by Nalini Singh
Deep in the orange grove, the Ancient wasn’t dressed in one of the flowing gowns in which she was so often depicted in scrolls and illustrated manuscripts. Instead, she wore faded brown leathers similar to Avi’s, her midnight black hair pulled back in a braid much like Andromeda’s.
“Isabel,” Caliane said in greeting when the warrior-angel landed, her voice hauntingly pure. “Are my maidens improving?”
“Like snails, my Lady.”
Caliane’s smile was unexpected and startlingly beautiful, her lips soft pink against skin of pure cream. “You must be patient—they are hothouse flowers suddenly exposed to the wind and the rain.” Her smile faded. “Would that it wasn’t necessary to teach them thus, but the world is changing into a dark place where the innocent are no longer safe.”
Isabel bowed her head slightly in a gesture of respect. “I bring you Andromeda. She is Naasir’s friend, of whom I spoke to you earlier.”
“Ah.” The excruciatingly pure blue of Caliane’s eyes, eyes she’d bequeathed her son, locked with Andromeda’s. “Charisemnon’s grandchild.” Daggers of ice in that voice that could be a beautiful, horrifying weapon. “And yet you show the good taste of escaping from Lijuan to help save Alexander’s life.”
“My Lady.” Not sure what else to do or say, Andromeda bowed deeply—unlike Isabel, she wasn’t a trusted warrior but a much younger guest.
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t execute you this instant for the crime done in my city?”
Blood a roar in her ears, Andromeda dared meet Caliane’s eyes. “If blood alone is what defines us, no child born is born in freedom.”
Caliane’s wings glowed for an endless heartbeat before subsiding. “Well said, fledgling. And do not look so terrified—I am not in the habit of hurting children for the crimes of their elders.” The archangel glanced at Isabel while Andromeda tried to keep from shaking. “Go, Isabel. I know you must do your flight over the city.”
“Lady.” Isabel left with another small incline of her head.
“She watches over my city as diligently as if it is her own,” Caliane said conversationally as she motioned for Andromeda to join her in her walk amongst the rows of trees that made up the grove. “I’ve told my son I will tempt her into staying with me, but he is confident in the loyalty of his people.” A glance at Andromeda. “Your wild friend could not wait to return to Raphael’s side.”
Andromeda took a moment to think. Some older angels could take grave insult at a single wrong word, and she had no desire to end up eviscerated. “Your city is astonishing,” she said, doing nothing to hide her wonder. “For me, it’s like being shown a treasure box.” She could spend weeks just walking the streets of Amanat, listening to the lilt of its people’s voices. “But Naasir is meant for wilder places and less civilized adventures.”
“Like my son.” Caliane’s love for that son was a piercing arrow to the heart. “Raphael collects the wild of heart to him.”
“He is the archangel who is least stuck in time,” Andromeda ventured to say. “Even Michaela, who so often plays to the cameras, keeps a court that works much the same today as it did a hundred years past.”
The pure white of Caliane’s wings seemed to glow even in the muted light; Andromeda was grateful that they no longer glowed in truth, because when an archangel glowed, people generally died.
“He is my son,” Caliane said quietly. “And he is Nadiel’s son. Together, we created a child who will one day fly higher than both of us.”
Having the sense that Caliane was speaking more to herself than to Andromeda, Andromeda kept her silence.
“Now he makes me even prouder by seeking to protect Alexander.” A cold tension in Caliane’s regal features. “I Slept during that time, but Jelena tells me that Alexander once thought to raise an army against Raphael.”
Andromeda took her life into her hands. “Yet he didn’t in the end,” she said. “I think he was tired and he saw Raphael as a young interloper. War was the easy answer to his need to find a reason to go on living in the world. In the end, he showed his wisdom and left the world to the young.”
Caliane pinned Andromeda with eyes aflame with power.
Her throat dried up, her pulse a rabbit in her chest.
25
“As I did in my time,” Caliane said at last, turning her attention back to the glossy green trees as they continued to walk. “Alexander was my compatriot, but we were never friends. He was a terror as a child, always breaking his bones and skinning his knee, while I was a girl who preferred to keep my dresses clean and to have civilized tea parties free of dirty boys.”
Andromeda felt wonder unfurl in her. Caliane’s memories came from a time so long ago that there was no one else awake in the world who knew them. “Is it lonely?” she asked impulsively. “To be the only Ancient in the world as Alexander once was? The only one with memories of times long gone?” Lijuan might believe herself an Ancient, but even if she was older than anyone knew, her age came nowhere close to Caliane’s.
Caliane didn’t strike her down for the impertinent question. Rather, the Ancient smiled. “I see why you are Naasir’s friend, scholar. You are as recklessly courageous as my son’s leashed tiger.”
Naasir isn’t leashed, Andromeda thought. He simply chose to give his loyalty to Raphael—and she had a feeling Raphael understood that. Their relationship wouldn’t otherwise be so strong.
“Yes,” Caliane said after a minute’s quiet. “It would be a pleasure to have a compatriot to speak with of times no one else remembers—perhaps I will invite Alexander to Amanat when he wakes. He grew up into a great general, and despite his foolishness in threatening my son, seems to have learned a modicum of civilized manners along the way.”
Andromeda realized Caliane was saying more than her words told. There was a hidden undertone to her statement. Caliane and Alexander hadn’t been friends, but instinct told Andromeda they’d been more than strangers. Not lovers; that wasn’t it. It could be as simple as the fact they’d sat on the same Cadre—perhaps they had exchanged dry insults across a negotiating table, all the while conscious that in the end, only an Ancient could understand another Ancient.
“Do you know of any secret places lost in time where he might Sleep?” she asked, hope burning inside her. “Could he have hidden himself under the earth as you did?” If so, the Sleeping archangel was safe.
But Caliane shook her head. “No, Alexander didn’t have an affinity for the earth.”
Andromeda’s brain clicked—despite having risen from the sea, the Legion, too, were rumored to be of the earth. Raphael must’ve inherited some of his mother’s gift, though his had manifested in a different form. “If not earth—”
“Hush, child.” A deep frown. “My memories are tangled skeins I must unravel.”
It was over a half hour later, the world gray, that Caliane said, “Metal. Alexander’s affinity was to metal. He could make iron flow like water and draw gold and silver out of the earth.”
Andromeda’s eyes widened. That fact was in none of the Histories.
“When he was a cocky youth, he pulled gold out of the earth in front of me and fashioned it into a bracelet.” Caliane shook her head. “He and Nadiel had such a rivalry . . . but Alexander grieved with me when my love’s heart no longer beat, and he remembered who Nadiel had once been.”
Andromeda heard the thickness of grief in Caliane’s voice even now. What must it have cost her to be forced to execute her insane mate? Andromeda couldn’t imagine the depth of her pain. About to gently excuse herself and leave Caliane to her private memories, she heard the Ancient draw in a breath.
“If I know Alexander, he will have built himself a vault of metal in a hidden place.” Caliane’s voice was so confident it confirmed Andromeda’s belief that the two Ancients had been closer than anyone realized. “It would’ve been impregnable to everything except angelfire when he went to Sleep, but Jelena has been teaching me about the new machines using hot light.”
“Yes. I think such a machine could cut through Alexander’s metal, even if Lijuan was not there to use the poisonous black rain she spews from her hands.”
It was news Andromeda didn’t want to hear. “Will he wake when disturbed?”
“To wake from Sleep is normally a long and slow process,” Caliane told her. “If Alexander’s subconscious terms you a threat when you first disturb him, you may end up dead before you can explain anything. I would recommend you waste no time once you have his attention.”
Andromeda swallowed, but felt no temptation to step back, attempt to hide. Far better that her last moments be spent with the most incredible man she had ever met, working to save the life of an Ancient, than to feel her soul shrivel away in her grandfather’s court.
* * *
Naasir was climbing through the treetops of Kagoshima under early evening starlight, the resident monkeys chattering at him for invading their territory, and Amanat almost within sight, when everything went quiet. The monkeys in the trees, the wild horses below, the birds in the sky. Naasir.
Holding himself in position, not even a breath stirring the air, he listened. The hairs rose on the back of his neck, the early warning system one civilized beings had learned to ignore. Naasir didn’t.
So he caught the unfamiliar scents on the breeze, heard the beat of wings snapping out to land. Turning very carefully, he made his way soundlessly through the trees. The monkeys didn’t give him away—they might scold him bad-temperedly, but when it came to animal against other, they saw him as one of them.
They also knew who belonged this close to Caliane’s territory and who didn’t.
The wings Naasir could see below definitely didn’t. It appeared he’d underestimated Lijuan’s generals—it was pure luck the light squadron had arrived too late to pluck Andromeda from the sky. Pressing himself down along the branch, Naasir strained his senses to hear what the four angels were saying.
“. . . go inside?”
“Negative.” The tallest male sliced out a hand at the sole female angel’s question. “We don’t want to start hostilities. Philomena was clear that Lady Lijuan has other priorities. Our task is only to retrieve the scholar.”
The angel on the left, the one who had skin as dark as Naasir’s, nodded. “She must be here—the last sighting from one of our people in the country puts her above the southern end of Kumamoto. There’s no other safe haven nearby, and she’s too young to have the endurance to have continued flying.”
“Agreed,” said the final man, and though his dialect differed from the others, it was familiar enough in the basics.
When Naasir was yet a child, Dmitri had told him he must learn as many languages as possible, so no one could keep secrets from him. This wasn’t the first time that advice had held Naasir in good stead.
“We watch and we wait,” said the angel who seemed to be the leader. “She can’t stay here indefinitely.”
The woman appeared dubious. “Amanat is a jewel for any historian.”
“But she has certain responsibilities in the Refuge. If she does decide to stay, we’ll reconsider our options.”
“Can we afford to wait?”
“Philomena wants her as soon as possible, but we can wait tonight. If she doesn’t leave with the dawn, I’ll contact the general.”
Naasir listened further, learned the squadron intended to spread out around Amanat, covering one quadrant each. He thought about taking them down one at a time, but if they were used to checking in with one another within short periods of time, he’d betray his hand. Deciding to leave them to their surveillance and wanting to ensure the four didn’t suspect he’d spotted them, he retraced his steps until he was about an hour out from Amanat, then ran toward the city openly.
Unlike Andromeda, he didn’t have to wait for an escort to enter Caliane’s territory. The city shield knew him, opened automatically in a welcome that was a ripple of archangelic power over his skin. The only person who could revoke his access was Caliane.
He picked up Andromeda’s scent the instant he hit the temperate air of Amanat; it was a shiny, delicious thread in the active mix of a thriving city.
“Naasir!”
He waved at the friend who’d called out to him from the second story of a nearby building, but didn’t stop. Isabel’s cool, clean scent crossed with Andromeda’s at one point, then both scents ran parallel toward the walled courtyard Isabel used as a sparring ground.
He grinned when he heard the clash of swords.
Loping up a wall on one side of the sparring ground, he crouched on top and watched Isabel and Andromeda dance with blades. His former partner in Amanat was good . . . but Andromeda was better. He hadn’t expected that. Neither, he saw, had Isabel. Naasir knew her, could read her expressions, tell when Andromeda’s moves surprised her.
Because, Naasir realized, Andromeda fought instinctively.
Dahariel had given her an excellent grounding, but she adapted her moves to the flow of combat, causing Isabel to have to rethink her more classical style. His eyes narrowed. That wasn’t just skill, not given Andromeda’s age—the instinct came from within.
She was an archangel’s granddaughter.
But where her mother wasted the strength that ran in her veins, Andromeda had honed it, made it her own. When she put her blade to Isabel’s throat in a move that signaled a win, her chest heaving but her hand steady, he wanted to growl in pride. Instead, he waited until the women drew apart and raised their swords in front of their faces in the respectful bow of two warriors.
Jumping down to the ground, he saw Andromeda’s head whip around. “Naasir!” She ran straight into his arms, sword thrust into a scabbard that hung alongside one of her thighs. He recognized it as one of Isabel’s.
And then she was cupping his face in her hands and all he could see was the clear brown of her irises, the golden starburst around her pupils bright. “You’re safe!”
Sliding his arms around her under her wings, he picked her up and spun her around. “You were worried about me.” He could look after himself, but it seemed right that a mate should worry.
“Of course I was worried.” Andromeda pretended to hit his shoulders as he held her up off the ground, but it was more a caress than censure. “You took your time getting here.”
Really wanting to kiss her—stupid Grimoire—he put her on the ground and sneakily petted her wings.
She shot him a minatory look but her lips were tugging up at the corners, her eyes sparkling. Playing with him again. Their own secret game. When her fingers brushed his, he closed his hand over hers. “I had to avoid Lijuan’s squadron,” he told her and Isabel. “They’re waiting for Andi to emerge from Amanat.”
Hands on her hips, Isabel asked for further information. “Hmm,” she said afterward. “Let them skulk about for now. We’ll eliminate the four from the equation when you and Andi are ready to leave—we don’t want to give Philomena a chance to send reinforcements or replacements.”
“We can do it,” he said, including both women in his statement.
Isabel shook her head. “Caliane’s squadrons need the experience and the confidence that comes from defeating the enemy.”
Naasir decided he could allow the squadron that; this prey wasn’t very interesting. “I need to speak to Caliane.” The Ancient would expect him. He wasn’t hers, but she thought of him as hers while he was here, and regardless, she had his respect.
Caliane might be an archangel known for her grace and the haunting beauty of her voice, but she had the same killer instinct as Naasir—and the same devotion to family.
* * *
Andromeda was still giddy with relief an hour later when Naasir climbed up to her balcony and walked into her room through the open doors. He’d bathed somewhere, was dressed in clean jeans and a white collarless shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Made of either a fine cotton or linen, it was washed soft and
fit him so well that she knew it was his. He must’ve left clothes in Amanat.
Walking over to where she was sitting on the edge of her bed making notes on a small pad, he sat down beside her and nuzzled at her. She should’ve stopped him but she didn’t. His warm breath, his warmer skin, his quintessentially masculine scent, the dampness of his freshly washed hair, it all felt too good, felt like the best thing she would ever feel.
“Did you feed?” she asked in a husky tone, having noticed the fine lines of strain on his face when he first arrived.
“Yes.” He sprawled on the bed behind her—as if he had every right to just take over her space. “Have you seen the angel we rescued?”
Andromeda turned to sit with one leg bent and on the bed, curling her fingers into her palm to keep from reaching out and stroking the hard muscle of his thigh. “No, she’s in anshara.”
“She was brave,” Naasir said, his tone matter-of-fact. “She’ll survive.”
“The body, yes, but I worry about her mind and her heart.”
“When she wakes, she’ll make a choice to live or to die while living.” Starkly solemn words. “No one can make it for her.”
That metal hand, it was back, crushing her chest. “Did you ever have to do that?” she whispered.
“Yes, when I was created. I decided to live and to be me.”
It should’ve been a nonsensical statement, for what child remembered its birth? Yet she knew it for pure truth—Naasir didn’t lie. “I’m glad,” she said. “I like you.”
A glint of silver under the curl of his lashes. “Lie down beside me.”
Heart aching, she didn’t fight her need or his. Going down on her side beside him, she propped her head on one hand . . . and spread a wing over his chest.
His smile held her captive, the hands with which he petted her feathers unexpectedly gentle. Though he stayed away from the highly sensitive areas, the caresses made her toes curl.
“Pretty feathers,” he murmured, lashes lowered as he indulged himself. “Do you know you have bronze filaments that catch the sunlight?”