Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
His mother’s three-dimensional image appeared, as if she were in the room with him. She was seated on a stone bench in the bright sunshine of the microclimate inside Amanat, flowers in her long dark hair and her gown a floating white. This was her maiden avatar, but he saw the warrior within, her eyes marked by loss and grief, love and time.
“Mother.” He took a seat on a nearby chair, so he wouldn’t appear to be looming over her. “You extend your stay in Amanat.” It had always been her heart home, no matter if she’d spent vast swathes of time in India since she became the archangel who held dominion over that landmass.
“My son.” She held out her hand toward him, and when he took it, he could almost feel her skin and bones, the technology that created such communication advancing at a phenomenal rate with each year that passed.
Mortals, racing time again. Leaving their mark on the world.
“Yes,” she said after they broke their strange handclasp. “I miss my home.” Her eyes were warm as they took him in. “I had hoped that you were not asleep. I rarely sleep now. No one ever tells you that about becoming an Ancient—the urge to sleep vanishes at a certain point.”
Raphael frowned; thanks to the current makeup of the world, he knew a number of Ancients. And he’d picked up that they slept. More to the point—“Even Marduk sleeps, Mother, and he is your ancestor.”
Granted, it wasn’t much in comparison to the needs of mortals or young angels, but there was a need. Per mortal scientists, sleep was a necessity for their kind to allow their brains to work through the events of the day, make memories, and otherwise stabilize themselves. Angelic scientists were of the belief that it worked much the same in angelkind—the difference was simply a matter of degree.
“Hmm.” Caliane reached up to begin pulling the flowers from her hair. “Perhaps I am just having a long wakefulness then.” A quiet smile. “No doubt I will sleep for a week in turn.”
Raphael’s gut twisted. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?” he asked. “You feel as you should?”
Delighted laughter, the intense blue of her eyes alight. “How you worry so, my Rafe, my son with my beloved, Nadiel.” Flowers all placed neatly on the stone bench, she began to braid the rich black of her hair. “I am quite well. Just haunted by dreams, I suppose, and so I avoid sleep.” A sigh, her smile fading. “I did not wish to admit that, but of course you will have guessed.”
Sorrow cast a heavy shadow on the flawless lines of her features. “They say immortality tangles memory, but it has tangled none of mine when it comes to your father. I miss him as much this day as I did the day I had to end his life.”
It was Raphael’s turn to reach for her hand.
Allowing her braid to unravel without hesitation, Caliane accepted his offer of silent comfort. “Tell me of your city. It has been too long since my last visit. How goeth your Bluebell?”
“You saw him at the last Cadre meeting, Mother.”
A dreamy look outward, Caliane’s attention caught by a butterfly that circled around to land on the flowers she’d left on the bench. “There is such wonder in the world, is there not, Raphael? I see it and I am grateful to be alive even in my sorrow.” She reached out a finger, but she wasn’t Aodhan, with an affinity for the fragile creatures.
The butterfly flew off, vanishing from sight.
Dropping her hand and releasing his, Caliane said, “I think you are right, my son. I will rest. I am very tired.” She rose and walked to him, to brush her lips against his temple, the maternal kiss a ghostly brush through technology.
Then she was gone, her image vanishing out of existence.
Raphael sat there unmoving for a good half hour, his earlier tension replaced by another, before he made a voice call. “Jelena,” he said when the woman who was one of his mother’s closest advisers answered. “Is my mother asleep?”
Jelena’s answer was a long time coming. “I am loyal to my archangel.”
His fingers dug into his thigh. “This is critically important, Jelena. If she continues to not sleep, you must call me. No one else. I am her son, will not take advantage. You know this.” Jelena and her partner in life, Avi, had known him since boyhood, had seen him and Caliane weather the tumult of time—and the pain of choices made in and because of madness.
Another pause. “I’ll call you.” She hung up without any attempt at even token politeness, but he cared nothing for that. Because in that terse exchange, she’d given him some vital information. And it hadn’t been an accident—Jelena was too experienced to slip up.