“And,” he added, “I’ve seen an archangel so lost in madness that she turned two thriving cities into silent graveyards.” In eliminating the adult populations of those cities, Raphael’s mother had also created thousands of orphans with broken hearts, many of whom had curled up and died of that heartbreak.
Raphael had helped dig their small graves, his tears lodged in his throat and his scream a keen in his head.
“I call that same archangel a friend now,” Suyin whispered, “and she is one of the calmest heads on the Cadre.”
“Exactly so.” Caliane made no effort to hide from or obscure her past. It was a silent shadow she carried with her always. All those deaths, all those souls, they haunted his mother, and in so doing, they made her a better ruler and a better archangel—while creating in her a weakness that could be exploited by the unscrupulous.
Better that than the bringer of death she’d once become.
“We are not mortals,” he said to Suyin. “Our lives are endless in comparison to theirs—as a result, our minds and hearts have a far longer period over which to heal. I think, if this child has spent decades in the dark, we should give them that same time in the light, to find a better path.”
“You speak what is in my heart, Raphael.” Suyin’s quiet voice held untold agony. “I will hope for him—and I will ensure that those who died at his hands have a respectful burial according to their rites. I will not simply ignore their lives as Lijuan might’ve done.”
A solemn pause before she said, “Jinhai didn’t—doesn’t—truly grasp what he did. He knows people are dead, but he seems to have no comprehension of such being a bad thing. And to orchestrate that while yet a boy? Not only murder, but the rest.”
“Yes.” Raphael, too, worried about what lived in the boy. “I won’t stand in your way if you decide he can’t be permitted to live—but, Suyin, I think I know you well enough to predict that such a decision will haunt you.”
“No, I will not let Lijuan make me an accomplice to the murder of a child.” This time, it was rage that vibrated through Suyin’s voice. “Jinhai never had a chance, did he? It’s as if he grew up surrounded by toxic sludge. The cancers were inevitable.”
After Suyin hung up to deal with the situation, he turned to his hunter, who’d arrived while he was speaking to the other archangel, but had stayed quiet. Damp tendrils of hair curled at her temples, the near white of it dark with sweat, and her body clad in black hunting leathers bristling with weapons.
Her wings were a magnificence of midnight and dawn.
A vampire had gone bloodborn a couple of hours to the south, and she’d volunteered to handle it. “Got to keep my hand in,” she’d said. “Being a hunter is part of who I am.”
He’d caught a slight panic in her gaze, tied to her awareness of just how much her life had changed since they’d fallen together. In her lived the knowledge that one day in the future, she might no longer have the right to call herself a hunter. Raphael didn’t believe that to be a true threat—she was hunter-born, the hunt in her blood. She could no more stop being a hunter than he could stop being an archangel.
She would, however, one day lose the friends with whom she’d grown into her hunter self. But that day existed in a far distant future. Her compatriots were currently in the prime of their lives. Her partner today had been the irreverent Demarco, a mortal who reminded Raphael of Illium.
He didn’t know Demarco well, but he would remember him long after he’d passed beyond the veil immortals so rarely crossed.
“Elena-mine. A good hunt?”
“Yeah, we got the vamp.” Arms folded as she leaned against one side of the doorway, she shook her head. “Older one. Stupid to allow his control to fray after all this time—and for what? A bad breakup that left him enraged to the point he surrendered to bloodlust.”
Unfolding her arms, she straightened up. “I was just going to wave at you to let you know I was home, then head up for a bath, but then I heard you mention Her Evilness. What’s happened?”
When he told her—for she was welcome to all he knew, his consort in the truest sense—she hissed out a breath. “I thought I understood evil, but this . . .” Striding over, she cupped the side of his face. “You okay, Archangel?”
No one else would’ve thought to ask that question. Elena alone understood how the specter of madness haunted Raphael. Both of his parents had gone mad. One had died. One had survived. Each had caused carnage.
“Yes.” He wrapped her up in his arms and in his wings, needing her close.
“Raphael, I’m sweaty and—”
“Hbeebti.”
She locked her arms around his torso, the lithe muscle of her warm and possessive. “Not that I’m not happy to see you,” she said softly against his neck, “but that’s a knife hilt that’s digging into you.”
He laughed, the sensation unexpected after the ugliness of what he’d just discussed with Suyin. Then, surrounded by the fierce life of his Elena, he told her the full extent of what Aodhan and Illium had discovered.
“Fuck.” A shake of her head against him, tendrils of her hair clinging to the white of his shirt. It had grown out in the time since she’d woken, the tiny feathers at the ends now all gone, and the length enough for her to braid it back out of the way as she’d done today.
Every so often, however, he’d catch a glimpse of light arcing through her wings. She’d told him she didn’t feel anything, and as far as they’d been able to determine, her power levels remained appropriate to her age as an immortal—though the Cascade had left her one lingering gift: she healed faster now, the archangelic cells in her body having accelerated her immortality.
“It disturbs me that I interacted with Lijuan as an elder archangel during the time she was torturing her child,” he admitted. “Because that was what it was: torture.”
“You won’t get any disagreement from me.”
“But I never saw any signs of such depravity. I saw that she was old and wise and not necessarily ‘nice’—but so few of the old ones are. It makes me question my ability to judge my fellow members of the Cadre.”
Elena pushed back so she could look up at him.“No one saw it,” she pointed out. “Not a single person outside of her inner circle. I know angels well enough to predict that almost none would’ve countenanced the mistreatment of a child—especially not back then, before she turned so many of her people into obedient followers.”
She put a hand on his chest, over his heart. “The news would’ve spread if Lijuan had brought in anyone but her most fervent acolytes. Trust me, Archangel, she put a firewall of unquestioning devotion around that information—and she was still stable enough to appear normal.”
Raphael went through a list in his mind, of Lijuan’s most trusted courtiers and generals. “I can’t believe this of General Xi. He saw her as his goddess, but he was a good man in many ways—especially back during the time of Jinhai’s birth.”
“Mortals have countenanced a hell of a lot of cruelty in the name of religion,” Elena pointed out. “And Lijuan had Xi since he was real young. I’d like to think he didn’t know, that she used others who were less intelligent, less likely to question her, but unless Suyin’s people dig up records that make it clear, we’re never going to know for sure.”
“No. The boy’s words certainly can’t be trusted, not given his state of mind.” Raphael pressed his lips to the top of Elena’s hair. “I think I will join you in that bath, Elena-mine. I feel the need to wash off this darkness.”
She stroked a hand down his back, her knuckles brushing the underside of his right wing. “Aodhan and Illium?”
“I haven’t spoken to them, but I know Illium will be all right. It’s Aodhan about whom I worry.” He’d never told Elena what had happened to the angel made of light, and she’d never asked, for that was a piece of private history for Aodhan to share.
&
nbsp; But she understood enough to wrap her arms around him again and say, “Illium’s there. You know those two will be fine as long as they’re together.”
46
Jinhai was silent on the flight to join Suyin, though it was a silence awash in wonder. The snow had stopped falling, the landscape a pristine carpet of white under cool winter sunlight that turned Aodhan into a star on one side of the sling that held the boy, while Illium took the other.
Jinhai was interested in everything, looking around with wide eyes.
Illium saw in his curiosity a glimpse of who this young angel might’ve become had he not been molded into a monster. For Lijuan had never been less than intelligent—and the same intelligence burned in the eyes of her son.
Driven by the situation, they’d accelerated the closing up of the stronghold. Now, only a day after they’d found Jinhai, Li Wei and her team traveled in three all-terrain vehicles on the ground below and just far enough behind them that Illium and Aodhan could check for threats on the road.
A grumbling Smoke traveled with them.
Li Wei had chafed at the rush that meant things weren’t up to her standards, but she was also a senior member of staff for a reason. She’d prioritized the list of tasks, mobilized her people, used Illium while Aodhan kept watch on Jinhai, and got the job done so they could leave this morning at first light. It had to be this way—Suyin was the only one who could deal with the boy, both because she was an archangel, and because she was his kin.
He and Aodhan landed often, but each time, they did so at a distance from Li Wei’s team, while still keeping them in sight. The sightline to ensure the team was never out of Illium’s or Aodhan’s protective watch, the distance a precaution in case Jinhai’s mental powers were more virulent than they’d initially judged. He’d had a long time to work on his guards, so it was probable he needed continuous access to manipulate—but there was no point in taking chances.
As for the regular landings, it was to give the boy a chance to stretch his legs, as being carried in a sling for a long period could be difficult on the body. Jinhai appeared to appreciate the breaks and used them to explore what there was nearby, but he never made any move to escape, too excited for further flight.
“I know he orchestrated a massacre,” Illium said to Aodhan during one stop, while the boy examined a frozen bloom on the edge of the clearing, “but right now, all I see is a child.”
Aodhan, seated right beside him on a large rock from which they’d cleared the snow, opened his wings in a slide over Illium’s, closed them back in. “Mentally speaking,” he said, never taking his eyes off Jinhai, “he’s younger than his chronological age.”
Illium agreed. “My gut says he’s around eighty, but he acts more like a child of fifty.” In mortal terms, it’d be the difference between a ten- or eleven-year-old and a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old.
An enormous gap in maturity and experience.
Illium had been offered a gorge aerie at Jinhai’s age and had already begun to run drills with what eventually became his squadron. He hadn’t accepted the offer, aware his mother wasn’t yet at a point where she could let him go, but that the offer had been made had been a source of enormous pride for him.
“Did she keep him immature on purpose, you think?” he asked Aodhan. His friend had always had a better insight into why people did the things they did. It was what made him such an extraordinary artist. He saw inside people, to their dreams and hopes and secrets.
“I don’t have enough information to say for certain.” Aodhan pushed back his sleeves, his skin warm against Illium’s when he put his arm back down. “But it could just be a consequence of his life. A flower won’t grow if deprived of light. How could he grow? He was in a place designed to make him small, make him less.”
In the distance, Jinhai went to pick the frozen bloom, hesitated, left it where it was. Again, a sense of loss stabbed at Illium. He’d never forget what they’d discovered in the hamlet—hell, the images would haunt his nightmares—but he found himself unable to simply condemn this boy. It would be like condemning a dog that had been trained to bite.
Jinhai’s most authoritative source of information about the world had been an insane and cruel archangel. The others around him were his jailors. Where was he supposed to learn empathy when Illium very much doubted anyone had ever been kind to him.
“I wonder,” he said, “who I would’ve been had it been my mother who went into Sleep and my father who raised me?” Looking out into the snow-draped dark green of the trees, he shook his head. “I wouldn’t be this Illium, that I know.”
Aegaeon was brash and selfish, a man capable of an intense and calculated cruelty, all of which he concealed behind a mask of bluff charm. Illium’s mother might’ve had a fractured mind during much of his childhood, but she was innately good and kind, and oh, how she loved.
Never, in all his life, had Illium questioned his mother’s love for him.
Aodhan’s hand closing around his nape, his skin a little rough in the same way as Illium’s. Every so often, especially with repetitive injuries such as the small stresses caused by regular weapons-work, immortal cells decided to callus rather than heal damage over and over.
Aodhan ran the pad of his thumb over the pulse in Illium’s neck. “Don’t let that fucker get into your head,” he ordered in a voice that vibrated in Illium’s bones. “You know that would make him happy.”
Illium scowled. “I’m having a crisis of personality and you tell me to knock it off? Sensitive.” Also exactly what he’d needed to hear. He’d rather gnaw off his own foot than do anything that might give Aegaeon even a tiny smidgen of joy.
Right then, Jinhai returned to the frozen bloom, ripped it off, then stomped on it.
They flew on.
Regardless of their regular breaks, since they were traveling with a small party and following a trail already cleared of major hazards, they made much better time than the initial caravan and caught up with Suyin within a matter of twenty-four hours.
She’d flown back toward them, not wanting to expose the rest of the survivors to Jinhai or Jinhai to them. With her had come General Arzaleya, a compact and deadly woman with wings of a red so dark it held undertones of black, hair the shade of burnt oak, and skin like Dmitri’s—it held its light brown color no matter the season. She also had Dmitri’s air of competence, her strikingly pale eyes watchful.
“I’d have thought she’d leave the general with the caravan,” Illium had murmured to Aodhan when he first spotted Arzaleya’s wings. “She’s the third in rank, right?”
Aodhan had looked thoughtful. “Suyin has a decision to make, and, by my calculation, the caravan is now at the safest part of their trek. Vetra is also there. And one—or two—of us three will join her soon, so there is little to no risk.”
Illium hadn’t had the chance to dig further on that before the group landed. Also with Suyin and Arzaleya was a small squadron of senior angels who were to guard Jinhai until Suyin assigned him a final team.
Aodhan had already warned her to rotate that team out with multiple others to ensure Jinhai couldn’t work his tactics of manipulation on them—his abilities might not be strong enough to affect angels, but he was still a master at subtle psychological ploys.
Suyin had brought along senior healer, Fana as well. Not a specialist in ailments of the mind, but of a skill and kindness that would make her a help to Jinhai until the arrival of the specialist healers. Aodhan knew Keir himself was on the way—Jinhai could have no better help.
Jinhai’s face lit up with piercing joy the instant Suyin landed in front of them. “Ma!” he cried. “Ma!” The happiness and hope and childish innocence in his voice was heart-wrenching.
He was almost to Suyin when he slowed down, a questioning lilt in his voice as he said, “Ma?”
“I am not Lijuan, child,” Suyin murmured. “But I
am kin. I am your cousin and your archangel.”
Jinhai seemed momentarily nonplussed by that. A second later, he exploded, launching himself at Suyin with hands fashioned into claws. “I am her only skin! I am her! I am her skin!”
Though everyone reacted to protect Suyin, she was an archangel, had no need of their assistance. She controlled the boy without doing him harm, her arms locked around him as she took them to the snowy ground. When he stopped screaming and struggling at last, she held him tight as he sobbed for his mother.
To harm a child is an act of dishonor beyond forgiveness.
—Angelic Law
47
Later, after Jinhai had worn himself out and fallen into an exhausted sleep, Suyin told Aodhan and Illium to join the caravan. “I will go with Jinhai to his new home. For better or worse, he sees the familiar in me, and I think it’s best he begin to learn to look at me with trust. As such, I need you to protect the caravan.”
Aodhan struggled against an immediate disagreement. He knew he couldn’t allow himself to become too attached to the child; Jinhai might speak to the part of him that knew what it was to be trapped and tortured, but the boy’s path had to diverge from his if he was to heal.
Though . . . “In the future, I would like to see him at times if he will receive me as a visitor. Would that be acceptable to you?”
Suyin’s smile was soft. “You will always be welcome in my territory—and Jinhai could do no better than to have you as a man from whom he can learn.” She turned to Illium. “I thank you, too, for watching over this broken child rather than executing him at first sight.”
“It wasn’t my right or my decision.” Illium flowed into a graceful bow, going down on one knee while flaring his wings out behind him. A powerful, dangerous butterfly in the snow.
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