by Nalini Singh
To the right.
The reborn Sharine had pinpointed was using its chin to try and drag itself away. Two steps to close the distance between them, then Titus brought down a blade on the creature’s neck. He took no satisfaction from the act; this hadn’t been an honorable battle. These people hadn’t had a choice. To him, this was simple mercy. Do you see any others not yet properly decapitated?
Sharine flew over the entire scene and hovered over several bodies before saying, “No.” Landing not far from him, she held her wings scrupulously off the blood and gore seeping into the ground. “We’ll have to burn the bodies.”
Nodding, he wiped his swords on a clean patch of grass, then slid them home. “I’ll take care of it.” A single pyre would do far less damage to the soil than if he’d used his power to scour the entire area.
“It’ll go faster if we both help.” She picked up a severed arm. “Where do you want to build the bonfire? I’m assuming somewhere close to the main mass of bodies.”
Titus blinked, but no, she was still standing there, radiant and ethereal . . . and with a rotting severed arm held by the wrist, while she bent to pick up a decapitated head. “Yes, atop the animal carcass,” he said, his instincts taking over; the longer they lingered, the higher the risk of attracting another nest, and the longer his people would have to fight the worst area of infestation without their archangel.
Sharine didn’t complain even as her hands became slippery with putrid green-black reborn blood, her body flecked with more of the same. The two of them would stink of decaying flesh for the rest of the journey, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Such cruelty,” she murmured at one point, her eyes bruised.
Glancing over, he saw her picking up what appeared to be a small carving. And he understood. In those who’d come from the far north, such carvings were sometimes tucked into the pockets of the clothing worn by the dead, to act as guardians on the journey beyond death that mortals believed awaited.
Now those carefully and lovingly buried dead were being desecrated.
Jaw set, Titus carried on, even as he saw Sharine add the carving to the pile of bodies. It didn’t take long to complete their task, the giraffe carcass at the bottom. After they’d gathered up some dry branches and leaves to act as kindling, he used a tiny fragment of his energy to start a flame. Then they watched, because he wouldn’t leave this fire to burn and spread across the land.
The heat blasted their faces, sparks jumping out, but they stood firm with their slimy blackened hands and stinking clothes. That was when he noticed light coming from Sharine’s palms. “I also wish I could blast them all into oblivion, but we must care for this land or it’ll become a desert.”
“What?” Following his gaze, Sharine stared down at one hand. Then, as he watched, the blood on her skin began to crystallize into dust and fall away.
Titus watched in fascination as she repeated the process with her other hand. “Useful.” It wasn’t a skill for which he’d give up his own abilities, but it would be a prized one in battle—something as simple as filth could demoralize an army.
Still staring at her own hands, as if she didn’t understand what she had done, she said, “Why don’t I know myself?” A vibration of anger.
“Do you want to see if you can repeat the process on someone else?” He thrust a hand in her direction—he was no stranger to the smells and liquids of battle but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it.
Sharine seemed to snap out of wherever it was that she’d gone. “Yes, let me try.” She took his hand in her clean ones.
Light glowed.
It felt . . . like a tickle across his palm, the gentlest power he’d ever sensed, yet it was paradoxically old and heady. He should’ve worried about what power lay dormant inside her, but as the blood and other fluids fell away into dust, he became aware of the softness of her hand, the gentle way she held him. As if he wasn’t so powerful he could break her in half with his physical strength alone.
It was all he could do to stand still while she cleansed his other hand, too.
“Thank you.” It came out stilted. “That’ll make it easier to fly. Can you take the stains out of our clothes, too?”
As a distraction technique, it proved a marked success. “No,” she said after trying multiple times. “At least the sun is hot enough to bake away the scent rather than causing the fluids to rot.”
Shuddering at the idea, he decided on another option. After removing his sword harness, he released the wing slits of his tunic, then pulled it off over the top of his head and threw it into the flames.
* * *
* * *
Sharine sucked in a quiet breath, struck by the blunt force of Titus’s masculinity. From the lack of differentiation in the hue of his skin, being shirtless was nothing new to the Archangel of Africa. His skin was smooth and silky-looking, his muscles flexing powerfully as he bunched up the filthy shirt and threw it into the flames.
The stunning sunlike golden marking on his chest—a marking that had emerged during the chaos of the Cascade—was a thing of beauty, potent yet oddly delicate in line and composition. It served to draw her eye back and back again to the raw beauty that was Titus.
Her mouth dried up.
Stunned and shocked by her visceral response, she forced herself to look away as he went to put his sword harness back on. It had been . . . a very, very long time since she’d felt the bite of physical attraction. She’d never been a woman of strong sexual appetites, more focused on looking for companionship and friendship and love. For an end to the loneliness that had haunted her since she was a child.
Her parents had left her long before they’d gone to Sleep.
It wasn’t that she’d become celibate after Aegaeon. Some spark of the Sharine who’d flown with a battle army had remained in the Hummingbird and she’d fought against the fragmentation of her mind, tried to cling to the shreds of herself that remained. Part of that had included a foolish effort to find an anchor using her body.
Foolish, for she wasn’t a woman for whom the physical had ever been a priority.
After finally realizing the futility of it, she hadn’t missed being a sexual creature, as her life hadn’t otherwise been devoid of touch. She’d had a son who’d hugged her often. Aodhan and Raphael, too, had been there for long periods. Her boys. Surrounding her with so much love and affection that she’d never even thought of the carnal, of the deeper needs of the body.
Today, however, her body had awakened with a vengeance, sexual need punching through her hard and brutal. For Titus, a man even more beautiful than Aegaeon. Though she still didn’t understand the superlatives about his charm. Titus was too blunt a hammer.
A fact he demonstrated to good effect when he said, “Are you wearing anything under that tunic? If you are, I suggest getting rid of the tunic. Reborn fluids tend to be disgusting in the extreme even when they dry—they grow black mold.”
Sharine hesitated; she was wearing a garment Tanicia had called a singlet. Soft and shaped to Sharine’s body, the white item held her average-size breasts in place, the wing slits fastened with small enclosures. But never in her life had she worn anything so revealing as outerwear.
She shifted on her feet . . . and got a whiff of her own odor.
Stomach threatening to turn itself inside out, she reached back to undo the wing slits on her tunic, then pulled the garment over her head and threw it into the flames. “I liked that tunic,” she muttered. “Now I only have one. My entire wardrobe in your stronghold is filled with dresses and gowns.” She scowled at him, careful to keep her eyes strictly to his face.
His square-jawed and rough-edged and altogether-too-handsome face.
“Don’t talk to me of gowns and clothing,” he grumbled. “I’m a warrior, not your dresser.”
“And how do your clothes appear, my lord Archangel? By magic?”
He threw back his head and roared to the sky, his shoulders bunched and his hands clenched as hard as his jaw. The sound was thunder that made the birds take flight from the trees and her own bones vibrate . . . but not in fear.
Holding her ground, her heart pounding, she met his gaze without flinching.
“I respect my people.” His eyes flashed. “That means I leave them to their duties. My steward should be able to point you to the right person.”
“Thank you for your kindness in sharing that information,” she said, not sure why she was taking such pleasure in antagonizing him—never in all her existence had she behaved this way; it was oddly exhilarating. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have figured that out for myself.”
Titus stared at her, just stared at her. “Tell me the truth—have you taken up drinking some concoction that turns a sane woman into a shrew?” It was a solemn question and maybe that was why the meaning of it took a moment to penetrate.
She bared her teeth at him, feeling . . . free. For so many years, she’d been caged. Caged inside her parents’ rules, then her own fears, then her broken mind. For the first time since she’d begun to store memories, she didn’t—what was that statement she’d heard one of the young townswomen say?—yes, that was it: she did not give a shit. And it was glorious.
“Men who call strong women shrews,” she said in a tone formed of sugar syrup and molasses, “are often men scared of a woman’s strength.”
“My mother,” he enunciated with care, “was first general to an archangel. I was born with a respect for female strength.”
“If you say so.” She brushed imaginary dirt off her arms, then walked around to the other side of the bonfire. “I’ll keep an eye on this side.”
Through the curtain of flame, he was a big and powerful and infuriated man standing with his hands on his hips and his chest bare. His eyes pinned her to the spot as the fire began to die down—or they made the attempt in any case, his eyebrows drawn together in a glower.
Sharine smiled at him. She felt zero fear. All her life, she’d been afraid in one way or the other, but it was as if she’d gone through a fire of her own and come out reborn. On the other hand, the latter wasn’t the best choice of word, especially with her skin hot from the heat of a fire built to turn the reborn to ash.
Shedding of the skin, remaking, resurrection, they were all just words. What mattered was that she was becoming someone new, a woman she’d always had the potential to be—an angel of whom her son could be proud . . . and an angel who could look herself in the mirror and smile.
22
I’m fine, Tito. But thank you, little brother, for offering to decapitate Aegaeon for me. I wouldn’t give that worm the satisfaction of beating my brother to a pulp. You’re a strong angel, but he is an Ancient and an archangel. No, Aegaeon doesn’t deserve the pain of someone of your worth.
—Charo, daughter of First General Avelina, to Titus, son of First General Avelina
23
Titus knew he should keep his distance from Sharine as they flew on after the fire was dead. She was clearly in a mood. But he was so fascinated by the contradictions of her and so aware of the gift he’d been given to safeguard that he stayed within an easy distance.
Not that she looked anything like the mythical Hummingbird. She looked like the straight-talking and confident angel who’d embedded a blade in a reborn eye. Her pants had mostly escaped being splattered with gore, but they weren’t pristine by any measure. But pants were far enough from the nose that you could mostly ignore the stench. Her boots, she’d managed to clean using the grass; he’d done the same.
He refused to focus on her form-fitting white top, though he’d seen many of his warriors fighting in far less. Not so many centuries earlier, the vast majority of them had fought with nothing but paint on their chests and fury in their hearts. It wasn’t the lack of coverage that bothered him, but the lack of coverage on Sharine.
The great artist Titus had been sent by the Cadre wasn’t meant to be a flesh-and-blood woman who had excellent aim with a blade, boasted breasts that plumped out slightly over the scooped neckline of her top and skin that glimmered with sweat. Neither was she supposed to have a curved-in waist and hips that flared just enough to have a man considering how they’d fit into his palms.
And it wasn’t her body alone that was giving him trouble.
She’d pulled her hair back into a tail that caught the light with every shift in the wind, every angling of her wings. The silken black tipped with natural gold—a gold that glittered here and there elsewhere in the strands—was astonishingly beautiful. As beautiful as her wings. No one in the world looked like Sharine. But it wasn’t a question of beauty, either. Many, many angels were strikingly beautiful, as were an equal number of vampires.
Plenty of women in his court could stand next to Sharine and not be deemed her lesser in beauty. Yet Sharine would shine regardless. She had in her a radiant light that drew others—the same rare light existed in her son. And Titus had a soft spot for young Illium. The youth was a little reckless at times, but Titus hadn’t exactly been less so as a youth.
The most important thing was that as Titus had been loyal to Alexander, Illium was loyal to Raphael. He was also a warrior who fought with fierce intelligence, the reason why he was a squadron commander. And wherever he went, the blue-winged angel drew others, the flame inside him a bright, beautiful thing.
That flame had come from his mother. It certainly hadn’t come from Aegaeon.
He growled deep in his chest, wanting to smash that hind end of an ass into paste, but sadly, his hands were tied on that score. Firstly, Charo would never forgive him for bringing up the pain of the babe she’d lost in the aftermath of Aegaeon’s heartless rejection, and secondly, the world needed every archangel it could get.
It was the latter thought that reminded him of a question he’d intended to ask—or perhaps he just wanted an excuse to talk to Sharine. “Have you had any word from Suyin’s court beyond the reports she herself has made to the Cadre?” The newest archangel in the world had been scrupulous in making those reports, conscious that everyone else needed to know how she was dealing with the devastation in her territory.
They’d all been honest in that way, and where possible, they assisted one another. Titus, for one, had used his Cascade-born ability to create a deep gorge between his territory and Alexander’s so no one could cross over on foot. While Alexander was known as the Archangel of Persia, his territory actually began on the other side of the isthmus that had connected Africa to Asia until Titus shattered the link using his power.
The lack of a land bridge meant the two of them didn’t have to worry about incursions from the other side, and could concern themselves with the dangers already present in their territory.
In time, their two peoples would find a way to traverse the divide, but for now, the only way to get from one side to the other was to fly or go by the sea. Neither of which the reborn could do—thankfully, the horror of Lijuan’s black-eyed and dead angelic fighters had ended with her, her energy the only thing that had kept them functioning in a nightmare simulacrum of life.
The reborn infection couldn’t take hold in angelic blood.
Streaks of green-black on stone, in the shape of dragging wings.
Gut cold at the memory of what he’d seen in Charisemnon’s stronghold, Titus hoped he’d been wrong, that the pattern had been something other—perhaps two vampiric reborn crawling away together. Because if the sky, too, became a place of war against Lijuan’s voracious “children” . . .
“I assume you’re asking about Suyin because of Aodhan?”
“He’s your son’s great friend.” The warrior-artist was also currently seconded to Suyin.
“He’s also loyal to the archangel to whom he has been seconded,” was the quelling reply. “Though it’s only a temporary posit
ion, he treats it with all honor.”
“I’d expect nothing less of one of Raphael’s Seven.” The pup who’d once been a stripling in Titus’s army as Titus had been in Alexander’s had done well to surround himself with such loyalty—and that extended to his consort.
A pang in his heart, powerful and deep.
Every so often, Titus looked at Elena and Raphael, as well as Elijah and Hannah, and wondered what it might be like to have a consort who’d walk with him through the ages of immortality. He’d never, however, come close to forging that deep a bond with any woman.
Some might say he was a true son of his mother’s blood, that he’d never settle, and maybe that was so . . . but Phenie was also of Avelina’s blood, and she’d been with her lover for two millennia and counting. Even Charo, gun-shy after Aegaeon, had settled into warm domesticity with not one but three men.
The first general would be immensely proud of her youngest daughter.
Sharine’s rich tones broke into his pensive—and unsettling—thoughts. “But,” she said, “Aodhan has spoken to me of his own feelings and overwhelming all else is a sense of grief.
“Lijuan has broken the heart of an ancient civilization. So many of China’s treasures are gone, destroyed during the horror of the black fog that murdered. But the biggest lost treasure is the population. All those minds and hearts and their gifts and skills erased from existence.”
Titus tried to imagine it, failed. “Even after the destruction of Beijing”—a destruction caused in the wake of the Cadre’s effort to rein in Lijuan’s lust for power—“I’m used to thinking of China as a place of deep history and culture, with a thriving populace.”
“Last we talked,” Sharine said, “Aodhan spoke of how eerie it is to fly over cities that should be bustling with enterprise and hope and yet sit silent, waiting for its people to come home. People who are long dead.”
“Once, Lijuan was another angel.” An angel with whom he’d never had a friendship, but an angel he’d respected. “A thousand years ago, I couldn’t imagine her doing what she did. Is young Aodhan well?”