by Nalini Singh
With Elijah, the Archangel of South America, as well as Caliane in the healing sleep of anshara, the Cadre was only seven right now, one of them Suyin, newly ascended and finding her feet. Add in the fact that Neha, the Archangel of India, had awakened from anshara a bare week ago, and the Cadre was stretched to the limit.
As a result, powerful angels who could maintain the leash of fear were needed far more so than in the normal order of things. Sharine wasn’t deadly or an enforcer. But in the time since taking up her position here, she’d learned that she had the ability to bring out the best in others, including warrior squadrons.
Those squadrons held the leash for her.
“We’ve spoken of that,” Tanicia said, her glance taking in Trace and Farah. “A number of vampires from this region were called to fight in Archangel Charisemnon’s army.”
“Yes.” Sorrow wove through her blood for all the people, vampiric and angelic and mortal, who would never again return, their bodies obliterated in war. Those assigned to Lumia at the time had come to her before their departure, making sure she knew she was about to lose them from Lumia’s complement and why.
Sharine had begrudged none of them. The war hadn’t reached this isolated area—Charisemnon had aimed himself at the southern half of the continent, with the fighting mostly taking place at the north/south border.
“The archangel didn’t only recall his soldiers, he drafted in civilians who were technically his people, though they lived inside our borders,” Tanicia reminded Sharine. “Sad as it is to say, that means we currently have a very small population of civilian vampires. We should be able to maintain the peace for weeks or longer—you’ve built a solid foundation on which we can stand.”
“The idiots know to behave,” Trace drawled. “Everyone else will otherwise haul them into line—and not be gentle about it. No one, mortal or immortal wishes to lose you as Guardian, and to that end, they will ensure the Cadre has no reason to question your leadership.”
Oh, she did like him. She liked all of her people. Farah, so quiet and sage in her advice. Trace, erudite and silkily dangerous. Battle-worn Tanicia, who’d been at Sharine’s side from the start, when Sharine wasn’t sure what she was doing here. The only reason she’d even accepted the position was because Illium had taken her hands and said, “These people are hurt, Mother. You understand pain, and you understand how to be kind. That’s what they need.”
He could be so wise sometimes, her blue-winged boy who was becoming more powerful each time she turned around. Yet she would always remember him as the ungainly babe who’d wobbled the first time he took off from their kitchen doorway, straight down into the breathtakingly steep drop-off outside.
She’d had her heart in her throat every painful second, but she hadn’t gone after him. His father had been watching from below . . . and well, Aegaeon had still been a good father then, even if he’d already lost interest in her as a woman. He’d have caught their small and delighted boy if he’d tangled his wings and fallen.
But he hadn’t. Their baby had flown.
And he’d given Sharine wings when she was at her most broken, bringing her to this place where she was considered someone to come to, a person to trust. “I have confidence in your ability to handle anything that arises in my absence,” she told her three senior people, and saw their spines lengthen, their faces gain light from within.
“I will prepare tonight and fly on the wing to Titus’s court come morning.” She held up a hand when Tanicia’s eyes flared, her lips parting. “Raphael offered to arrange a ride in one of those flying metal contraptions, but I’m not that modern.” The idea of being trapped inside a tube of metal was not her idea of flight. “I also wish to make a survey of the landscape.”
Tanicia frowned, and Farah stepped from foot to foot. Surprisingly, it was Trace who inclined his head in defeat. “I wish you good journey, Lady Sharine.”
* * *
* * *
Dawn came on a caress of pink and light yellow across twilight gray skies.
Sharine’s maidens had argued for sending her things overland, but Sharine had no intention of risking her people for vanity. She’d borne their distraught silence as she made it clear she’d carry what she needed in a small pack that fit neatly between her wings. “No one is to send anything else after me.”
Such long faces they’d had, such bowed shoulders, but they had accepted her word. Now, she double-checked the pack she’d filled the previous night. She’d had such a pack as a young woman, but this one had been a gift from Aodhan. And Aodhan being Aodhan, while the pack was a golden brown suitable for the heat of Morocco, when examined more closely, it proved to be patterned with a design in the same color. Even in the simplest of things, her protégé couldn’t stop making art.
She’d taken time to think about what she might need and what she could borrow. Titus was a man who had many female warriors and staff, and while she was at the smaller end, she wasn’t so small as to make borrowing clothing or shoes difficult. In the end, the pack had ended up a weight she could easily carry for her entire journey.
As for her clothing for this journey . . . She’d always worn gowns of various kinds—simple patterns without embellishment, as well as more intricate pieces. Even with the latter, however, she was no fan of heavy enhancement, preferring beautiful fabrics and cuts. Still, since taking up her position in Lumia, she’d come to appreciate the versatility offered by the clothing worn by her warriors.
Now, she pulled on brown pants that hugged her legs, and a mid-thigh-length tunic in gray-blue with three-quarter-length sleeves. The tunic bore silver edging on both the sleeves and the bottom edges.
A gift from the Archangel of India when Sharine accepted the post in Lumia, the fabric of both the pants and the tunic included subtle shimmering threads. As well, the embroidery was imperfect—the kind of imperfect that spoke to an artisan’s personalized touch. It all sang to Sharine’s love of color, of art.
After dressing, she went to the mirror and considered the fall of her hair. She’d become used to wearing the gold-tipped black of it out for the most part, but today she picked up a hairbrush and ran it through the strands, then wove her hair into a braid that she tied off with a plain black tie.
She laughed at the face that looked back at her—with her hair thus, and dressed with simple practicality, she looked young and hopeful.
Immortality left its mark, but not always in the face or the body.
Sharine’s marks were all internal. Her face was that of the young woman she’d once been. A woman who’d been scared and anxious much of the time, a girl she wished she could go back and reassure.
Hair done, she went to sit on a stool near the doors that led out to her balcony, and pulled on socks, then boots. Her preference was to remain in sandals that she tied with strings up to her calf, but Titus was currently having to deal with hordes of reborn. Sharine needed footwear that wasn’t going to make her a liability should she end up in a fight.
Dawn sunlight fell on her wings as she sat lacing up the boots, and she looked across, imagining how she’d capture that tracery of light on a canvas. Falling into the strokes, into the shades of paint and how she would mix each to precise perfection.
The main part of her feathers would be easy enough—the intense indigo was familiar and a color she’d painted often back when Raan had her practicing portraiture by doing her own, but with that champagne-like shade dusted all over the filaments, it was so filled with light as to be almost impossible to capture. As well, the texture of the sun was further altering the—
“Sharine,” she muttered, deliberately breaking her gaze and turning her attention back to her boots. This was a truth she hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Caliane. The broken shards of her self hadn’t fully healed—every so often, her mind tried to spiral back into that shattered landscape where everything was soft and hazy and she di
dn’t have to think about pain.
It had been so easy to live inside its embrace, to do her art and not confront a life that had left scars so deep they could never be buffed out or erased. She’d been a coward and it was time she admitted that. Caliane might not see it that way, but Caliane didn’t have a son who’d had to parent his own mother.
Heart aching, she couldn’t help herself from picking up the device Illium had given her last time he visited Lumia. No, it hadn’t been the last time, it had been the time prior. He’d come alone then, and he’d nagged her until she sat down with him to learn how to use this device.
“It’s called a phone,” he’d told her. “A small version of the screen you use to talk to Raphael and Archangel Caliane.”
Sharine had never much bothered with technology—even the technology of the time in which she’d been born. She’d been far more interested in working out how to capture all the hues of the world. But, wishing to indulge her son and content to just be with him, she’d sat and listened.
Today, she dug back through her memories in an effort to remember what he’d attempted to teach her. She hadn’t paid enough attention at the time, still partially lost in the kaleidoscope, so her retention wasn’t as sharp as usual.
But Sharine was through with giving up.
Jaw set, she touched different parts of the screen, activating things until the device began to look familiar at last. Even faded and hazy, her memory was one of her greatest advantages, the reason she could paint so true to life.
Teeth biting down on her lower lip, she created a message: my son, are you awake? i would speak to you. It didn’t look pretty, but it would do. She sent it. She didn’t know what time it was in his city, and she didn’t know what duties lay on his shoulders, but she knew he must be very busy.
Yet the phone began to buzz in her hand a moment later, a still portrait of Illium coming onscreen. She glanced frantically at the available options, not knowing which part to touch. Thinking that red was almost universally the color of warning, she decided to touch the green. And her boy’s living face appeared on the screen.
He was sweaty, the blue-tipped black of his hair damp against a background of darkness lit up by the lights in the windows of a building behind him, and he had the most enormous smile on his face. “Mother, did you do that yourself?”
Squaring her shoulders, she said, “Of course. You shouldn’t doubt your mother.”
His laughter made her lips curve, everything inside her suddenly warm and happy. He was so beautiful, her boy. With his golden eyes and his skin kissed by sunshine, and his wings of astonishing silver-blue. But the most beautiful thing about Illium was his heart. He loved so fiercely, her son. And he mourned so deeply that it was pure devastation.
“I am going to Titus’s territory,” she told him. “Will I be able to use this device there?”
He nodded. “I’ve set it up so you can use it anywhere. If you want, I can give your contact number to Raphael and Elena and anyone else you want to stay in touch with.”
“Yes, I’d like that.” No longer would she isolate herself in ways big and small. “Teach me how to retrieve the number and I will give it to my people, too.” It was certain that she’d have access to all of Titus’s technology while in his court, but Sharine was discovering that she wasn’t happy being reliant on others.
Illium taught her how to navigate the phone, then reminded her that she must charge it with electrical energy, as she’d been doing every few days since he first gave her the device. Afterward, she took in his face, the angles of it thinner than usual. “Tell me of your city.”
“People say we were lucky.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “It’s true we don’t have to worry about a reborn scourge like so many other territories—but that’s only because of how much of the city was destroyed. The earth itself is so badly scorched in places . . .”
A lowering of his head, his voice tight when he next spoke. “There were so many dead, Mother.” Golden eyes shiny-wet, he looked away for a second before meeting her gaze again. “So many biers to fly to the Refuge, so many graves to dig, so many friends to mourn whose bodies had to be incinerated after what Lijuan did to them.”
His shoulder muscles bunched, his jaw working. “We had to effectively sanitize the entire city before the vulnerable could be permitted to move back in. Aside from a small respite offered by the glittering rain that fell during Suyin’s ascension, the smell from the rotting corpses of Lijuan’s black-eyed army wouldn’t leave. For a while even Raphael worried we’d have to burn the entire city to the ground and start again.”
Sharine wanted to reach out and hold him, but all she could do was listen.
“Too many of our own are gone, including the Legion,” he told her. “It’s too silent in the city. It feels strange to say that when the Legion barely spoke, but they were always around—sitting on tops of buildings like gargoyles or flying in small groups, or just gathering on balconies. I miss them. We all miss them.”
Sharine didn’t truly understand who and what the Legion had been, but she understood the loss of friends. War was not kind, and war did not discriminate. “From what I’ve heard, your friends gave of their energy so that a great evil could be defeated. They went with honor.” Such a thing would make no difference to her should her son have died in the war, but she knew it mattered.
Illium nodded. From the arc of his wings above his shoulders, she could tell that he was holding them with his usual muscle control even though his feathers remained soft and downy. As they’d been when he’d first grown his feathers. A smudged sky blue those baby feathers had been, so delicate and airy that she’d worried about damaging them each time she gave him a bath.
“How are your wings?” He’d lost both during the war, but was growing them back at a pace that terrified her for what it meant for his power levels.
Her sweet boy’s father was an archangel. An Ancient. Not every child who had an archangelic parent ended up being Cadre themselves, but that was looking like a certainty with Illium. He was only just over five hundred years old, and already, there were those in the world who thought he should have control of a territory.
She knew he’d been offered many positions, but he stayed with Raphael both out of a deep sense of loyalty and love—and because he was intelligent enough to know that he wasn’t ready. But sometimes, power didn’t give its wielders a choice. If Illium ascended . . .
No, she wouldn’t think about that. Her son would be torn apart by the forces of ascension should he rise too young. She could still remember how difficult it had been for Raphael—and he’d been a thousand years of age. She’d been terrified Caliane’s beloved boy would die, simply fragment into a million pieces from the power surging through his veins.
When he landed, his eyes had been blue fire, his skin crackling with lightning—and his wings ablaze in a way that had reminded her of Nadiel’s fiery fall. She’d been distant from the site of the battle where Caliane had executed her true love, but she’d seen Nadiel’s beautiful wings crumple, seen fire devour him as he fell—a star that had burned too bright and consumed itself.
7
On the small screen of the phone, her son spread his wings so she could see the progress of his healing. “Getting there,” he said. “In the meantime, I’m working on the ground. It keeps my muscles conditioned, and it also helps with wing strength because I’m constantly shifting those muscles when I lift or bend or turn.”
They spoke of other things in the time that followed, such things as might be spoken of between a mother and her son. At one point, she said, “How is Aodhan?” Illium’s best friend had been so often in their house as a child that she felt entitled to maternal worry.
Illium scowled. “Fine.”
Sharine, once out of the last vestiges of the fog in which she’d lived for so long, had sensed a visceral change in the relationship b
etween her boy and his friend; she wondered if she should say something.
Friendships so deep were rare in an angel’s lifetime and should be cherished. Anger and bitterness could destroy that which was most precious. But, she remembered, even as they fought, they looked out for each other. The two had too many years of friendship and loyalty between them to allow it to shatter—but she would keep an eye on both, ensure stubbornness didn’t get the better of them.
“Give him greetings from me and tell him of this number. I would speak to him, too.”
“I will,” Illium promised, though he was still scowling. “You’ll be careful, Mother.” It was an order, a quiet one but an order nonetheless.
She allowed it, for she knew it was reflex after so many centuries of having to care for her, of having to be the parent. There was so much she’d missed of her son’s life, so much of his pain that she didn’t understand. Never again would she let him down.
“I promise to take every care,” she told him, her heart an ache. “I realize I’m going to be dealing with dangerous creatures in Titus’s territory.” The last thing already worn warriors needed was distraction in the form of watching out for a senseless angel. “You will use this device again to speak with me?”
“I’ll call.” He grinned, a glint in his eye. “I wonder how Titus will deal with you.”
“He is an archangel and I am an old and experienced angel who can assist him. We’ll work well together.”
Her son’s laugh held a glee that had her narrowing her eyes, but she allowed him his mischief, deeply content to see joy fill him to the brim once more.
* * *
* * *