off to hang down her back on its string.
“You must be Elle and Emmie. It’s so good to see you. And you had a pleasant trip through the Turquoise Sea? Yes, I see you did,” Lia said with a warm smile. She clasped their hands and squeezed gently.
“What are you?” the little girl whispered.
“Ssssh,” Elle hushed.
“It’s okay,” Lia said. She’d heard this question a lot, over her life. With her pale white skin, and whiter than white hair, it was a natural curiosity. It didn’t help matters that Lia had woven string and beads and bones into her hair as well, and had even dyed bits different colors. Right now, her hair had purple and pink in it, amongst all the baubles. And then there were her eyes.
“Elle, Emmie, this is Lia. She’s my sister.”
Elle looked over at Clay and rolled her eyes. Which were just as Lia had known they would be: dark purple with specks of Gray and flares of Green. Lovely.
“I figured that one out. How’d she know our names? Did you send a letter ahead?”
“No,” Clay said. He sounded uncomfortable.
Lia smiled. “He never needs to. I always know when he’s going to visit me.”
“Are you Graced?” The girl—Emmie—asked. Her eyes were the brightest Teal Lia had ever seen. Well, equal brightest.
“Emmie!” Elle sounded scandalized.
Lia spun in a circle, raising her hands to the sky. When she turned back to them, she was grinning, the bones and beads in her hair clinking. “Yes.”
“Well, she’s half-Graced, half-were,” Clay said.
Lia tilted her head to the side and looked at him. “More Graced than wolf, brother.” She leaned down next to Emmie’s ear and mock-whispered, “I’ve never been able to change form.”
The little girl’s eyes were wide. “No?”
“No. But I don’t age, so it’s all wonderful.” Lia plopped onto the sand and patted the vacant space next to her. Elle, Clay and Emmie all sat, as she’d known they would.
“What can you do? Your eyes are…Pink.”
Red, Lia liked to think, but on the days she was being honest with herself, she did admit that they were pink. Today wasn’t one of them.
“Red,” she said.
Emmie shook her head, but didn’t correct her.
Lia clapped. Oh, she was going to like her! Just as she’d known she would.
“Lia, I have something to tell you…” Clay started.
“Which bit?” Lia asked, excited. Oh, she’d been waiting for their arrival for months. She’d been so happy. Even the local people had caught on to her upbeat mood. But they thought it meant there was going to be good fishing. She’d have to apologize to them later.
Lia didn’t wait for Clay to elaborate, but rushed to speak. “The part where you’re engaged to Elle—yay! A new sister—or the bit where Emmie is a healer?”
Elle and Emmie stared at her, slack-jawed. Clay just gave her a half smile. “Both?”
Lia laughed and clapped. “It’s so wonderful!”
“If you hadn’t guessed,” Clay said to the others, “Lia can see the future.”
The vampire and healer both gaped at Lia, and she saw images flash through her mind. Years and years they’d have together. But Emmie didn’t know that yet. Didn’t understand that she could heal herself of age damage. The things Lia could tell her…
“Oh, we’re going to have so much fun!”
Acknowledgments
Graced is my first published novel, and I owe some very special people some very large thank yous. First, I’d like to thank my husband Tom, for listening to me develop my ideas and reading over the very first draft, and my wonderful beta readers: Liz Grzyb, Marty Young, Stephanie Gunn, and Joanne Matthewman. All your thoughts and comments—even the painful ones!—made this book better.
I also want to send out a huge thanks to my amazing and persistent agent, Jenny Darling. Her belief in this book has been absolutely invaluable in it reaching your ebook readers. And then there’s the team at Momentum: Haylee Nash, Tara Goedjen, Michelle Cameron and Julia Knapman: you have been an absolute delight to work with, and you seem to love this book as much as I do. And as much as I hope you, the reader, does.
About Amanda Pillar
Amanda Pillar is an award-winning editor and author who lives in Victoria, Australia, with her husband and two cats, Saxon and Lilith. Amanda has had numerous short stories published and is working on her eighth fiction anthology. Graced is her first novel. By day, she works as an archaeologist traveling around Australia.
First published by Momentum in 2015
This edition published in 2015 by Momentum
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Copyright © Amanda Pillar 2015
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A CIP record for this book is available at the National Library of Australia
Graced
EPUB format: 9781760082307
Mobi format: 9781760082314
Cover design by Raewyn Brack
Edited by Julia Knapman
Proofread by Laurie Ormond
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