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)
Raphael knew his mother; a single instant’s true awareness of a second atrocity and she would end Caliane, Archangel of Amanat, once and forever.
Elena cupped his face, her hands firm and strong, her gaze that of a warrior. “We won’t let that happen,” she said. “Even if I have to riddle her wings with crossbow bolts so you can pin her down and make her listen. We won’t let her fall back into the abyss.”
His temple pulsed again, the pain serrated. Ignoring it because it was nothing in the face of his mother’s impending madness, he admitted all of it. “I’ve been lying to you, hbeebti.”
15
He had to die, my love…And so must I—that is why you came to kill me, is it not? You can’t kill me, my sweet Raphael.
—Mother to Son (In the time of Madness)
Elena searched his face, her body long and lean and strong against him. “Tell me what’s hurting you.” A tender demand.
“I’m afraid, Elena. So deep-down afraid that it gnaws on my bones.”
“Caliane,” she said with a roughness in her tone that was an eon of love and knowing. “And Nadiel.”
“Yes.”
Madness.
The specter that had haunted him his entire adult existence. His parents had spiraled into madness one after the other. They’d become strangers to him, strangers who’d hurt others—and him. The same son his father had carried on his shoulders and proudly talked about to his friends. The same much-loved child his mother had spent hours playing with even though she was an archangel with countless calls on her time.
“I’m remembering things I’d long forgotten.” He released Elena so he could pace, opening and snapping his wings closed as he did so. “Memories I’d shuttered away because they were too painful.”
He stared out at the rolling red vista of the desert that was this part of Marduk’s territory. “When I was very small, my mother once flew hours with me in her arms because I was missing my friend who had moved to a distant part of the territory with his family.” He’d lost that friend in a long-ago battle, but he well remembered the other boy—as he remembered how safe he’d felt in his mother’s arms.
“My father used to call me his Rafi.” His eyes burned. “I haven’t thought about that for centuries upon centuries. Nadiel was the only person in my entire existence who ever called me by that name. Rafi died with Nadiel.”
Elena used her forearm to wipe away her tears. “You’re afraid you’ll hurt our child in madness.”
He braced his hands against a wall, pushed himself back. “We long ago decided that if we fell, we’d fall together.
“But now…it’s not just about us any longer.” He went to her, slid his hand to the back of her neck. “And I’m an archangel, Elena. No one can stop me but another archangel. Not even the consort I adore with every breath in my body. I could murder you. Murder our child. And no one could stop me.”
Elena could feel Raphael’s terror as a cold wind against her skin, but she hadn’t loved this man this long to break under what, to him, seemed the ultimate truth. “Illium and Titus together could stop you.” Two archangels against one, all three battle hardened. “And if I asked, they would. Because it would save your life.”
His hand clenching on her hip. “That’s not how archangels work.”
“Raphael, since when have you and Illium ever had a normal archangel-to-archangel relationship?” The slightest upward tug of her lips. “When it’s just us, when he doesn’t have to maintain a front for others of the Cadre, he still treats you exactly as he’s always done.” With a respect so deep that it was clear no one would ever budge Illium from his loyalty to the man who had been there for him since childhood. “He also still flirts with me in the complete confidence that you won’t blast him with angelfire.”
She cupped her archangel’s hard jaw. “As for Titus—he’d cut off his own head if it would keep Lady Sharine from being hurt, and losing you to madness would hurt her. So he’ll make sure that doesn’t happen—even if he has to risk your wrath by invading your territory to keep you in check.”
She held the violent, beautiful blue of his eyes. “We’ve never followed the rules, so why start now? No isolation, Archangel. We lean on the people we love—and that includes telling Dmitri to call Illium and Titus if you start to go off the rails and I’m compromised.”
Raphael’s hands flexed, then tightened once more on her hips. “To admit to such weakness…it goes against everything I’ve ever been taught about what it means to be Cadre.” His wings opened in a glory of white gold. “But then, it was once implied to me that I should murder you because if I did not, you would make me weak.”