by Nalini Singh
But the Hummingbird didn’t drop from the sky like a small, startled bird. Instead, she came to hover across from him, a soft smile curving her lips. It struck him at that instant that she was beautiful, stunningly so. Shrugging off that errant thought because this was the Hummingbird and not a woman, he bowed slightly.
Yes, he was an archangel, but the Hummingbird existed outside the hierarchy of angelkind as far as he was concerned. He’d seen her work, been absorbed by it to the extent that he’d hunted down a piece for his own rooms. The person who created such transcendence, the person who had within them such grace, was to be treated with utmost respect.
“Archangel Titus,” she said with a bow of her own. “I see I have come at a bad time.”
He winced inwardly, wondering at the level of insult she’d taken. “I’ve just come in from battle,” he said. “The reborn have taken strong hold in this landscape. Charisemnon, that pestilent piece of . . . er, rotted meat,” he substituted instead of “excrement,” “worked with Lijuan to create a stronger, more intelligent strain before he died.”
“Yes, I have heard many such reports on my journey here,” she said in a voice so rich with texture it felt like a tactile caress. Titus had a weakness for music and art and she was the embodiment of both. Too bad she was also the Hummingbird and the entire angelic world would be insulted beyond repair should he invite her to share his blankets.
He was insulted beyond repair on her behalf at his own base thoughts. The Hummingbird had long risen above all that, and he was—what was the word one of his sisters had used a few centuries ago?—yes, he was a cad for even thinking of her in such a carnal way.
“I saw much during my flight,” she said. “I would share that information with you. I think you and your people haven’t had a chance to fully survey the rural edges of Charisemnon’s territory.”
Titus gave a small nod. “I’d be grateful for any new information.” He didn’t expect much in terms of martial details, for the Hummingbird had probably focused on the artistic merit of various things, but still, perhaps she’d picked up a relevant piece or two of information by accident. “I welcome you to my court, Lady Hummingbird.”
A tightness to her face, but her voice remained pure velvet as she said, “It will become tiresome if we are both constantly formal with one another. Please call me Sharine, and if you do not disagree, I shall call you Titus.”
Titus almost scowled before he caught himself, his shoulders bunching. It didn’t feel right to call her anything but Lady Hummingbird, but he’d make the attempt since that was her preference. As for himself, she could call him whatever she liked. The Hummingbird had such rights.
“As you prefer, La—Sharine.” He shook out the tension in his shoulders. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll lead you to my citadel. We’ll sit and have a meal together, though I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until after I bathe.” He wanted to slap himself—what did he think he was doing, talking about bathing to a woman so genteel and refined?
“That is as well,” she murmured as they fell into flight side by side. “I’m dusty from my long journey and will need to clean up, too.”
Exhaling because that had worked out better than he’d expected, he said, “We expected you two days ago.” He’d been concerned enough when she hadn’t arrived some days after leaving Lumia that he’d contacted Raphael to ask if Illium had heard from his mother. “Your son assured me that you were safe and on the way else I would’ve dispatched my people to look for you.”
“I should’ve sent word.” A gracious apology in her tone. “I decided to take several detours to check on the status of settlements on either side of my main route. I saw some disturbing things and didn’t wish to rush here when I could bring you useful information instead.”
Grooves forming in his forehead, Titus glanced sideways at the Hummingbird before quickly looking away. He didn’t want her to catch him staring at her, but this woman was not behaving at all like the Hummingbird of whom he’d heard. Everyone in angelkind knew the great and gifted artist spent more time in a world of her own making than she did the real one.
The woman currently speaking to him, however, sounded more like one of his intelligence agents. Cool. Calm. Collected. The only significant difference was the richness of her voice, the tones filled with a depth of emotion. But, strange behavior or not, it could not be an imposter.
There was only one individual in all of angelkind who possessed wings of indigo brushed with light and eyes of a shade so pale and golden that they were like captured pieces of the first rays of dawn. This was most assuredly the Hummingbird.
“I haven’t seen so much activity my entire flight here,” she said as they flew closer to the citadel.
Narja bustled around that fortress of stone and light, his people choosing to live close to their archangel. It was a source of pride for Titus, that the people he ruled came toward him instead of going outward. Even the ones based in other parts of the territory tended to cluster around the senior angels in the area. It was quite different from the way his dead enemy’s land was laid out—Charisemnon’s people had not hugged close to their leadership.
“Anyone not able-bodied enough to help with the reborn scourge is assisting with the rebuild,” Titus said with considerable pride. “Whether that means holding a paintbrush in the hour they’re permitted out of the infirmary, or acting as teachers of craft even if their own limbs are shattered.
“My city took considerable damage in the war, close as it is to the border.” Scarlet fire burned his blood at the memory of how he’d permitted Charisemnon too close. His snake of an enemy had worn the mask of an ally, choosing cunning over honor. Death was too good for him, but it was all the satisfaction Titus would ever get.
“I didn’t realize your city had so much glass and steel. It reminds me of my son’s home but for the lack of towers that scrape the sky.”
“Narja stands up against any of New York’s temptations,” he said, chest puffing up. “We boast far more green spaces for one, and as for the towers—that’s a consequence of being a border city. The higher the building, the bigger the target.” As a result, the city’s buildings were constructed to not provide easy sightlines to the enemy, as the roads were designed to be confusing to the eye from above.
Noticing the Hummingbird’s wing muscles had begun to droop, he subtly lowered his speed. “My only regret is that you do not see my city in its full glory.” He had physically helped build the citadel that was the center of it, had even dug a garden or two that would normally be brilliant with color.
“It’s a place with heart, that I can tell regardless.” Angling her body to take in another part of his city, she said, “Are you aware that your ability to move the earth has created massive cracks in the earth that continue to creep farther inward? At one village, I was told that the gorge approaching them has advanced by half a foot per day—such a speed has them scrambling to relocate.”
He scowled, for he didn’t like to think of mortals afraid and alone because of the outcome of an immortal war. It was brutal reality when archangels fought, but he’d never been at peace with such a consequence; his mother had taught him that the strong protected the weak.
“My scholars have been studying the advance and they tell me it should stop soon, as the energy in the earth runs out.” His Cascade power to cause earth tremors had helped him defeat his enemy, but as with all archangelic gifts to be born out of that unpredictable confluence of time and power, it had more than one facet.
He’d been uncertain that he retained the ability when the Cascade ended with a sudden finality, taking with it much of what it bestowed. In the end, it turned out that he could still affect the earth, but at a tenth of the capacity he’d possessed during the height of the Cascade. Given what he was hearing about the others in the Cadre and the powers with which they’d emerged from the Cascade, it was a fair enough trad
e-off. They’d all lost something and retained something.
“That is good news,” the Hummingbird said. “I’m glad you continue to give your scholars room to work. It must’ve been tempting to haul them into the battle against the reborn.”
He decided not to take insult, for there was a grain of truth in her supposition. “I have been Cadre long enough to have learned to think for the future. Well I know that my scholars’ greatest weapon is their collective brain and not their sword arms.
“All but for one—Ozias is a warrior-scholar and she is my spymaster, her task to gather intelligence about the state of the territory. But she is only one angel doing a mammoth task. I thank you for the information you’ve brought me.” Unexpected though it was from a woman known for her penchant of living in a dreamworld.
“You fight a difficult battle, Titus. I offer what assistance I can.”
Spotting the increasing dip in her wings, he chose against giving her an overview of the citadel. “We’ll land on the balcony outside your suite,” he said. “It’s near mine so you can access me at any time should you have any need.” That wasn’t quite true. He’d be out in the field more often than not. But it seemed like the sort of thing an archangel should at least say when the Hummingbird stayed in his home.
It wasn’t anything he’d ever before had to consider. With the entire gentle court sent to safety prior to the beginning of the war, he had no one soft and sweet left on his staff to handle such things. Elia, six-hundred-year-old vampire and foster mother—by choice—of the orphaned children who lived in Titus’s court, would’ve no doubt managed it all with smiling joy, Titus none the wiser of the work involved.
He wasn’t a complete dullard in such things, however—there was a reason he’d offered Elia a position as senior courtier. She might be kind of heart and prone to dressing in frothy fashions while putting enormous amounts of cosmetic colors on her face, but she also gave his steward a run for his money when it came to dealing with problematic or touchy guests.
However, his steward was currently using his sword arm against the reborn, and Elia was on an offshore island with her charges; he’d had to pull people from other duties to ready things for his guest.
The only positive?
Members of his household staff were so honored by the Hummingbird’s visit that they hadn’t minded pulling double shifts to pretty up a suite for her while not falling away from their usual duties—whether that be repairing weapons or feeding the troops or a million other critical tasks.
After landing on the balcony and ensuring the clearly exhausted Hummingbird got down safely, he pushed aside the gauzy curtains of the open doors—to see soft, curving feminine furniture and vases full of fresh flowers. Thanks be to the ingenuity of his people; he had absolutely no idea where they’d found those blooms.
“I hope this will suit,” he said modestly after they’d both stepped inside—but the modesty was for show; he was very conscious his people had done well and deserved all the praise she would bestow.
Expression tight, she looked around. “I didn’t expect you to go to this trouble.” A tone to her voice that, on any other woman, he would’ve described as an edge. But this was the Hummingbird. Perhaps she was displeased about some small element of the room.
Having known more than enough contrary women over his lifetime, beginning with his mother and sisters, Titus decided to leave well enough alone and didn’t ask her what was wrong. “My staff is honored by your presence and wished to make you welcome.”
Features softening, she inclined her head. “I’m deeply grateful for their care.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that on.” Titus wasn’t a man to steal praise that wasn’t his to take. “I made sure to remind them to set up an art studio for you,” he said with justifiable pride, and pointed upward. “You’ll find stairs just beyond the half wall to the right—at the end of the climb is a room full of light set up with an easel and art supplies.” He had no idea where his people had sourced any of those things, either.
When the Hummingbird said nothing in response to his magnanimous gesture, he decided to take his leave. Could be this was one of those moments where she existed out of time. Though . . . for an ethereal being, her jaw appeared unnaturally rigid and he could swear that her shoulders were bunched.
No, he had to be imagining it; the Hummingbird was beyond such things. Beyond anger, beyond petty grievances. The Hummingbird was a being special and gentle, a being who needed care and was to be handled as you would a fragile, broken bird.
10
Sharine glared at the wide sweep of Titus’s back as he strode out of the room, shutting the door behind himself. It was as well that he’d left because she might’ve otherwise given in to the urge to pick up the small vase on the table next to her and throw it at his head. And what exactly would that have achieved? Nothing.
Titus—a warrior tired from constant battle—had done nothing but be kind and treat her as he no doubt believed she expected to be treated. As a fragile artist who needed beauty and softness around her and could not be expected to cope with harsh reality.
Well, was that not who you were for centuries?
It was a slap hard and stinging from a part of her that had woken when she’d woken, a part that was brutally honest and had no time for self-pity—or for misdirected anger.
Sharine winced.
How could she expect Titus to treat her as anything but a delicate, breakable butterfly when that was all she’d ever shown the world?
She and the Archangel of Africa hadn’t known each other when she was still herself—and even then, she’d been slightly out of time, a wounded bird who’d never quite found her wings. This Sharine, the one she was now, a mature woman shaped by loss and hurt and pain and anger and a fierce love for her son, she was someone Sharine herself was still getting to know. She couldn’t expect Titus to divine her new state of being.
Still, she scowled at the curvy velvet sofa, the lush bouquets of flowers, and—when she opened the wardrobe—the floaty and superbly impractical gowns within. Not only had a member of his overworked staff wasted time in getting all this together, it was clear that no one—from the archangel down to his most junior member of staff—expected her to dirty her hands.
Titus’s people were ready to take on another burden at a time when they needed every bit of help they could get. Making a sound low in her throat that startled her with its feral nature, she kicked the door of the wardrobe and was satisfied by the loud sound. Then she took off her backpack and removed the clothing items within.
Luckily, she’d stopped near a stream the previous night. She’d needed time alone, and so had stayed away from any settlement, but she hadn’t been foolish. She’d chosen an area with a wide-open landscape where nothing and no one could sneak up on her. While there, she hadn’t slept, for she’d done so the previous night and an angel of her age didn’t need as much sleep as the young. Instead, she’d simply rested her wings and done a few small chores. Including washing out her second set of clothing.
It had reminded her of when she’d first left her familial home. Most fledglings were nudged out of the nest at a hundred years of age. In mortal terms, angels were about eighteen in maturity and growth by then, ready to take up training or further studies or to go exploring.
Sharine’s parents had asked her to spread her wings when she was eighty years of age. “We’re old, child,” they’d said to her. “We want to make sure you are settled in the world before we surrender to the Sleep that whispers to us nightly.”
Back then, Sharine had been scared—and also ashamed of her need for them to stay awake. Today, she felt a hot burst of anger. She was older than they’d ever been, and she would never, in a million years, walk into Sleep while her son was of an age where he needed her.
Is that not what you did when you walked into the kaleidoscope?
Flinching at the cutting words from the same part of her psyche that had delivered the earlier slap, she shrugged off the wave of shame that threatened. All that would do was cripple her, make her useless. No, the time of shame was past; she had to stride into the future—and make people see her. See Sharine, and not the Hummingbird.
After stripping off her dirty clothing, she walked into the bathing chamber. It was as luxuriant as everything else in the suite, complete with scented soaps, plush towels, and other extravagances. She’d heard that Titus had a liking for art and soft, beautiful things—women included. From the look of him now, however, he wasn’t bothering with any of that. He looked exactly what he was—a warrior who had little time for fripperies while his territory was overrun with vicious reborn.
Teeth gritted, she bathed quickly then was annoyed at herself for automatically picking up the bottle of lotion afterward. But that was a habit too ingrained to shun and since his people had made the effort to provide for her with such care, she slathered her body in the silky cream scented softly with a flower she couldn’t name, before heading out into the bedroom and pulling on her blue-gray tunic and dark brown pants.
Having washed her hair the previous night, she simply brushed it out, then pulled it back into a tight tail at the back of her head. Again, when she looked in the mirror, she saw a fresh-faced young woman looking back at her. Only her eyes gave her away. They were old, telling of the life she’d lived . . . and not lived.
Gut tight, she turned away, her hand going to her right wrist, where she wore a bracelet that Illium had sent her from New York. It was made of platinum metal, each of the links slender but strong; the heart that hung from one end bore not her name but his. It had made her laugh, because of course her mischievous boy would do this. She wore the gift with pride, her son’s name, her son’s love.
She deliberately didn’t go up into the art room. It was an act of willpower on her part. Perhaps Titus had done her a favor there after all—he’d placed her drug of choice within reach and now she’d have to resist temptation each time she was in this suite, thus building her strength of will.