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)
She turned to look at Elena, her eyes lost in time. “All the flowers within bloomed only in the moonlit hours, their petals aglow from this cool, cold light.” Her smile faded. “He was so delighted with himself that day, my Nadiel, that he’d found such beauty for me. He knew how much I enjoyed gardens.”
Elena had long ago stopped being nervous around Caliane, but today, she found herself hesitating. Nadiel wasn’t a topic on which they’d ever really spoken—Elena had always felt it wasn’t her place. “All these millennia later, you miss him,” she said. “I understand.”
Caliane looked at her. “Do you, child? You are but spring’s first breath, the rust of time nowhere near you.”
“I was mortal,” Elena reminded her, a deep ache in her heart. “With mortal family. Mortal friends.” And perhaps…a mortal child.
“Ah, their lives flicker and are gone before they can truly burn bright.” Beautiful words, but there was no sorrow in them, none of the empathy she was used to from Caliane. Raphael’s mother had long ago vowed to face what she’d done in her madness, and in that reckoning, had become a far kinder person, one who understood grief and guilt and despair in a way many immortals never would.
“Perhaps that is better,” Caliane added. “A quick burn rather than an endless span of an agony that leaches into the bones and calls itself at home.” Her eyes went to the moon again. “I think at times that the pain of it will end me, but I do not end. I am forever. And he is never. I killed him. As I killed the mortals who would not follow my command to be at peace.”
Elena’s heart thudded, the skin of her palms suddenly too dry and hot. Because the way Caliane had just referred to the murder of two ancient cities had been…flat. A mere fact. Nothing of emotion to it, no grief or guilt or acceptance that she’d committed an atrocity. Archangel, you’re right about your mother.
The answer was immediate. Where are you?
She told him, while Caliane stared at the moon again and began to recite a list of names, pausing in between to explain. “Others I killed. In battle for most.”
The susurration of wings as familiar to her as her own breath, Raphael landing on Caliane’s other side. “Mother,” he said, “will you walk with me?”
“Of course, my son.” She turned to look at Elena, her gaze silvered by the moon. “You will not mind if I steal him for a few moments?”
Elena shook her head while inside her chest, her heart squeezed. I hope you can get through to her.
The waves of Raphael were turbulent in her mind when he replied. I must.
Or Caliane would die, Elena realized. Because as she’d learned during her very first hunt, the Cadre would not countenance a mad archangel.
18
…my father went to Sleep an asshole, woke up an asshole.
—First General Illium to Andromeda, Archivist of Angels (Once, at the First Amber Revel)
It had taken all of Aodhan’s considerable self-control to remain in place even after Elena made her very rational argument for it. He’d known she was right; his presence would inflame an already tense situation—he didn’t know if it was jealousy because Illium loved him and didn’t give two fucks about Aegaeon, or simply because Aegaeon saw Aodhan as an impediment to his access to Illium, but the man who’d once been Illium’s father hated Aodhan with a vengeance.
Had he been the consort who walked into that clearing, Illium and Aegaeon would be in the air right now, throwing angelfire at each other with deadly intent. Because one hint of violence against Aodhan, and Illium would snap. His Blue would not allow anyone to ever again hurt Aodhan.
Aware of Ellie slipping away even as he landed, he said, “What set you off?” Illium had been in an excellent mood when they’d left their suite tonight. He was rare to anger as a rule—and he never really became this enraged, even with Aegaeon. He was happy enough to needle his father now and then and leave it at that.
“Rage requires passion,” he’d told Aodhan two hundred years ago. “I’ve realized that I don’t actually care enough about him to be angry.”
Wings still aglow, Illium paced the small area several more times before saying, “He had the audacity to blame Mother for his decision to go into Sleep.” Rage so hot it scalded. “I can’t recall all of his asinine accusations because my blood began to boil at that point, but he was saying something about how she wasn’t enough for him, and so he had to recover his energies another way.”
Aodhan’s own hands fisted. “I will kill him.” It came out as cold as Illium’s anger was hot.
He would burn down fucking empires for Eh-ma, the woman who’d held him in his darkest hour, and who had shared her love so generously that he felt as if he had two mothers most of the time. One who didn’t understand him but loved him in her own quiet way, and one who just knew him when it came to art and how it drove their spirits, her love a bright flame.