by Nalini Singh
“Tzadiq will take care of it,” Titus said, not happy to know so many people were suffering. “But right now, I wish to talk about your power.”
She waved it off, as if he wasn’t an archangel and she could defy him with impunity. “I have something far more interesting for you—I thought the reborn must’ve begun to mutate, but now I’ve seen the ones here, I begin to question my conclusion.”
While he was still agog at her complete disregard for his authority, she pulled out a phone device from her pocket and touched the screen. “Here, look at the moving pictures I took.”
Caught between the urge to snarl at her to respect his authority and a fascination that was rooted in befuddlement, Titus found his attention caught by the images on the screen. The recording showed the hand of what he thought must be a reborn. It was severely burned, but the hand was elongated in a way that turned the stomach, it was so alien . . . and there.
He grabbed her wrist without thought, faintly noting the unexpected tensile strength of her bones. “Can you show me again?”
“I believe so, but I need both hands.”
Heat burned his skin. “My apologies.” Titus wasn’t in the habit of grabbing women without permission.
“It is no matter,” she murmured, her focus on tapping at the device.
Once again treating him like an errant pup who’d made a misstep, rather than the archangel of an entire continent.
Chest rumbling, he went to point out that he was no pup and never would be, but she smiled without warning—and the searing beauty of the light in her expression knocked him flat.
“I have it,” she said with open pride, and held out the phone again.
Titus had to force himself to pay attention. “Watch with me, focus on the fingers.” He needed to know if she saw it, too.
A second in, she sucked in a hard breath. “It moved.” Horror in every syllable. “That should be impossible. The bodies were so badly burned that nothing could’ve survived it—and reborn are susceptible to fire.”
“It’s possible this reborn was a vampire before being turned, and managed to survive for a considerable period of time.” Those were always the nastiest ones to kill. “But it should still not be showing signs of life, given the intensity of the fire.” The rest of the recording offered evidence of a violent blaze. “How far is this settlement?” He couldn’t ignore the sign of an even more robust strain.
When she told him the location, he did rapid calculations in his head. He couldn’t send a proxy for this—he had to see her discovery himself, but he also couldn’t leave his people low on manpower. Still, if he flew at archangelic speed . . . “Can you give me exact coordinates to the village?”
Her face dropped, smile fading. “I don’t know how to give you such coordinates.”
“Your device may have noted it.” He reached out mentally to Obren, aware the youth was an aficionado of technology. “Obren joins us soon to check.”
But the boy shook his head after checking the device, his locs tied back at his nape with a thin piece of twine. “I’m sorry, sire, it appears that operation has been turned off.”
“I may have done it while I was working out how to use the device.” The Hummingbird’s tone was apologetic. “I’m sorry.”
Titus ordered Obren to return to his duties. “In that case,” he began.
But the Hummingbird was already speaking. “I can lead you directly to it.”
“You’ll slow me down,” Titus said bluntly, and braced himself for a fit of feminine anger. “I can’t lose time, not now.”
“Yes,” the Hummingbird agreed in a quiet tone. “But I think even an archangel shouldn’t go into such danger alone. And as I am not yet assigned to a specific task, taking me along will leave no hole in your defenses.”
Titus didn’t believe he was invincible because he was an archangel. Even archangels could be hurt. Right now, an enemy didn’t need to kill him to do catastrophic damage to his territory. If they shot a missile at him, blowing his body to pieces, they took out a massive part of his offensive forces for however long it took for his body to knit together.
He didn’t believe any of the Cadre currently had the time or energy to launch such an assault, but some of Charisemnon’s flunkies might yet act out of stupid loyalty. And, as she’d proved today, the Hummingbird had some power. Enough to scare off anyone who thought they were coming at a tired and worn Titus.
“A good strategic point,” he said. “Can you be ready to fly in four hours?” That would give him time to organize his forces—and for her to get a few hours’ rest. Her wings had dropped even further.
A nod from the Hummingbird. “I should tell you, my endurance is not yours.”
“I’ll carry you from the point you get tired, if you’ll permit it.” It came out stilted. “I mean no insult.”
“I take none.” Her eyes were intense, and yet somehow . . . lost. No, that wasn’t right. When he’d seen her in the distance through the years, he’d thought her a lovely ghost, a woman with so many fractures in her psyche that she only survived by disassociating from the world.
This was different; she hadn’t retreated from the world. Rather, it was as if she was looking inward, searching for something she’d forgotten. Such wasn’t the least bit unusual in older angels. Even Titus found himself doing it on occasion, and he was only three thousand five hundred years old in comparison to—
It was then that he realized he had no idea of the Hummingbird’s age. What knowledge he had said she was a contemporary of Caliane’s—and Raphael’s mother was an acknowledged Ancient. Yet when he looked at the Hummingbird, he felt no sense of age, no sense of history pressing down on his bones.
Her presence was radiant, full of an unexpected light.
“Is all well?” He tried to temper his voice out of its usual booming register.
Lines furrowing her forehead, she seemed to snap back to reality. “What’s wrong with your voice? Are you falling ill?”
Titus wanted to throw back his head and just roar at the sky. Why were women the bane of his existence? He loved them, that much was true. But they also drove him to distraction. “My voice is fine,” he grumbled. “I was attempting a tone that wouldn’t blow out your eardrums. According to all those borrowed warriors who quit my service, I yell too much.”
She tilted her head a fraction to the side. “I don’t recall making that complaint.” Arch words, no indication of anything but a woman confident and strong.
“My people seem to find my voice just fine, too, but others are weak and lily-livered.” It was a gauntlet he’d just thrown down, pushed to the edge by her . . . He didn’t know what it was about the Hummingbird that aggravated him, and that just turned the aggravation up another notch.
The edge of her mouth lifted slightly, her extraordinary eyes filling with an effervescence he could’ve sworn was laughter. “I agree with you,” she said in that mellifluous voice rich with tonal layers. “You’re an archangel fighting a deadly scourge. Those who expect you to waste time pandering to their needs should be ashamed to call themselves warriors.”
He glared at her, not sure if she was making fun of him or not. Regardless, there was nothing he could do about it. She was the Hummingbird. Angelkind would disown him should he lay a finger on her. Not that he would. But it was the principle of the thing. “I am an archangel,” he boomed. “I am the law in this territory.”
She bowed deep and precise. “Of course.”
He felt like he’d just been petted on the head, much as an indulgent mother might do to a small child who was puffing himself up. Growling in his chest, he decided to do as advised by a long-ago trainer, and take a step back.
The adversary he faced wasn’t a simple one; to win this war he’d have to be cunning and stealthy. Neither of which was exactly his strong suit, but if he changed cunning to strategy . .
. yes, that made more sense. “Please take this opportunity to rest your wings. We fly when the sun is high in the sky.”
It was the longest break he could give her. He’d use the time to brief Tzadiq, Orios, Tanae, and the others of his senior court—including Ozias; his spymaster was on her way back to Narja, close enough now that he could reach her with his mind. The short of it was that Titus’s people had to push on with the eradication process. They couldn’t stop for a single day. Not with the rapid-fire spread of infection.
Even with his many soldiers spread out across the territory, they couldn’t protect every village and every town and every city. People were dying. People were being taken by the reborn and changed into a rotting abomination of life. Fathers were having to kill mothers before a mauled loved one became a creature of nightmare. Children were becoming orphans all over his territory . . . if the little ones survived at all.
This war was more heartbreaking than any he’d ever before fought.
14
Sire, I fly to join your court in the spring, a season out from my hundredth birthday. You do me a great honor in accepting me into your army.
I know that part of it is because of your respect for my mother, but I will prove myself to you in the years to come, until you do not think of me as your first general’s son, but only as Titus.
—Letter from Titus to Archangel Alexander
15
Sharine rested first and foremost; her just over three hours of sleep rejuvenated her a considerable amount. Afterward, she put together the items she’d need for this journey. It wouldn’t be much. This was about speed and about what she needed to keep up with Titus.
The latter was why she stopped a harried member of staff and asked them to show her to the kitchens.
Eyes wide, the individual with smooth skin the hue of rich cream, a shaved head, and the barest impression of breasts against the court’s brown and gold livery, said, “My lady. I can bring you anything—”
“It’ll be faster if I can talk to the cook myself,” she said. “But I thank you for your care.”
A couple of hard swallows, but the staff member nonetheless didn’t protest any longer and led her to a huge kitchen filled with heat and light, and the energetic bustle of those who worked to prepare enough food to fuel this massive army.
Spotting her before his minions, the clear king of this space—a man of medium height blocky with muscle—rushed over. “My lady.” He bowed over her hand, his black hair tightly braided in neat rows against his scalp and his skin a light shade of brown. “You do me a great honor.”
“You are a fellow artist and I would speak to you of your divine dishes,” she said, because it was true. “Today, however, I come to ask you for something simpler.” She told him what she needed. “If it’ll take too much of your time, I can adapt.”
His face lit up, his rich brown eyes shining buttons in a face that was naturally plump and would probably stay that way all his life, regardless of the ongoing effects of vampirism. Some mortals seemed to have a presence so strong, it held sway no matter what. Raphael’s second, Dmitri, fell in that camp.
“No, it isn’t difficult at all,” the cook said. “We keep a store of prepared bars for our warriors who can’t stop for a full meal.” Rushing into what looked like a cool storage room, he returned with his hands full of bars that contained high levels of energy. “How many do you need?”
“This is more than enough.” Accepting the handfuls, she took a moment to look around the kitchen. “You must be tired, for this has been a continuous effort.” Even the most powerful angels needed constant replenishment when they were expending so much energy on a daily basis—including in healing wounds.
“What does it matter to be a little tired if what I do helps us fight the ugliness of the scourge?” His fangs flashed as he spoke, his shoulders square with justifiable pride.
Sharine didn’t ask how a vampire, a being whose system couldn’t process anything but small quantities of food, had ended up cook to an archangel, just smiled at him. “Yes, you and your people provide the fuel for this great engine.”
He was beaming when she left.
Once back in her room, she put the bars in her little pack, then stood there for a second and for the first time, thought of what she’d done with the burrow, how she’d exposed it with her power. Her hand tingled. Looking down, she saw a shadow of the champagne energy that had erupted from her.
It stirred deep within her, so potent that it stole her breath, but still only half-awake. An energy left unused so very long that it had grown darker and denser with each passing century.
Of what was she capable? It had been an eon since she’d allowed herself free rein. First, she’d throttled her power in a vain effort to hold on to her parents, then it had fallen by the wayside of her art but for the few occasions she’d been forced to use it, as on that long-ago battlefield. Then she’d . . . forgotten it.
A youngling like Obren wouldn’t understand how a person could forget a central element of their nature, but while angelic memory was in many ways infinite, that didn’t mean you could always access what had been stored away so very long ago. An angel as old as Sharine, especially one whose mind had carried fractures for so long, could’ve forgotten many lives, many pieces of her existence.
The realization haunted her even as she stepped out to meet Titus for their journey to the abandoned settlement.
Responsibility lay a heavy cloak over his shoulders.
He didn’t speak as they took off, and neither did she, her mind busy with myriad flashes of memory as she attempted to pinpoint the moment when she’d forgotten the power that lived in her veins.
The knowledge had been lost long before she bore Illium, her babe who’d grown into a dangerously powerful man. And she’d never known it with Aegaeon, either. But the time between her childhood and before that critical point in her life was an eternity that spilled out to the horizon.
Head aching from the futility of it, she finally stopped tugging at the memory threads. That could wait. Right now, she had to watch Titus’s back, ensure he didn’t get taken unawares by anything. He was flying to her left and slightly ahead, his wings powerful, while she rode the draft created in his wake.
Oh.
He was doing it on purpose. The man might be a blockhead who thought she’d collapse at a loud voice, but he was also an honorable and clever warrior. That was one of the few facts she knew about him. All her information on Titus came from comments made by those who served at Lumia, and a few passing words from Illium.
He was beloved of his people.
He was beloved of women.
He was a man of honor and truth.
He was a warrior who showed no mercy against evil.
He wasn’t a scholar and his court wasn’t a scholarly one—but Sharine no longer took that particular tidbit as fact. Not after hearing him speak of warrior-scholars, and, on her return from the kitchens, glimpsing a number of people working in a great library.
Brows furrowed and shoulders bowed, the scholars had looked as tired as the warriors and household staff. No doubt, they’d been set to the task of seeing if there was another, faster way to stop the reborn.
Last but not least was the information that though Titus enjoyed women—tall and short, slender and voluptuous, pale-skinned or dark—he’d never come close to taking a consort.
The latter seemed to be a point of pride among his people, as if Titus gadding about like a fly laying its eggs on every possible surface was the epitome of masculinity. Sharine snorted to herself. Her mother would’ve been horrified at the inelegant sound but her mother was long-gone, turned to dust.
Aegaeon’s people, too, had been proud of their archangel’s virility and inability to commit his heart. Looking back, she saw not virility but weakness. It didn’t take any great skill to go about takin
g lover after lover if one was an archangel. Power alone was an aphrodisiac.
Oh, Archangel Titus’s charm is just . . . Sigh.
She’d overheard similar words more than once from those who’d passed through Lumia. Each smitten woman had placed her hands on her heart and spoken of how easy it was to melt into his arms, how gorgeous he was when he smiled, and how attentive he was as a lover. Sharine hadn’t thought she was paying attention at the time but, thanks to her accursed selective memory, she now remembered every morsel.
From what she’d seen, however, Titus’s charm consisted of being an archangel. She’d spotted no sign of any other talent in how he dealt with women. He was a blunt hammer and everyone seemed ready to fall for it.
Really.
If that was all one needed to be considered charming, she had a castle on a cloud she could sell them.
She snorted again.
* * *
* * *
Titus glanced to the right and slightly back. He could’ve sworn the Hummingbird had just snorted, but surely not. She was too refined and delicate a creature to snort.
Though she was also examining him as if he were an insect under a slide. There was a reason he didn’t spend too much time with the scholars of his court—he respected them as he respected all who had skills he didn’t possess—but half the time, he felt as if their greatest wish was to take him apart in order to work out how he functioned.
It was enough to raise the hairs on an archangel’s nape.
Deciding not to ask her if anything was the matter, because he’d long ago learned that lesson about women and poking hornets’ nests, he focused on his surroundings. His heart broke at seeing the devastation in the areas close to the border, the fallow fields and burned-out villages farther out.
They hadn’t yet hit the first major city on the northern side.
Most of the border damage would’ve come about during his battle with Charisemnon, but as they flew on, he saw that the situation had worsened significantly since his quick scouting run after he first took over his enemy’s territory. It also aligned with the updated report Ozias had given him, his spymaster having reached Narja right before he flew out.