Eleven years ago, in the small careful operational hour after a working in the Manzano mountains killed three witches, the Blackthorn family's intelligence officer made the decision that would end Imogen Hale's professional career and save his family's. He filed the after-action report that named her as the operational lead. The Council banned her from coven leadership. The Marchetti faction took its retaliation against another family.
Rafe Blackthorn has not slept five and a half hours in a single block since.
Imogen rebuilt on Whidbey Island. She runs the careful operational chapter from a small grey-shingled house at the head of a gravel turnaround, with a workshop, a working circle, and a wardsmith whose discipline is the operational pace at which witches stay alive. She has not forgiven Rafe. She has not, by any small operation, addressed him.
And then, on a Tuesday in November, a senior Marchetti operative arrives on her island hunting witches in retaliation for an apprehension in Bavaria — and the Pack is sending Rafe to help her stop it.
He arrives with a contract he intends to honor at the architecture of a contractor and not a man. She accepts the contract because the case requires it. Eight days at the careful operational distance of four feet across the worktable, with the captive operator in the back room and the wardsmith at the working circle and the small operational lamp at the boathouse window across two hundred feet of dark gravel.
Eight days to apprehend the operative.
Eight days for Imogen to read what eleven years of his silence has been telling her.
Eight days to register that the careful operational architecture of how a Blackthorn man defends the woman he has chosen is the architecture his grandmother taught him at the age of thirteen, the architecture his family has been conducting on this continent for one hundred and seventeen years, the architecture he has been conducting for her — without her knowledge, without her permission — since the small careful operational hour of the decision that took her career.
A slow-burn, dark, restrained paranormal romance. He-fell-first and she-buried-him, with witches, wolves, eleven-year silences, and the careful operational architecture of two people who have been doing the work the whole time.
Rafe Blackthorn has not slept five and a half hours in a single block since.
Imogen rebuilt on Whidbey Island. She runs the careful operational chapter from a small grey-shingled house at the head of a gravel turnaround, with a workshop, a working circle, and a wardsmith whose discipline is the operational pace at which witches stay alive. She has not forgiven Rafe. She has not, by any small operation, addressed him.
And then, on a Tuesday in November, a senior Marchetti operative arrives on her island hunting witches in retaliation for an apprehension in Bavaria — and the Pack is sending Rafe to help her stop it.
He arrives with a contract he intends to honor at the architecture of a contractor and not a man. She accepts the contract because the case requires it. Eight days at the careful operational distance of four feet across the worktable, with the captive operator in the back room and the wardsmith at the working circle and the small operational lamp at the boathouse window across two hundred feet of dark gravel.
Eight days to apprehend the operative.
Eight days for Imogen to read what eleven years of his silence has been telling her.
Eight days to register that the careful operational architecture of how a Blackthorn man defends the woman he has chosen is the architecture his grandmother taught him at the age of thirteen, the architecture his family has been conducting on this continent for one hundred and seventeen years, the architecture he has been conducting for her — without her knowledge, without her permission — since the small careful operational hour of the decision that took her career.
A slow-burn, dark, restrained paranormal romance. He-fell-first and she-buried-him, with witches, wolves, eleven-year silences, and the careful operational architecture of two people who have been doing the work the whole time.
Used availability for Danielle E Voss's Cruel Things