by Nalini Singh
“I’m afraid you cannot be as aggravated as I am. It’s a brilliant strategy. I’m angry that I didn’t think of something similar myself. We could’ve tunneled to attack the other side for one.”
Titus shook his head. “That would’ve only worked once or twice before they began to do the same in retaliation and we ended up back where we began.” He put his hands on his hips. “Go back to your foster brother.”
His spymaster stared at him, unblinking. “Sire, you know full well I’m incapable of returning to my brother without first discovering if our theory is correct.”
Sharine’s laughter was gentle, a sound that pleased the ear and had Ozias turning to look at her in a way that was . . . Not intrigued. More than that. Fascinated and with an edge of wonder. Because this was the Hummingbird and Titus realized that most people had never seen her so alive, so vibrant, with no fog in her.
If she’d been lovely and ethereal before, she was now dazzling in her brightness, a small and brilliant sun. “That’s something my son would say,” she said to Ozias. “I can just imagine Illium standing where you are now, his hands on his hips and his wings twitching with impatience.”
Ozias, some thousand years older than Illium, smiled again and it was deeper, more real, revealing the beauty she turned to dull invisibility with such skill. “I tried to recruit your son once,” she said.
“I know he’d never leave Raphael.” Sharine shot Titus and his spymaster both a dark look. “And I believed that you were friends with Raphael.”
Titus chuckled. “It’s a game.” A most satisfying one. “Every so often, one of us makes an offer to a member of the other’s court that should be irresistible—but it’s a point of pride with us that none of our high-level people have ever taken up those offers.”
Even as Sharine shook her head, lips fighting a smile, he added, “For those who are younger, such movement can be beneficial. I teach them to be warriors and they return highly trained to Raphael when he makes a counteroffer. The pup, in turn, teaches my people how to thrive in a world that is constantly changing, and they return home with knowledge that stops my court from slipping into the dark ages.”
The two of them were quite content with this silent and never acknowledged exchange. As Titus and Alexander were content with their far more open and always friendly game of one-upmanship. Though neither one of them had had the chance to challenge each other to a daring escapade since Alexander’s waking.
“Now, we fly,” he said. “Let us discover if we’re attributing too much intelligence to my enemy, or if he did indeed get one over on me.”
“Wait, I must leave this journal in the study.” Sharine turned on her heel to run quickly inside, her wings a shock of color in this dreary place.
Ozias looked at him once she was gone, the brown of her eyes unusually soft. “Lady Sharine isn’t who I believed her to be . . . but she remains a treasure, a star captured in a small frame.”
Scowl heavy, Titus folded his arms. “Are you telling me to leave her be?” He had every certainty that Ozias had noted exactly how close he’d stood to Sharine, seen the brush of their wings, spotted the faint dampness of her tunic, and put it together with Titus’s yet-drying hair and the damp patches on his pants.
No smile, her expression deadpan. “On the contrary, sire. I’m saying we should steal her for ourselves so we can conspire to protect her from those who’d attempt her harm.”
Grinning, Titus slapped his spymaster on the shoulder, careful to modulate his strength. Ozias was strong, but she wasn’t Tzadiq. Yet even as Ozias permitted a rare grin to light up her face, he knew full well Sharine didn’t wish to be protected. If he did it, it’d have to be by stealth. Not exactly Titus’s strongest skill.
His scowl returned along with Sharine.
She raised an eyebrow at him, but asked no questions as the three of them lifted off. The journey didn’t take long, though Titus had to hold back so the other two could keep up. His spymaster contacted him mind to mind as they were about to reach this side of the former border.
Lady Sharine is far faster than I would’ve predicted. She’s maintaining my top speed and she doesn’t appear tired.
Titus knew she’d tire on a longer run at this speed, for she hadn’t yet built up the necessary endurance, but his spymaster was right about her pace. He’d always assumed young Illium was as fast as he was because he had an archangel for a father, but the clue to the actual truth had always been in front of their faces.
The tiny, jeweled hummingbird could move at incredible speeds relative to its size—even faster than an archangel. A small fact he’d picked up at some point in his life and that had stuck. Yet he’d never made the connection with the delicate and lovely treasure of angelkind.
Landing, Titus folded back his wings, looking to Sharine as she landed together with Ozias. “How did you get your nickname?” he asked, to confirm his theory. “The Hummingbird?”
“Why are you asking me that question now?” She lifted her hands, palms out, but answered anyway. “Raan used to say I flew like a hummingbird. Here and there and everywhere, so quick I was a streak of color in the sky.” She opened out her wings then folded them back in with neat precision.
“I’m not as fast as I once was,” she said with a grimace. “Unquestionably due to a lack of practice on my part. But I can feel the muscles beginning to wake up and I won’t permit them to atrophy again.”
I feel very stupid today. Ozias’s mental tone was morose.
The entire world joins you in this, Titus assured his spymaster, even as he stamped down a ridiculous burst of heated green fire in his gut. Being jealous of a man long dead would make him an imbecile of the highest order, and he was already feeling the lash of being fooled by his enemy.
“So,” he said aloud, taking in the abandoned garrison buildings. “We need to look for a section that’s either collapsed and has been left that way for what looks like some time, or one that is new—in case Charisemnon decided to hide the truth by building and rebuilding.”
The three of them took off again, heading to scan different parts of the garrison. Titus went high into the sky, so he could see every part of it; at the same time he tried to remember the battles fought. Charisemnon had never attacked the troops on the field of battle except when Titus was also present.
In that, at least, he’d held to the unwritten rules of the constant battles between them. One archangel wouldn’t seek to decimate the forces of the other. There was no point in “winning” a skirmish if it meant crushing angels who had no hope of saving themselves from an archangel.
Odd that Charisemnon had honored that bright line when he’d crossed so many others, but as with any creature thousands of years old, he’d been created of layers upon layers. The same man who’d written all those journals that captured millennia of his history and that of his territory had also created insects that crawled under mortal or vampire skin and murdered.
He saw a number of cracks in the earth from his vantage point, evidence of his Cascade-born power. One was looking to turn into a small gorge. Spotting a likely location—a building on the outer edge that appeared to have taken severe damage and that had been left untouched for so long that plants had begun to crawl over it, grasses growing in the nooks and crannies—he flew down to examine it with more care.
It wouldn’t work were Charisemnon unable to access the underground facility, and this pile of debris was just that. No way to get inside to whatever lay beyond. The two buildings on either side of it, however, stood whole but for some minor damage. Hmm . . .
Cobwebs kissed his face as he went to enter the building on the right; he heard wings come down behind him at the same time as he brushed the webs away. “Wait outside,” he ordered Sharine. “I’m not sure of the structural safety of this building.” What appeared minor damage from the outside could have a significant impact on the insi
de.
“Then why are you going in?” A sharp question. “It could as easily fall on top of your stubborn head.”
He turned to look over his shoulder, wondering if he should be insulted, but no, genuine concern marked her features, her lips flattened and her eyes dark. Deep inside him, an unknown thing twisted. No one had worried about him in such a way for an eternity. Not even his mother or sisters, all of whom often referred to him as the baby of the family.
“I’m one of the Cadre,” he reminded her with a gentleness that came from the same unknown thing inside him. “A building falling on me will do no damage that my body can’t repair in a matter of minutes.” It would take her far longer.
“Just be careful,” she said after a pause. “I don’t feel like spending hours digging you out of the rubble if you get stuck.” Though the words sounded harsh, she reached over to close her hand over his. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”
It felt natural to dip his head and kiss those worried lips. “I won’t.”
Releasing her hand with a squeeze, he walked into the dusty building, the floor of which was coated with flakes of debris from the ceiling, and made his way to the steps he could see on the left-hand side. Those steps led down into what appeared to be a large storage area, but he soon discovered another set of steps beyond that.
Heading down those after turning on lights that flickered but still worked, he found himself in a space filled with neat piles of boxes. A thick layer of dust coated the tops—far thicker than could be explained by the lack of movement here since the war.
He opened one, found weapons.
Titus’s cargo master would’ve long since shifted these unused boxes to open up space. Unless, of course, Titus told him that the weapons needed to be kept in place in preparation for a specific action of which his archangel would inform him when it was time. No one would then touch it.
A curious warrior who opened a box would find weapons—nothing unusual in a battlefield. What was unusual was the door concealed behind a set of boxes at the very back. He only spotted it because he’d cracked the earth under Charisemnon’s infantry. The land had shifted . . . and the wall had moved to reveal the lines of what would’ve otherwise been a hidden door.
Invisible. Unseen.
Something smashed above, the building shaking around him. He was considering his next step when he heard footsteps, light and swift, coming down the steps. “I told you to stay upstairs!”
He couldn’t bear it if those wings of indigo and gold were broken, that small body crushed. Not because she was the Hummingbird, a treasure of angelkind, but because she was Sharine, who worried about him and who had a quick wit and who he was finding he could talk to without ever getting bored.
“The building is falling down around you.” She walked over to him, unrepentant . . . as the translucent champagne of her eyes scanned him for injury. “And, as your lordship pointed out, you are part of the Cadre. I’m sure you can protect me should anything happen.” Then she reached out and took his hand, tugged. “Come.”
He realized she’d come to drag him to safety.
Astonishment turned him to stone.
Not simply because, physically, she couldn’t drag him anywhere, much less up two flights of stairs. No, because she’d been worried enough about his safety that she’d disregarded the danger to her own. It was foolishness, but it opened a vein inside him, one so profound that he wove his fingers through her own and said, “I’ve found a hidden door.”
Widening eyes, before her gaze followed his. When he tugged at her hand, she came with him. Only to protest when he put his arm around her shoulders, tucking her close to his body.
“If I’m to protect you from a falling building,” he grumbled, “you must be tight to me.” His bones could take far greater damage, and he’d also wrap his wings around her, protecting her own.
“You’re making sense. It’s aggravating.” With those grumpy words that made him want to smile, she slipped an arm around his back, pressed a hand against his bare skin.
The contact burned . . . and was a strange kind of comfort.
With her at risk, he walked to the doorway without delay. “Stay close,” he ordered, then released her so he could use both hands to pull at the exposed edge of the door. It creaked, its mechanism stuck or warped as a result of the quake.
A shower of dust as he finally wrenched the door off its hinges and put it aside. Sharine coughed and waved her hand in front of her face, the dust swirling in the doorway making it difficult to see beyond until it settled.
“The smell,” she said on another cough. “Decay and neglect and a wetter, more fetid odor.”
“Yes, as if something died within.”
Using the back of his hand to wipe the dust off his own face, Titus told Ozias to stay above. Warn us if you see any sign of movement in the cracks caused by my power. He was certain the earlier shake had resulted from such movement.
Sire.
And, to satisfy your curiosity so you don’t expire from the frustration—you were correct. This building connects to the building hidden beneath the rubble next door. With that, he stepped into the hidden underground bunker, Sharine by his side, their wings rubbing against each other, they were so close.
It was pitch-dark beyond what little light fell into the space from the doorway, and the first warning he had that they weren’t alone was a scrabbling sound as something rushed toward him on a rattle of chains.
41
Punching out his hand with warrior precision, he wrapped his fingers around the throat of what he expected was a reborn. Nails clawed at him as Sharine wreathed her hand with her power. Dim light suffused the room . . . to reveal a reborn such as he’d never seen. Her wings had been clipped so she couldn’t fly, her eyes were reddened, her flesh holding a greenish tinge.
Yet she wasn’t rotting, was alive in some bizarre sense.
His anger at Charisemnon’s malevolent actions a storm, he went to tear off her head out of instinct when Sharine put a hand on his forearm. “No, Titus, don’t!”
He stopped mid-motion, even as the reborn scrambled weakly at his arm, its strength fading at rapid speed. “The creature is a danger, and it’s also cruel to allow it to exist in such a state.” No angel would ever choose this life.
“Look.” That single word was full of horror, her gaze not on the reborn’s face, but lower.
To the creature’s swelling belly.
His stomach revolted so badly that he almost threw up, as might a young soldier faced with the viscera of battle for the first time. “I’ll do it quickly,” he promised Sharine. “I won’t extend its torture.” Such a thing as this was beyond evil. “Women who are with child when attacked don’t survive and rise as reborn—I’ve never seen such.”
But she put her hand in his and squeezed. “Don’t you understand, Titus?” Her body trembled. “I think she’s carrying the cure.”
He stared at her, then at the weak creature in his grasp. There was little flesh on its body—not a surprise if it had been trapped in this room since Charisemnon’s death; it would’ve had only the food the other archangel had left behind for it. That food was apt to be flesh . . . and while the reborn had become smarter, they were nowhere close to smart enough to know to hoard food against a shortage. Their instinct was to gorge.
“Find another light source,” he said to Sharine; he focused on the practical action because the horror would otherwise overwhelm him. “There must be something brighter here if this was Charisemnon’s workspace.”
It didn’t take her long, the room soon drenched in a clinically white light. The space that stretched out in front of them was massive, but it was also open enough that he could see at a glance that it contained no other reborn.
A filthy mattress and a pile of blankets lay in one corner, along with iron restraints that had come off the
slightly cracked wall. He looked down, saw the chains dragging from the creature’s ankles. Though it turned his stomach, he carried the now unmoving reborn to that bed—even the chains didn’t add much to her weight.
She’d fouled part of the mattress, but he found a comparatively clean patch on which to place her.
“This must’ve held food.” Sharine pointed to several now broken containers near the mattress. “Oh, sweet mercy.”
Following her gaze, he saw a mound of small bones. Muscles bunching, he looked again at the starving reborn. “When I moved the earth, it must’ve cracked the joints enough for rats to get in.”
“She did what she had to do to survive,” Sharine said, her face taut with sorrow.
“It’s not a she, Sharine. She died when Charisemnon and Lijuan did this to her.” Sharine had to understand that, or she’d hesitate against a reborn at the wrong time, and end up torn apart. “This is a creature created by a monstrous evil.”
A shuddering breath, but Sharine nodded.
Sire, the cracks in the earth are moving and heading your way.
Titus felt the first whisper of a rumble under his feet even as Ozias’s warning hit his mind. That this structure was still standing told him it was solid and built to be resilient, but they couldn’t rely on that—not after all the damage caused by earlier quakes. “Gather any documents you see,” he told Sharine. “I’ll do the same—this creature’s body is limp. We don’t have to fear an attack.”
It was Titus who found the still functional cold storage room. Rows upon rows of bodies lined the walls, all of them angelic females. Clipped wings were standard . . . and someone had slit open the stomachs of several. Small twisted forms with no faces and with skin a rotting green were stacked in another corner.
He shut the door when he heard Sharine coming closer. “You don’t wish to see what lies within,” he said, holding tight to the door handle to stop her from even attempting to open it. “Trust me on this. As a mother, you don’t want to see that.”