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)
“I should not collect any,” she’d murmured even as she admired a precisely balanced blade that Elena had gifted her. “Marduk and I will not be long awake.”
In the end, however, the couple had remained far longer than either had initially anticipated. By staying on after Illium’s ascension, Marduk had taken the Cadre to its full complement of ten, becoming the piece that ensured the world’s stability by his simple presence. Because nine was a stretch, eight painful to the point of leaving the archangels threadbare.
Ten, however…ten was calm and ease. Ten left time for empires to rise, innovation to thrive, dreams to take flight—and friendships to take root.
And so Tiamat-Neith now had a collection of blades to rival Elena’s.
Raphael tumbled into bed, pulling her with him. As she fell over her archangel, her wings spreading to shadow them in a midnight-and-dawn sky, her mind crashed with a surge of love as wild as the ocean waves that crashed against the city.
Salt and steel and power, that was her Raphael.
“Knhebek,” she said against the perfect shape of his lips, before he wound her braid around his fist and they sank into a kiss that was as familiar as their own breaths—and as extraordinary as the endless stars scattered across the universe.
I discover you anew each day, Guild Hunter. Raphael’s voice in her head, the mental scent of him intoxicating to her hunter senses.
Then there were no more words, just a tangle of limbs and wings and love.
Strong hands sliding over her skin, her lips tasting the heat of him, her fingers spread over his inner feathers in an intimacy that was hers alone to claim. As the way he caressed the arch of her own wings, making her toes curl and her thighs clench, was only ever for him.
She surrendered, because all these years later, it wasn’t about submission or control.
It was about trust.
Boundless, infinite, cherished.
Their love had grown in weight and depth with each passing season…without ever asking Elena to give up herself. They weren’t one being; no, they were Elena and Raphael, and they were a unit forged of loyalty furious and forever.
“Love me, Archangel. Time haunts me today.” A heaviness of melancholy twined around old sorrow until it was a vine choking her heart.
Tenderness in his kiss, his hands cupping her face as he drew her down and into him, into pleasure.
* * *
* * *
Later, when her eyes grew heavy, he wrapped her up in arms that understood her confusion at a time when her entire past was a boulder on her chest.
A thousand years. Ten centuries. So many mortal lifetimes.
“Sleep, hunter-mine.” His wing coming over her. “I have you.”
Safe, at home, she rested.
And dreamed of unearthly white owls with huge golden orbs for eyes that flew around her while she strained to hear a distant whisper.
2
Such glory you are, prophecy of mine. I will wake again when you next change the world…
—Archangel Cassandra (War’s End in the time of the Death Cascade)
Elena woke to a dawn that was a sweeping wash of orange-kissed pink beyond the balcony doors, but it was the piercing blue of her archangel’s eyes that held her attention.
His hair was tumbled over his forehead, his skin aglow in the morning light, and his wings a shimmer of white gold.
The Archangel of New York remained the most beautiful being she had ever met.
“Happy Birthday.” Leaning on his elbow, he held out his palm—on which sat a small box of verdant green tied with a gauzy ribbon that was a rich hue caught between purple and blue.
Her voice was husky with sleep when she answered. “I already have everything a woman could want.” They’d long ago stopped giving each other physical gifts on specific days—instead, it tended to happen when they spotted an item they thought the other would enjoy.
Despite her words, however, she was smiling as she took the box off his palm. Tilting her head to the side, she shook it gently by her ear. “Hmm, jewelry?” She wasn’t a woman who wore much of it—mostly his amber and sentimental items like the bracelet that Beth had gifted her.
“I know you’ll miss us after we’re gone,” her baby sister had said, her face seamed by a life joyously lived, and her spirit at peace in a way that had made her far older than Elena in that moment in time. “If I’ve forgotten anyone, you have space to add more links.”
Beth’s gift never got old. No link ever broke. Because Raphael had it quietly repaired each time it began to show signs of damage.
The blades and gauntlets that Sara and Deacon had given her, Elena had preserved in a memory box when time and use began to make her fear for them. Not so they’d be hidden away, but so she could still take them out every decade or so and touch the leather and metal that had been given to her in love by her best friend in all the world—and by the man whom Sara had loved.