The Sentinels of Eden, Books 1-4

Chapter 69

Chapter 13

Everyone rushed to the front door, summoned by the sound of tyres on loose gravel. I was terrified. I knew who it would be. Barely breathing, I stayed on the far side of the kitchen table, my hands clutching the bench behind me as I heard the door open. The bowl of fruit on the table looked meek and friendly, so I started cataloguing what it was offering me, trying not to think about what was about to happen.

Three oranges on top. Four bananas.

Voices funnelled down the hallway, and a stranger introduced himself as Tim.

Two red apples, one green.

What if Bane was angry? He used to always be angry at me. Downright mean, even.

Four kiwi fruits.

Breathe, Lainie. If he gets angry, do not cry. Just breathe. He wasn’t always angry. A vivid memory of him smiling at me as he taught me to play our old piano eased some of my fear. His smile was adorable and made my heart dance, but suddenly the short time in which he had been friendly to me seemed like so little compared to the years in which he’d hated me.

A bunch of green grapes. One grape had escaped and was hiding down on the table away from its family. It looked lonely, so I climbed up onto the table and sat next to it with my legs crossed.

Someone was practically skidding down the hallway and then Bane appeared in the doorway and froze, staring at me with eyes as grey as shadowed snow. He was really there. His face looked just like the photo. Almost. I picked out an orange from the fruit bowl and noticed that my hands were trembling. I had no idea what to do. How could I tell if he was angry at me? And was he mad at me for leaving? Or for returning? What did he want? He wasn’t moving a muscle, not giving me any body language that I could use to read him like I had learnt to do in Eden. His face looked tired and pale, and I knew that was entirely my fault.

‘You look shattered,’ I said, holding the fruit out to him. It wasn’t the right sort, but he looked so unwell that I had to give him something.

He breathed out a tired laugh, his lips curving upwards and lighting up his whole face. ‘And you look even more stunningly beautiful than I remembered.’

The sound of his voice, so familiar, so … Bane, completed a circuit in my brain that had somehow been shorted out, and then the fruit bowl was in the way so I clambered over it and launched from the table into his reaching arms. He buried his face into my neck and I could feel his hot tears. The orange fell and rolled across the floor. I was home.