Chapter 29

• Deva sat there listening to the women. Calla, Amari, and Journee were filling them in on what had happened in the world since they’d been taken. She still couldn’t wrap her brain around some of it. Calum’s mother had been missing for twenty-three years. Deva wasn’t much older than that. Among the other two women from the island, Alandra and Jorja, it was Alandra that had been gone the longest. For a quarter of a century, she had been a captive of lunatics.
• Both had children in that time because they were taken before their change and impregnated when their body was still acting like that of a one-form. Deva’s heart felt heavy with the knowledge that they’d been forced to have children, and then the children were taken from them. Even though they had named their children, there was no telling if they still used those names. Jorja’s son would be thirteen, she thought, but with no calendars, she couldn’t be sure of the age. Alandra’s daughter was around twenty-one, and if Deva knew anything about the sick s.o.bs that ran this operation, she likely had a child of her own by now. Calla had written down the names, ages, and other details.
• “So, where are you from originally?” Calla looked at Jorja. “You have a slight accent, but I can’t place it.”